Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona governor who served as secretary of the interior for eight years under President Clinton, will speak at the University of Colorado at Boulder on April 20.
Babbitt will speak at 7 p.m. in the University Memorial Center's Glenn Miller Ballroom, in a conversation with CU-Boulder history and environmental studies Professor Patricia Nelson Limerick and Distinguished Professor of law Charles Wilkinson. The talk is free and open to the public.
The event is part of the 2003-04 Wren and Tim Wirth Forum on the American West, which is bringing five former secretaries of the interior, and current Secretary Gale Norton, to campus to discuss their roles in shaping the West. Babbitt was secretary of the interior from 1993 to 2000 and governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987.
The series is sponsored by the CU-Boulder Center of the American West, The Nature Conservancy and the Denver law firms of Brownstein, Hyatt and Farber, and McKenna, Long and Aldridge.
As interior secretary, Babbitt put into effect new grazing policies and regulations for public lands, used Habitat Conservation Plans to protect endangered ecosystems under the Endangered Species Act and led Clinton to use the Antiquities Act and other authorities to set aside an unprecedented number of National Monuments and protected areas including the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, the Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument, the Missouri Breaks and the Northwest Hawaiian Island marine reserves.
Wolves were brought back to Yellowstone National Park under Babbitt's tenure in 1994. He also led efforts to restore the Florida Everglades, the largest environmental restoration program in the nation's history.
Babbitt was instrumental in working with The Nature Conservancy to initiate negotiations with the owners of the Baca Ranch in Colorado's San Luis Valley, which will soon become the nation's next national park and wildlife refuge.
"Secretary Babbitt is one of the West's most important Western political figures and also one of the region's most interesting thinkers," Limerick said. "His actions as governor and secretary are certain to register in the history books of the future."
Babbitt grew up in a pioneer ranching family in northern Arizona where he graduated from Flagstaff High School. He received a degree in geology from the University of Notre Dame, studied in England as a Marshall Scholar where he received a master's degree in geophysics and attended Harvard Law School.
Babbitt currently lives in Washington, D.C., where he is an attorney at the law firm of Latham & Watkins. He serves as a director of the World Wildlife Fund and as chair of the Mayor's Environment Committee.
For more information on the lecture series, contact the CU-Boulder Center of the American West at (303) 492-4879 or visit or The Nature Conservancy at (303) 444-2950 or .