The federal government aptly fills the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the ongoing production of western land management. In the words of Charles Dickens, “he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone … a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!”
This holiday season, Utah wants control over the millions of acres of “unappropriated” land within their state, currently managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In August, Utah filed a lawsuit asking the United States government to decide if the federal government has the legal authority to hold unappropriated lands within the state indefinitely. This lawsuit excludes the millions of appropriated acres within the state already designated as national parks, forests, and monuments, wilderness areas, tribal lands, and military properties.
Federal land ownership dominates the West. Over 60% of Alaska is federally owned and the rest of the 11 contiguous western states have 45% federal ownership. A sharp contrast to the eastern states where federal ownership amounts to 4%. The most frustrating issue for the western states is that almost half of this acreage is unappropriated. Unappropriated ground is managed by the BLM, sitting in limbo, inefficiently utilized, and horribly underserved because of the overwhelming volume of acreage. Romantically imagining the federal government as a proactive, efficient and conservation-minded manager is as foolish as asking Scrooge for a donation – Bah humbug!
Early America was shaped by the principle that “ownership of property gave not only economic independence but also political independence to the average American.” George Washington wrote, “An enterprising man with very little money may lay the foundation of a noble estate.” This was the generous philosophy instilled in early American land management policies. But as western states obtained statehood, public lands were trusted to the national interest with the promise that eventually the federal government would sell these lands back. That never happened.
Federal shackles were tolerated initially, because early conservationists like Theodore Roosevelt believed active land management involved local interests. Good intentions were spoiled when out-of-state narratives overwhelmed the local voices, slandering the communities who lived and worked with these resources. Environmentalists criminalized local communities, motivating laws and administrative rules which have held public lands hostage for decades, for the mental well-being of a few people who rarely or never visit these areas.
These policies were an “all-purpose tool for stopping economic activity.” Wilderness acreage rose more than 716% between the 1960s and 1980 and grazing use plummeted. In 1976, the interests of local communities were completely erased from policy considerations with the passing of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which enshrined all public lands into federal oversight for perpetuity.
Today, western communities and taxpayers face the culmination of these decisions, living next to public lands stifled by protection and resembling the opposite of any imagined picturesque landscape. New growth of trees is 48% of mortality, and of those dying trees only 11% are harvested. Instead, federal lands are consumed by wildfires and disease, with fire size averaging five times that of nonfederal lands.
Taxpayers are also forced to fund federal inefficiency when every dollar spent on federal land returns only $0.73 and state lands have revenue of $14.51 per dollar spent, with just a fraction of the land base. Anemic timber sales and other resource harvesting, combined with the lack of federal fiscal obligation, starves rural communities from economic opportunity and school systems from abundant funding.
Public lands yet to come will see more land lost, western communities fall into deeper levels of poverty, and America struggles to compete with foreign resources because environmental activists have a stranglehold on our domestic interests. This stranglehold has choked off access for rural communities since the 1970s and is now suffocating the environmental prosperity of the public lands themselves. Along with Scrooge, western communities ask, “Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?”
In recent years, about 20 states have attempted to obtain more local control over federal lands but have met with little success. Utah’s lawsuit against the federal government is the latest attempt to introduce the early values of America back into the public land discussion. Though concern looms over selling public lands for profits, the West needs a solution that fosters more state influence in public land decisions.
Federal generosity would foster local management and influence on public lands, allowing western lands to become a thriving environmental and economic opportunity that will “bless us, everyone!”
