Resources Committee, House

Under Morris K. Udall, the Arizona Democrat who chaired the committee from 1979 to 1991, the committee was a strong advocate of protecting public lands. Although many committee members still wanted to accommodate the timber and mineral industries, that attitude did not dominate the committee in the late 1970s and 1980s as it had earlier under the lengthy chairmanship (1959–1973) of Colorado Democrat Wayne N. Aspinall. Although Stewart Udall, interior secretary from 1961 to 1969 and Morris Udall's brother, had won support from the Senate to close certain federal lands to commercial use, the proposals had faced opposition from Aspinall and the House. Congress eventually passed the 1964 Wilderness Act, a landmark bill that also included concessions to mineral leasing and other activities.

[Page p387]More than a decade later the House, not the Senate, was the lead player on preservation issues. When Congress was considering what parks, forests, and energy development were appropriate on the millions of acres of federally owned land in Alaska, the Senate pushed for less protection and more development. In contrast, the committee won House passage of a conservation-oriented bill. Eventually enacted in 1980, the measure concerning Alaska lands fell short of House goals, but it did reflect earlier concessions by the Senate to the committee's proposals.

In the early 1980s James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's secretary of interior, launched an aggressive campaign to allow private industry to develop wilderness areas before a 1984 deadline would close them to commercial use. That legacy from Aspinall's era had permitted an additional twenty years of development in areas designated as wilderness in 1964. Never were the ideological differences between the Democrats and Republicans more apparent than during those early years of Reagan's presidency. But eventually, even Republicans on the Resources panel objected to Watt's plans, and Congress blocked him from acting. On many other issues, the committee took positions more favorable to conservation than did the Republican-controlled Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which handled most public land questions.

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