Bush Stumps With The Fishes

Sitting on a bale of hay next to a salmon pond, George W. Bush said conservation efforts like saving endangered salmon are best left in local hands, and promised help without domination from the federal government.

“I'm convinced that the cooperative effort going on locally is much more efficient at saving salmon,” said Bush, who was joined by local officials Wednesday on a plot of private property 40 miles east of Seattle.

The Republican presidential nominee came to rural Washington to announce his plans to fix up national parks and to aid the salmon without breaching federal dams, the solution some environmentalists are pushing.

The salmon population of the pond he visited, known as Haskell Slough, was revived with the help of a $300,000 project funded with state and federal money. Bush praised several local salmon experts who explained how landowners working with state and community groups had improved conditions so that salmon thrive in the pond for the first time in 50 years. The salmon had been wiped out when streams in the area were blocked off from rivers important to their spawning.

“It all fits a philosophy that says we can have a clean environment if we trust local groups,” Bush said.

Afterward, in a speech before the fog-shrouded Skykomish River, Bush criticized Democratic nominee Al Gore for refusing to take a stand on the dam issue.

“My opponent has refused to take a position,” Bush told a crowd of about 100. “I think you deserve an answer about this important environmental issue.”

In July the GOP presidential candidate needled Gore on the question of breaching the dams. Gore said he was studying President Clinton's plan to put breaching on the back burner while other recovery efforts are tested.

“I will make conservation an important commitment,” Bush said in his speech, delayed almost an hour in hopes fog would lift from the river serving as backdrop. “I believe the federal government acts best when it supports these local efforts.”

If elected, Bush would push Congress to appropriate $4.9 billion over five years to pay for a backlog of projects to fix deteriorating highways, repair leaky roofs at tourist attractions and purify polluted streams in national parks.

Bush blamed the Clinton and Gore administration for rundown parks, saying too many federal dollars were spent acquiring land and not enough went to maintaining existing properties, leaving the National Park Service with more property but less money to take care of it, the paper said.

“We want to preserve the natural beauty that draws us in the first place,” he said in a campaign position paper.

The Texas governor will also support state efforts to improve salmon habitats threatened by federally built dams in the Pacific Northwest, but opposes breaching the dams - a solution favored by environmenalists but opposed by farmers, shippers and power users who utilize them.

Instead, Bush will back a bipartisan effort in Washington state to fund watershed projects to improve the waters critical to spawning salmon.

Bush will also propose spending $100 million over five years to hire scientists for the National Park Service.

In tackling environmental concerns, Bush is trying to reinforce his claim to be a “different” kind of Republican who cares about issues not traditionally associated with the GOP.

The trick will be to keep the focus on his campaign messages. In recent days the Texas governor has worked to draw voters into his health care and education proposals, only to find himself dealing with other, unwanted issues.

Visiting Florida on Tuesday to press his plan to help seniors pay for prescription drugs, Bush was peppered with questions about a GOP ad attacking Gore in which the word “rats” was flashed across the screen for a fraction of a second.

GOP admakers said the word formed the end of the word “bureaucrats” and wasn't intended as a subliminal message.

Bush said he took the ad's creators at their word and tried to steer the focus back to health care, saying, “I don't think we need to be subliminal about prescription drugs.”

Last week's unwanted intrusion was of his own making. He made a crude comment about a reporter at a campaign rally without realizing that his words were picked up on microphones.

A jousting with Gore over presidential debates and grumblings among Republicans about how his campaign is being run were also among last week's distractions.