I keep having to pinch myself. I can't believe the sale of our National Forests or BLM lands is really an issue that merits discussion let alone opposition.
Above: The Snake River Range which when I took the photo was National Forest, now it's Wilderness.
I usually consider myself fairly tuned in to local sentiment across the intermountain west and the sale of public lands hasn't really been on my radar, and it ought to be. Ineffectual statements by state legislatures don't do much to impress me, they don't have the force of law for public lands. The steady pitter patter of rhetoric reported on page 12 of small distribution local papers goes unnoticed along with buying new firetrucks and school sports news.
People who appreciate public lands shouldn't be taking things so lightly. The stage is being set for a takings. The rhetoric is making what is an unbelievable thing more acceptable. Enough of this rhetoric over enough years and then one day when control of the senate or congress changes, well low and behold we only have one veto pen between us and selling the crown jewels of America's public lands.
I've forgotten the particulars and don't really care but recently there was a meeting in Salt Lake of local politicos from a dozen or so states. Idaho has also had various anti federal government type rumblings from their legislature.
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which is probably the fastest growing conservation organisation in the Western US (and of which I'm a member), felt concerned enough that they put out a very loud and public statement to all their members saying...
RMEF calls on all members of Congress to stand up for the ongoing federal ownership of land and to further improve the situation by enacting legislation that creates specific strategic goals for the Departments of Agriculture and Interior to implement sound, active federal management.
“Federal public lands have always afforded the opportunity for Americans to hunt, hike, fish and enjoy the outdoors,” added Allen. “The RMEF wants it to remain that way.”
RMEF News Release
The Raison d'etre for this anti public lands sentiment is something we poke fun at, at our own expense. I read of Clive Bundy and various cartoonish militias as if they are some sort of spiritual center of a renewed Sage Brush Rebellion and while they might be harbingers they are hardly the main show.
There are at least two very different parties involved.
Publicly there are people similar to but much less militant than Bundy. Remember Bundy was the last of some hundred ranchers in his area, driven off their allotments in similar fashion. Those other hundred ranching families might well feel strongly that it is wrong to break the law or threaten federal officials, but they also feel strongly the loss of the life they and their families had known for at least three generations. Many were forced to give up the family homestead. That's a loss that engenders strong long lasting antipathy.
Similarly there is the whole logging and lumber industry. All good paying jobs scattered across the west from Washington State all the way down into New Mexico and Arizona. And for what? An owl that continues to decline in population anyway? Forests that we are now told need periodic cutting to avoid the types of fires we are now experiencing and to harbor more varied wildlife than single aged stands can provide?
Similarly as David Allen the Director of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation says,
“Calls for transfers of federal land are rooted in disappointment and disgust with the lack of balanced use and management of these lands today. Over the past decade, there has been a shift in the multiple use approach for the benefit of the most people and wildlife to a preservationist agenda advocated by small radical groups. Actively managed lands benefit people and wildlife, and in a specific case, reduce the impacts of wildfire, a national crisis at this time,”
As a hunter I totally get it.
When I read this web site, Daily Kos, and read open mockery of these people and their concerns about the places they live and the livelihoods lost I too am lost, lost for words. Since when does a web site supposedly supportive of the Democratic Party laugh at impoverishing working class rural people? Those very people we should be supporting we are instead driving into the arms of those who would privatize our vast public lands. When rural western Americans have one group actively doing everything they can to keep one from using the public lands that rural people live in, how much worse would state control be?
I don't agree with turning federal lands over to the states, but I sure as heck do understand it. What's worse, some asshole from CA/NY/Wherever, or some asshole from the State Capital? That's the reasoning.
The other actors in this struggle are maybe quietly funding campaigns and encouraging rhetoric. They are the folks who will either buy federal lands at cut rate prices or suborn the much easier state legislatures into allowing the drilling/mining/development of former federal lands. When those folks get their hands on land there will appear large Keep Out signs. And that will be that.
Photo from campsite on public lands last weekend. Snow is getting lower every day.