Watt vs. Smokey Bear
Secretary of the Interior James Watt does not like to paddle. He does not like to walk. But he does like to see the U.S. exploring for mineral resources, even if they happen to lie underneath those areas that Congress has declared protected wilderness, "where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Environmentalists and their friends in Congress moved to forestall Watt earlier this year, when they used an obscure provision of the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act to prevent oil and gas exploration in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness. But they did not move...