According to critics like the Wilderness Society, George W. Bush has distinguished himself as the President most at odds with wilderness preservation since passage of the Wilderness Act 40 years ago. Bush has signed off on adding just 530,000 acres to America’s wilderness legacy, the least of any President since Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law in September 1964. Additionally, the Bush White House has lobbied extensively for increasing oil and gas drilling on wilderness lands throughout the nationwide 106-million acre wilderness system.

This week’s column consists of brief excerpts from just a day or two of the anti-Bush press releases, op-eds and news stories that cross my desk. As many commentators have pointed out, the Bush environmental policy is rarely fully visible. To understand all its scorched-earth implications, you have to read the fine print in thick government regulations, Presidential orders and agency filings. But poring over that material is exactly what some dedicated environmentalists do.

Environmentalists were optimistic last week that a new federal report acknowledging that emissions from automobiles and power plants have contributed to warmer temperatures in North America since 1950 would lead to a policy shift by the Bush administration on global warming. But despite the report, a White House spokesperson reiterated that President Bush still believes that the connection between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming is inconclusive, and that voluntary reductions are sufficient for the time being.

The National Park Service believes that pollution from Denver and its suburbs is taking a toll on the fragile ecosystems of nearby Rocky Mountain National Park. If left unchecked, ecologists worry that effects similar to those of acid rain will wreak havoc on the park’s alpine environments.

The Bush administration continues to stonewall on the subject of reducing mercury emissions, even though the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Michael Leavitt, admitted August 24 that fish in almost all of the country’s rivers and streams are heavily dosed with the toxic heavy metal.