If there is any connective theme in the yearlong assault on the nation's environmental laws, it is Congress's clear desire to enrich state, local and commercial interests at the expense of the long-term health of America's national resources. The notion of stewardship is foreign to this Congress, a fact made clear when it tried to cripple the Clean Water Act and strip Federal agencies of much of their regulatory authority over the environment. But nowhere is the urge to trifle with public resources more nakedly expressed than in a web of bills that would transfer huge tracts of Federal land to state and private control.

Congress has already spoken on one of these measures. A provision in the pending budget reconciliation bill would open up the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Although President Clinton has promised to veto the bill, environmentalists are worried that the drilling provision will survive in later negotiations between Mr. Clinton and Congress.

There is another test just around the corner. Companion bills in the House and Senate would take about 22 million acres of Federal land in Utah now run by the Federal Bureau of Land Management, give wilderness protection to a mere 1.8 million acres in southeastern Utah's fabled canyonlands and open the rest to mining, road-building and development.

The bills are sponsored by Representative James Hansen and Senator Orrin Hatch, both Utah Republicans. A competing bill sponsored by Representative Maurice Hinchey of New York is much better. It would protect 5.7 million acres, which environmentalists think is the minimum required to maintain the integrity of the canyonlands. According to several polls, Utah's rank-and-file citizens prefer the Hinchey approach and believe that there is more to be gained from tourism if the terrain is left alone than from bulldozing some of the nation's most fragile and scenic lands. But Utah's Congressional delegation prefers the bulldozer.

Critics of the Hatch-Hansen bill have two further complaints. First, it would undermine the intent of the 1964 Wilderness Act -- an act that designates wilderness as a place "where man himself is but a visitor" -- by allowing development even in the 1.8 million protected acres. Second, it forecloses the possibility of future wilderness designations. The B.L.M. will continue to manage the 20 million Utah acres left unprotected by the Hansen-Hatch bills. But the bills say the land must henceforth be reserved for commercial users. Wilderness designation will no longer be an option.

Finally, victory for the Hansen-Hatch bills could provide smoother sailing for other measures that are aimed at stripping the Federal Government of control over public lands. The most brazen of these are identical bills sponsored by Senator Craig Thomas, Republican of Wyoming, and Mr. Hansen that would transfer to the states every single acre managed anywhere by the B.L.M., some 270 million acres in all. A variant has been offered by Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, who would establish a commission to identify national forests and other public lands that could be sold or transferred to the states or private interest.

The Thomas-Hansen measure proposes a giveaway. The Burns bill threatens a national yard sale of the country's natural heirlooms. Mr. Thomas says the lands would be better administered "by the people who truly understand the needs of local citizens.'' That, of course, means Western state legislatures, which tend to be far more inclined to exploit public resources for commercial gain than even this Congress.

These are destructive ideas, and the only sure way to stop them is to send a clear conservationist signal by defeating the Utah lands bill. The main hope is on the House floor, where a growing group of moderate Republicans is having strong second thoughts about legislation that endangers the environment. The preservation of a sound national public lands strategy may lie in their hands.