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Show CHAPTER FOUR Public Land Policy and the Environment FROM THE START of our review, we have examined, in connection with each topic or subject, the impact of particular public land uses on the environment. This Commission shares today's increasing national concern for the quality of our environment. The survival of human civilization, if not of man himself, may well depend on the measures the nations of the world are willing to take in order to preserve and enhance the quality of the environment. These problems, which are related to the public lands in varying degrees, stem from many causes, most of them resulting from the growing population and the rapid rate of technological progress. As our national living standards improve and our numbers increase, we have come to demand, among other things, more food, more fiber, more minerals, more energy, more wood products, and more outdoor recreation. The painful experience of crowding, so common now, comes not alone from population density, but from the greater impact on the environment by modern man with his automobiles, his gadgets of all descriptions, and his insatiable demand for more and more of everything. At the same time, our technology has developed artificial products of all kinds which do not disintegrate through natural processes. These solid wastes, the junk of modern life, may bury us if the technology that created them does not find a suitable way to reuse or dispose of them. Persistent insecticides, herbicides, and detergents also constitute threats derived from our rapid industrial development. We, however, express a cautious optimism, arising from our confidence that America's growing awareness of the danger, and the taking of appropriate steps to protect and enhance our environment, will combine to bring about the necessary corrective processes. The environmental hazards have had impacts in many ways on our public lands. The vast extent of those lands establishes that they are at the heart of maintaining environmental quality in large areas of the United States. The variety of characteristics of our public lands requires flexibility in the methods used to achieve quality objectives. Environmental conditions differ greatly among regions, areas, and localities. The problems of environmental management are as complex as the differences in the factors of topography, geology, soil, hydrology, vegetation, wildlife, climate, and visual-spatial form. As the owner of the public lands, the Federal Government has many laws on the books indicating an interest in the environmental impacts of the use of those lands. Most of these laws provide little statutory guidance and leave the development of standards and procedures to the individual Federal land management agencies. The obvious exceptions are the preservation-oriented statutes relating to such areas as national parks, wilderness areas, and wild and scenic rivers. Under general constitutional authority there are Federal laws concerning air and water pollution,1 as well as environmental impacts of highways constructed with Federal financial assistance.2 These are across-the-board law, i.e., not limited to Federal lands. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 s and the Water Quality Improvement Act of 1970 4 apply to all Federal agencies in the performance of any of their responsibilities which may have an impact M2 U.S.C. § 1857bl-(c) and 33 U.S.C. §§466 et. seq. (Supp. IV, 1965-68). -22 U.S.C. § 131 (Supp. IV, 1965-68). :iP.L. 91-190,83 Stat. 852. * P.L. 91-224, April 3, 1970. 67 |