Salazar, sportsmen chide states' public lands movement

A hiker goes through the San Rafael Swell, in Emery County. (Steve Baker, Deseret News archives)

By Amy Joi O'Donoghue
Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — A states' rights, public lands movement with its genesis in Utah was blasted by former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Thursday as an effort that threatens to undo the successes of American conservation policy.

"This would roll back 100 years of public lands progress," he said in a teleconference hosted by the National Wildlife Federation.

"This would cause Teddy Roosevelt to roll over in his grave if he knew what the Republican National Committee's position was in respect to our public lands."

Roosevelt is regarded as the presidential architect of public lands conservation in the United States, creating a flurry of national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges under his administration, as well signing the Antiquities Act into law that gives presidents the executive power over such decisions.

In the teleconference, Salazar emphasized that a resolution endorsed by the Republican National Committee in favor of the Western states' movement is wrong-headed.

"These lands are the nation's birthright," he said. "They do not belong to one state."

The Transfer of Public Lands Act was passed in Utah two years ago and calls on the federal government to cede title to lands that some say were supposed to be "disposed" of at statehood.

Sponsored by Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, the law is at the center of a movement that has gained political traction among Utah's neighbors and sympathetic support from critics who say the federal government has too much control in the West.

The effort seeks transfers of vast swaths of Forest Service and BLM lands into state or private control, generating revenue that would support cash-strapped public school systems.

In Utah, more than 65 percent of the land is under the purview of the federal government, which "take back" supporters say puts the state at an economic disadvantage when it comes to tax revenues.

But critics say to sell or trade off public lands is to relinquish lands cherished by U.S. citizens and envied by countries around the world.

"America's national parks, monuments and rugged landscapes are not only a draw for people in this country but across the globe," said Peter Metcalf, president and chief executive officer of Salt Lake City-based Black Diamond, a clothing and outdoor equipment company. "No other country in the world has the public land infrastructure that we have. "

While the anti-public lands movement — at least in Utah — does not seek to dismantle national parks or monuments, Metcalf said he sees it as a real threat to the outdoor recreation economy.

"I see no other issue as strategically threatening to the vibrancy of one of America's most significant, sustainable and growing sectors … and the American outdoor industry is the world's leader. It is one of the few industries where America still dominates."

Metcalf said he first heard of the anti-public lands movement about 18 months ago, an ideological mission he said most dismissed out of hand because it was so "right-wing and so unimaginable."

"Now, because of our deafening silence and the fact that we did not mobilize earlier, something that people thought was inconceivable … is actually a plank in the Republican National Committee. Clearly it has gained momentum."

Utah has led out in a public policy and legislative push against continued federal land management and in Congress, a number of bills seek to rein in the power of agencies like the BLM and the Forest Service.

The festering resentment over federal land management policies on such activities like grazing, wild horses, oil and gas development, forest management and endangered species has crystalized in conflicts like that of Cliven Bundy's showdown over "trespassing" cattle and a defiant ATV ride in San Juan County.

The federation's Collin O'Mara said booting the public off the land, however, is not the answer.

"Resolutions like these cut against more than a century's worth of precedent," he said, noting that he'd visited the Salmon River area of Idaho recently, reveling in its beauty.

"The idea that lands like those could be closed off from visitors, from residents, from wildlife lovers of all stripes is a terrifying proposition because of the connection with nature that could be lost through these kind of activities," said O'Mara, the federation's president and chief executive officer.

Western lawmakers strategize on taking control of federal lands

April 12, 2014: The Bundy family and their supporters fly the American flag as their cattle were released by the Bureau of Land Management back onto public land outside of Bunkerville, Nev. (AP/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL)

FoxNews.com
Associated Press

Officials from nine Western states met in Salt Lake City on Friday to discuss taking control of federal lands within their borders on the heels of a standoff between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management.

The lawmakers and county commissioners discussed ways to wresting oil-, timber- and mineral-rich lands away from the feds. Utah House Speaker Becky Lockhart said it was in the works before this month's standoff.

The BLM rounded up hundreds of Bundy's cattle, saying he hasn't paid more than $1 million in grazing fees he owes for trespassing on federal lands since the 1990s. But Bundy does not recognize federal authority on the land, which his family has used since the 1870s.

