The grand compromise: The search for a public lands resolution

A possible solution to the bickering over land use in a big chunk of Utah is being negotiated with all varieties of groups at the table under an effort shepherded by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. Despite the challenges, he and others remain optimistic.

The moon sets in Desolation Canyon Thursday, July 1, 2010, on the Green River. (Tom Smart, Deseret News)

By Amy Joi O'Donoghue
Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — Imagine Rob Bishop with his head under the hood of a car and a line of people behind him telling him the best way to fix it.

That's the scenario for the Utah congressman, the "car" in this case the delicate issue of federal lands oversight in Utah, and few would dispute the current system is a junker, rife with lawsuits, stalemates and uncertainty.

Bishop, a Republican, has spent the past 20 months as the fixer mechanic, brokering a public lands initiative process that attempts to meld a legislative solution to land use issues in seven Utah counties.

"Everybody is going to get something, but not everything they demand," he said. "That is the beauty of doing it big."

Bishop's bill will propose solutions for some 18 million acres in the extreme eastern part of Utah, with possible wilderness designations that number in the millions of acres. At the same time, it would carve out certainty for recreationers, the oil and gas industry, coal mining interests, potash extraction and more.

This is no minor tune-up.

Wednesday Bishop met with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at her request. He said she wanted to know how his "grand bargain" legislative effort was coming along.

"It was positive," he said. "She wanted a quick update of where we were in the process...We did go through in detail over the kind of things we would be putting on the table. She actually seemed very positive about it going forward."

Positive and optimistic

"Positive" is the key word that swirls around any discussions on Bishop's public lands initiative. It is the oil that keeps this engine running, even in the face of such disparate interests.

"It's quite encouraging to see the stakeholders still hitched," said Kim Christy, deputy director of Utah's School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), which manages lands conveyed at statehood and held in trust for financial benefit of school children.

"I am the first to admit it is a long shot." But it is a shot.

The stakes are high for Utah.

Bishop's bill, which he hopes to ready to be introduced in January, involves land swaps — it could be SITLA's largest in its history — and would mean it could trade out high-value cultural or wilderness quality lands in exchange for acreage with potential for development.

It leaves the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument off the table and it attempts to solve disputes in this swath of Utah that arise over oil and gas development, endangered species, off-roading, grazing and more.

Bishop believes faith in the continuing negotiations is helping to keep a possible monument designation in Utah by President Obama at bay, although no outright promises have been made.

"What they have said is they are positive about the process and as long as we seem to be making progress toward the solution that this would be the preferable solution where everyone is involved, as opposed to the president making a political statement," he said.

Bishop said each side can gain something and the threat of losing everything keeps everyone involved in the process.

"What we are seeing is everyone sees a potential win out of this process and that encourages them to continue on," he said. "It is important to say that unlike maybe a few years ago, when other people were less successful in trying this same kind of stuff, that everyone also views the potential of defeat."

Strange bedfellows

He said, "There have been times...that there was one side or the other who thought they had the guaranteed, safe upper hand as it was and if they stood pat, and stuck with the status quo, they would come out OK." He said now the threat of losing something provides a healthy détente.

This lands process, as a concept, has forged like positions for two unlikely bedfellows — Emery County and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA).

Representatives of both say they prefer a wilderness bill to a monument designation.

"The impetus for us doing this is to have some local control for what gets designated as wilderness," said Ray Petersen, Emery County's public lands coordinator. "SUWA's Red Rock Wilderness deal or a monument designation is totally out of control, so if we can maintain some input, and some control in this process, why would we not want to do that?"

And from Scott Groene, SUWA's executive director: "I would rather we reach agreement on wilderness legislation. It would affect a much larger amount of wilderness and there could be greater certainty with legislation. We could resolve more issues."

Working the deal

Bishop is working with each of the seven counties to come up with individual public lands management proposals that contemplate wilderness designations and zones where oil and gas development, mining and recreation occur. It could be that all seven counties are part of the final package. It could be that all are not.

"All of them are just looking for certainty," Bishop said, who is still months out from having maps that detail what that proposal ultimately will look like.

Emery County is farther along in the process than the others, having submitted its plan to Bishop two years ago.

"We have negotiated a compromise over time, since this latest effort, going back a couple of decades," Petersen said.

When the Bureau of Land Management abolished cross-country motorized travel and instead designated only specific routes where it was allowed, Petersen said it was a rancorous and dramatic change for residents.

