Informant38

"Gale Norton is the greatest threat to America's wildlife and natural heritage today," Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen says. "Our last remaining wild land is quickly vanishing, and we desperately need a steward who will passionately implement and enforce laws protecting those places and the wildlife that depends on them for survival. Instead, our Interior Secretary is determined to undermine those laws for her friends in industry."

As Colorado attorney general, she was hostile to environmental protection and took a head-in-the-sand approach to polluters. She stood by, for instance, as cyanide leaks from the Summitville gold mine killed wildlife in 17 miles of the Alamosa River. As a lawyer, she represented the oil industry, loggers and miners. She was a senior attorney at the arch-conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation under its founder, the bombastic Watt.

Norton has declined to oppose a single lawsuit by home builders and other developers attacking federal protections for critical wildlife habitat. As the Los Angeles Times put it in a March 26 editorial: "Ranchers, home builders and others in favor of pell-mell development are blasting away at the federal Endangered Species Act like hunters on a rampage through a zoo. And the people whom President Bush appointed to defend the act are either cowering or cheering them on.