Washington -- The fight to enact the Conservation and Reinvestment Act crumbled Thursday when the Senate, following in the footsteps of the House, overwhelmingly approved a vague, less generous program as part of a 2001 Interior Department spending bill.

The spending bill, approved 83-13, sets aside $12 billion over six years for House and Senate appropriations committees to spend on lands and conservation programs, still touted as the largest ever increase in such spending.

The CARA legislation, however, would have established a 15-year entitlement program that automatically doled out about $3 billion a year for parks, recreation and coastal programs.

CARA, written largely by Alaska Rep. Don Young and Sen. Frank Murkowski, would have meant about $164 million a year for Alaska. Under the spending bill now on its way to the White House for President Clinton's signature, how much any one state receives will depend largely on how much appropriators want to give it.

Alaska likely will do well over the next two years, when Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens will still be serving as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Tucked into the $18.8 billion Interior Department appropriations, for example, is more than $100 million for the state.

Early in the week it appeared there might be an orchestrated effort to defeat the Interior spending bill over its conservation funding. CARA, which Young spent two years toiling to get through the House, was supported by some 5,000 organizations that were angered when the measure was overtaken by the more modest version brokered by Washington Rep. Norm Dicks, the senior Democrat on the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee.

Young urged House colleagues Tuesday to defeat the spending measure. Instead it sailed through the chamber on a 348-69 vote early this week.

On Thursday, there was virtually no hope of CARA supporters holding the spending bill hostage. Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose state would have gotten at least $176 million from CARA, was the only member to bitterly complain about its demise.

"We will continue our fight," Landrieu said. "We will be organized for next year. Although CARA voters will lose the vote today, we will come back stronger."

But Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, Republican chairman of the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, said the Interior bill will provide much of the money that CARA supporters wanted for conservation programs, though in a way that doesn't create new entitlement programs.

"CARA is almost $3 billion annually in entitlements for 15 years," Gorton said. "Items in it were deemed to be more important than saving Social Security, education and health care. It is my view that these are utterly inappropriate for an entitlement that comes right off the top."

Murkowski, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, made no comment on the Senate floor about CARA's fizzling in the shadows of the Interior spending measure, for which he voted.

But Young, for whom passage of the conservation bill would have been the hallmark of his chairmanship of the House Resources Committee, continued to rail.

Young and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., introduced legislation to abolish the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In a statement Thursday, Young blamed the council's director, George Frampton, for persuading the White House to abandon its support of the CARA bill and to embrace the Interior spending measure.

"It is a sad commentary when the White House's top environmental adviser is responsible for killing the most important conservation bill in the past 25 years," Young said.

Frampton said he was disappointed to learn of the legislation.

"We understand that the conservation funding vote was very difficult for many members," Frampton said.

The Interior spending bill is loaded with Stevens earmarks and directives benefiting Alaska.

It includes $9 million for the Alaska Railroad to clean up a fuel spill caused by an avalanche last winter, $7.5 million for spruce bark beetle work in the Kenai Peninsula Borough, $5 million apiece for land trades in Kake and Craig, $5 million to increase timber preparation in the Tongass National Forest, $1.5 million to buy mining claims in the Wrangell-St.Elias National Park, and $5 million for staff housing at the Bethel hospital.

A provision for a $176,000 reindeer processing plant in Teller drew scorn from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who condemned the spending package for containing unparalleled "pork barrel" spending.

The $176,000 is coming out of the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget at the same time Lower 48 Indian reservations are struggling to replace dilapidated housing, McCain noted.

"I am sure Santa Claus will be pleased," McCain said.

Stevens did not go to the Senate floor to respond. But he has said many times that he is using his position as Appropriations Committee chairman to identify federal programs from which Alaskans have been excluded and that economic development money is a particular priority.