The BLM released the cattle after a showdown last weekend with angry armed protesters whom Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid referred to as "domestic terrorists."

"What's happened in Nevada is really just a symptom of a much larger problem," Lockhart said, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

The Legislative Summit on the Transfer of Public Lands, as it was called, was organized by Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory and Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, addressed the group over lunch, the Tribune reported.

"It’s simply time," Ivory told reporters. "The urgency is now."

Fielder said federal land management is hamstrung by bad policies, politicized science and severe federal budget cuts.

"Those of us who live in the rural areas know how to take care of lands," said Fielder, a Republican who lives in the northwestern Montana town of Thompson Falls. "We have to start managing these lands. It's the right thing to do for our people, for our environment, for our economy and for our freedoms."

Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington also were represented, but none of the other states has gone as far as Utah, where lawmakers passed a measure demanding that the federal government extinguish title to federal lands.

The lawmakers and Gov. Gary Herber have said they're only asking the federal government to make good on promises made in the 1894 Enabling Act for Utah to become a state. The intent was never to take over national parks and wilderness created by an act of Congress, said Lockhart, a Republican from Provo.

"We are not interested in having control of every acre," she said. "There are lands that are off the table that rightly have been designated by the federal government."

Ivory said federal government's debt threatens its management of vast tracts of the West and its ability to make payments in lieu of taxes to the states, the Tribune reported. He said the issue is of interest to both urban and rural lawmakers.

"If we don’t stand up and act, seeing that trajectory of what’s coming … those problems are going to get bigger," Ivory was quoted as saying.

The University of Utah is conducting a study called for by the legislation to analyze how Utah could manage the land now in federal control.

BLM renews Grand Staircase grazing study

After 12-year hiatus, BLM set to restart an environmental analysis — and feud between environmentalists, ranchers

Map of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (BLM)

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune

A long-stalled environmental review of grazing in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is set to resume more than 12 years after a rangeland management plan was supposed to have been completed for this dry, though biologically and culturally varied, landscape.

The grazing issue has a tortured history on the 1.9 million-acre monument in southern Utah, pitting environmentalists against ranchers and their supporters in Garfield and Kane counties. Both sides have criticized the Bureau of Land Management for either failing to protect a fragile land owned by all Americans or pushing livestock off the range and undoing a revered Utah tradition.

Now the agency is trying to finish a job that it was given 17 years ago when President Bill Clinton established the monument, reigniting debate with both sides still firmly entrenched.

Clinton’s proclamation recognized livestock as a continuing presence on the Grand Staircase, Kaiparowits Plateau and Escalante canyons, but it also ensured grazing would be subject to "applicable laws and regulations."

The monument’s 1999 management plan is silent on the controversial subject of grazing, and officials have been kicking that can down the road ever since in the face of lawsuits and failed planning and collaboration efforts.

On Friday, the BLM is expected to post a notice of intent in the Federal Register, announcing the launch of an environmental review with the goal of producing a grazing-management plan, otherwise known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

"A grazing plan needs to pay attention to more than just ‘grass utilization’ and how much forage there is," said David deRoulhac of the Grand Canyon Trust. "BLM processes need to include all kinds of stakeholders and not just permittees. Grazers affect all kinds of values, such as wildlife, ecosystem health and recreation."

Local officials and grazing interests, however, contend the trust and other conservation voices don’t deserve a seat.

"Their objective is to eliminate grazing from the monument," Garfield County Commission Chairman Clare Ramsay said. "All they would be doing would be to legitimize their position. We are the elected officials."

The monument currently harbors 82 grazing allotments supporting 102 permit-holders who used a total 11,000 animal unit months, or AUMs, last year. AUM is a measure of how many mother cows and their calves can graze an allotment for one month.

The $1.35 the feds charge per AUM falls far short of covering the grazing program’s administrative costs and environmental impacts, leading some conservation groups to ridicule public-lands grazing as "welfare ranching."

Conservationists believe this landscape is too arid to support grazing at current levels and the monument’s nonagricultural assets, such as biotic soils, native plants and ancient rock art, are being sacrificed for the sake of a 19th-century enterprise.

