CLINTON'S appointments of two strong environmentalists to the posts of secretary of the interior and administrator of EPA have alarmed many business leaders. But the choices of Bruce Babbitt and Carol Browner for these key environmental positions accurately reflect the "greening of America." They reconfirm the practical necessity for business to act in environmentally sensitive ways.

IS RANCHING on the federal range an environmentally destructive anachronism? Many environmentalists seem to think so. Less than 30,000 ranchers graze cattle on 350 million acres of federal lands, an area twice the size of Texas. Environmentalists hope the public lands will be, as the bumper sticker intones, "Cattle Free by '93."

KILLING WOLVES is a dramatic and highly controversial wildlife management practice. Alaska has recently proposed this as a way to boost caribou, moose, and deer populations for tourists and hunters.

But many people find gunning wolves from airplanes offensive and are outraged.

AS PRESIDENT-ELECT Clinton and Vice President-elect Gore look toward Jan. 20, they must confront the problem of reconciling their environmental rhetoric with economic reality. Much is promised: Al Gore's environmental commitment is unprecedented for a vice president and adds to pent-up pressures to address environmental concerns.

THE election of Governor Clinton and Senator Gore alerts us to a new environmental movement. They claim to be seeking innovative and efficient ways to achieve environmental goals. For the past 20 years such an alternative approach has been developed. It may at last receive the attention in Washington that it has earned in universities and think tanks.

It is called the New Resource Economics (the NRE). It is based upon incentives and voluntary action. It recognizes the role property rights and markets play in coordinating and rationing valuable resources.

James Watt, Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, was an environmental paradox. To environmentalists, he personified an obsolete view of nature, a view seeing only commercial value in natural resources. But for the Greens, Watt was a useful icon of rapacious industrial exploitation. As such, he deserves much of the credit for the rise of professional environmentalism. He was the enemy that united their followers. He fueled massive fund-raising campaigns to thwart the Reagan Administration's policy directives.

International trade, a vital component of the Northwest economy, has come under fire from a seemingly unlikely source: environmentalists.

At issue is the recently concluded North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA), between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. NAFTA would create the world's largest free-trade zone, encompassing over 360 million people and $6.2 trillion worth of goods and services a year.

The Montana chapter of Defenders of Wildlife has announced a new program to encourage wolf re-introduction. This is noteworthy because it seeks to do so with the help of ranchers, until now some of the wolves' staunchest opponents. This approach could hold the key to fostering the recovery of endangered species nationwide and have implications for the Northwest's debate over the spotted owl.

This year is the centennial of the National Forest System. Its custodian, the U.S. Forest Service, manages 191 million acres of national forest and rangeland. That’s equal to Texas and Louisiana combined.

The federal Endangered Species Act itself may soon be endangered.

Throughout the American West, the law now threatens to devastate entire economies based upon altering nature - logging, mining, damming rivers. And many environmentalists are gloating.

They are using the grizzly, the wolf and the salmon - symbolically some of America's most important creatures - together with one of the most obscure, the northern spotted owl, to hold development hostage.