Volume 144, No. 46 covering the 2nd Session of the 105th Congress (1997 - 1998) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“RANCHERS IN COLORADO KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE LAND” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2301-H2302 on April 23, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
RANCHERS IN COLORADO KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE LAND
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I woke up this morning and, doing the usual morning, looked at the newspapers and read some of the comments about Earth Day yesterday, and I was surprised at some of the remarks that were made that seem to want to imply to the American people or convince the American people that the way to protect our environment is to have a larger and bigger government in Washington, D.C.; that the people in Washington, D.C., truly know better than those of you out there who own property, who have worked property, who work your land and live your land; that the people in Washington, D.C., really should be trusted with your water, they should be trusted with utilization of your land, they should be trusted with all of the decisions to be made about the environment.
So briefly tonight I wanted to talk to you about a few people that live on the land.
David and Sue Ann Smith, the Smith ranch located in Meeker, Colorado, that ranch is what they call a centennial ranch, which means one family has been on that ranch more than a hundred years. In the Smith case, it is one of the most beautifully managed ranches that I have been on, and I have spent a lot of time on it. It is a centennial family, they care about it, they make their living off that land.
Down in Carbondale, Colorado, former Congressman Mike Strang, Mike and Kit Strang have their ranch down there. It looks out over Mount Sopris. They take care of that land as if it were their own child.
You go back up to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Al Strouband's. Al has a beautiful ranch up there, Storm King Ranch. He takes care of it. You should see what he does with the vegetation, you should see what he does with the utilization of the water, how he takes care of the game.
And not only does Al have a ranch in Colorado, he also has a farm in Virginia. Go down and see the farm and what he does with his farm, how well manicured it is, the animals that are taken care of, how he takes care of the environment, the soil, the water.
And you come back to Colorado. Go back up to Meeker again, go visit Bart and Mary Strang. They have been there a long time, these Strang families, long, long time. See how they take care of the land, see how protective they are of the environmental issues.
Go back up to Evergreen, Colorado, to Bill and Leslie Volbright. That is the utilization of conservation easements so that they can protect their land into the future.
Or if you want to, go back to Grand Junction, Colorado, Doug and Cathy King. I go up there every year to bugle elk. Some of the finest elk in the country are up in that area, beautiful aspen trees. You should go up there sometime in the fall, should go and ride in the pickup truck with Doug and see how much he cares about that land, how fragile they are with the land.
Go to Carbondale, Colorado to Tom and Ruth Perry's ranch; to their in-laws, Tom and Rossie Turnbull's. Look at what they do with their land and how protective they are.
You will find three things in common with all of these families. Obviously the first thing in common is they care about that land. They love that land. They know how important the land was for generations before them. They know how important that land is for generations ahead of them.
The second thing they all have in common is no one in Washington, D.C., no one in Washington, D.C., no Environmental Protection Agency, nobody from Earth First or the National Sierra Club had to march onto this property and tell these people how to care for that land. Nobody from Washington, D.C. or Earth First or these organizations had to tell them about the future generations. Nobody in Washington, D.C. or Earth First or any of those programs know anything about the past generations of this land.
The other thing that is in common, they are all Republicans.
Now when I read the papers this morning, the Democratic Party seems to think that through big government, through a larger EPA, through organizations like Earth First, that that is the way we ought to control and protect our environment. Well, I am telling you they have got it all wrong.
What they need to do is just take a few minutes, go talk to their local members, go talk to the local ranchers, go talk to the men and women that make their livings off farms and ranches. Take enough time to ride around on horseback or in a pickup or walk around, whatever you want to do. That land, see how they care for it, see how they talk about it, see how they cuddle it like it is a small child, see how they talk about future generations, and then reassess whether it is necessary for Washington, D.C. to impose their excess regulations, to impose some of the utopian ideas and in many cases to drive these people off that land.
You know it is very easy in the East to tell them what to do in the West because there is not much government land in the East. In the West, my district for example, my district, geographically larger than the State of Florida, 20-some-million acres of Federal land. We know about that land. We do not need Washington, D.C. to tell us.
Sometime take a deep breath and go visit a ranch in Colorado.
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