On a Sunday afternoon 10 days before President Clinton's State of the Union address, Clinton and Vice President Al Gore met in the White House with about a dozen leaders of major environmental groups.
A week later, Gore met with the leaders again to brief them about the contents of Clinton's economic package. It contained 19 of 30 measures recommended by the Sierra Club, one of the groups in the meetings.
"I've spent more time visiting the President and vice president in the last two weeks than in the last 12 years," National Wildlife Federation President Jay D. Hair said after the meetings.
After being relegated to the role of agitator on the outside of the last two Republican administrations, environmental groups appear to be wielding more influence at the White House than any time in several decades. Their ranks are being tapped for key appointments and their views solicited.
From fee hikes for cattle grazing on public lands to an energy tax, the longtime agenda of major environmental groups is being incorporated into Administration policy.
Western organizations that represent users of public lands are alarmed, and even environmental groups realize that the transition from an opposition force to practical policy-makers will challenge them in new ways.
"You can always be opposed to something," Hair said. "It's much more difficult to say yes."
Gore, long a friend of environmental groups, and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who owes his post in part to lobbying by these activists, provide the pipeline into the Administration.
"I know these guys so well," Hair said. "I feel comfortable calling them, and they feel comfortable calling me."
The most striking changes are occurring at Interior, a sprawling department that includes agencies with often conflicting missions: the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, which have a strong conservationist ethic, and the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Minerals Management Service, which are more industry and user-oriented.
George T. Frampton Jr., Babbitt's assistant secretary for parks and wildlife, is former president of the Wilderness Society, an environmental group that frequently sued previous administrations.
His BLM director, Jim Baca, was a member of the Wilderness Society's governing council whose appointment has unnerved timber, mining and ranching interests in the West. Babbitt formerly served as president of the League of Conservation Voters.