"Ranching is a negligible part of the economy of southern Utah, particularly in Garfield County. It’s barely measurable," said Jon Marvel, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project. "The politics of Utah is such that BLM has been afraid to complete a grazing plan even though they know that grazing is incompatible with that arid landscape."

The Grand Canyon Trust has mustered the money to buy and retire allotments along the Escalante Corridor and other sensitive places in the monument, provoking lawsuits from local officials.

"You don’t want to put cattle in a desert where they are only going to hang out in the riparian areas," said the trust’s Mary O’Brien.

However, the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act guarantees ranchers can run cattle on these lands, local officials say, and any reduction in grazing harms the counties.

"Those units were set up for grazing. It doesn't mention recreation or anything else," Ramsay said. He contends the trust’s concern with creeks is really an excuse to rid the land of cows.

Still, nearly 97 percent of the monument is actively grazed, according to O’Brien. The remaining 65,400 acres are associated with allotments that conservation interests have bought out through the years.

The BLM has been through this planning process already and issued a draft EIS in 2008. But the scope of the analysis had become so broad and unfocused that officials decided to scrap the document and start afresh.

Officials were reluctant to comment Thursday, but in past public statements, BLM state director Juan Palma has promised that the new review will engage all interested parties, including environmentalists, in a transparent process.

"There is no direction from anywhere [or] anyone about undoing grazing," he told the monument advisory committee last year.

Still, in its last session the Utah Legislature used BLM’s alleged efforts to reduce grazing as the basis for designating a "grazing zone" in and around the monument, declaring livestock the "highest management priority" there.

And under the Public Lands Transfer Act passed last year, the monument and another 28 million acres of federal land are to be transferred to the state by the end of 2014. The legality of either law is open to debate, but both send a message that Utah intends to assert as much control over the monument as it can.

Bills keep pushing federal land transfer

BLM Geologist Doug Powell makes his way through a rock garden of "Hoodoo's in the Escalante Grandstaircase National Monument east of Kanab. (Hartmann/photo)

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune

A Senate panel on Monday advanced a joint resolution that presses the Utah governor and congressional delegation "to exert their utmost abilities" to convince the federal government to hand over 30 million acres of public lands to the state.

SJR13 seeks to speed the implementation of last year’s Transfer of Public Lands Act, which envisions the state acquiring most of the federal land within its borders by the end of next year. But even its backers concede this might take a legal battle, but one they say is worth fighting, especially if other Western states join the struggle to "take back" public lands.

"This action, if taken by the federal government, will allow Utah to provide for the education of its children, grow its economy and job opportunities, and provide for responsible management of the state’s abundant natural resources while preserving the important historic and cultural contributions that Utah’s public lands provide the citizens of Utah, the nation, and the world," the resolution claims.

The federal act that enabled Utah’s statehood in 1896 "promised" public lands would be disposed of but the feds have reneged on the deal, according to sponsor Sen. Aaron Osmond, R-South Jordan, who addressed the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee Monday. The panel passed the bill onto the full Senate on a 3-0 vote.

The panel’s lone Democrat, Sen. Jim Dabakis, of Salt Lake City, volunteered to work with Osmond to reword his resolution to make it less confrontational and critical of the federal government.

"The approach we tried [with the Public Lands Transfer Act] and you are trying to reinforce isn’t working. I wonder it it’s time to put some of the arrows aside and go back to Washington with a new attitude," Dabakis said. "Let’s see if we can roll up our sleeves and create some peace here."

For months, conservationists have been panning the proposed transfer as an unconstitutional land grab that would cost Utah taxpayers dearly, both in terms of litigation and administering the land itself. Their biggest concern is the land would be sold off, but backers say the intention is to keep the land public and do a better job managing it than the feds have done.

"This is something Utah has been asking for nicely for decades. It’s time to demand. Other states are standing with us," said Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan,addressing another land-transfer bill on Friday.

Awaiting action on the House floor is HB142, which would authorize the Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office to further study how best to accomplish the transfer. This effort will cost up to $450,000, according to a fiscal note.