"It was the most painful process, a big change. For some of the users, it was nearly the end of the world to have to be confined to ride on trails."

The decision closed hundreds of miles of trails and was not well received, Petersen said. But within a couple of years the locals decided they could live with it.

"It took a lot of time to go through that. The end result is that we have better management of the resources."

Park expansion?

He said that same idea is at play with the idea of expanding Goblin Valley State Park by 136,000 acres. Such a move involves a transfer of BLM-managed lands and could be accomplished through Bishop's bill.

"The east side of those canyons, day in and day out, are the busiest slots on the swell. It is the farthest away from the BLM's Price field office and it really needs management now; the BLM acknowledges that."

So how is it accomplished?

"My advice is to start 15 years ago," Petersen said. "It takes time. You have to be committed to it. You cannot do it quickly and it is not going to be easy. You have to commit to collaborate, understanding that you are not going to get everything you want."

Groene said his group is waiting to see what the individual county plans look like and what ultimately is laid out on the bargaining table.

"We have said all along the only way we will reach agreement is everyone will have to make concessions, including ourselves."

Reaching agreement on a sensitive environmental issue in which industry and advocates have to compromise is not without precedent in Utah.

SUWA, the state of Utah, Bill Barrett Corp., and a host of others forged concessions in a programmatic agreement in 2010 hailed by then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as historic for what it gave up, and for what it allowed in the Nine Mile Canyon area.

Then, as in the process unfolding now, no one got what they wanted, but they got enough.

Petersen said ideally, public lands planning involves looking beyond one's own hood ornament as you're traveling toward your destination.

"There is plenty of resource, but every resource will not be used for every reason," Petersen said. "The big picture is we have to make land use decisions about what is best for the land, and sometimes that is not what is best for me, and I am not always going to get what I want."

Utah counties want to take the roads less traveled -- and keep them

The Island Park Road, which descends 17 miles through sagebrush and pinyon and juniper trees before ending on the banks of the Green River, is one of more than 12,000 roads Utah has claimed under R.S. 2477. (Photo by Phil Taylor.)

Phil Taylor
Greenwire

DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT, Utah -- A bullet-riddled sign in Utah's pinyon-juniper desert warns of a winding highway ahead.

It's a harbinger of the tortuous political and legal fight among Utah's counties, environmental groups and the Bureau of Land Management that could dramatically change management of the area's stark deserts, red rock canyons and backcountry lands.

Key witnesses say they remember Island Park Road being used by jeeps and trucks at least as far back as the 1950s for livestock operations, farming, fishing and other recreation.

That, according to an 1866 mining law, means management of the road rightfully belongs to Utah, not BLM or the National Park Service, over whose land the road crosses.

The 17-mile road, which winds past ranchlands and American Indian petroglyphs to a historical ranch along the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument, is one of more than 12,000 roads that Utah and its counties last year claimed as their own in federal district court.

Spanning about 36,000 miles, the road claims represent one of Utah's boldest bids yet to assert control over federal lands and, according to conservationists, the most serious threat to Utah's remaining wildlands.

Utah claims the roads at stake have been used for decades by hunters, cattle ranchers, mineral speculators and motorized vehicle enthusiasts, and have either been shut down or restricted, or are in danger of closure by the federal government.

"There will be economic benefits derived from these roads if they're kept open," said Anthony Rampton, Utah's assistant attorney general and lead litigation counsel for the roads lawsuits. "That benefit will come from ranching enterprises, oil and gas development, wind development, solar development, tourist income, hunting and fishing income."

But unlike similar campaigns by Utah to "take back" federal lands through eminent domain or by hamstringing federal law enforcement agents, the law appears to be on Utah's side in its road battle.

In March, Utah's Kane County claimed a major victory when a federal district judge awarded it rights of way over 12 of 15 roads it had claimed, four of which run through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (Greenwire, March 25). Some of those 89 miles also run through the Paria-Hackberry wilderness study area, which BLM recognized for its roadless characteristics and which environmentalists have eyed for future wilderness designation.

"Given the facts that we have and the law, we're going to be able to prove the vast majority of these roads," Rampton said of the state's Revised Statute 2477 claims, which are located in 22 of its 29 counties. "It shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone."

The ruling was a shot across the bow for conservationists who fear the road claims, if successful, would fragment Utah's best remaining backcountry, including scenic national parks and monuments. Solitude would be lost, invasive weeds would spread and archaeological sites would be exposed to looters, they say.

Conservationists have assembled a legal team of more than 25 attorneys from national and local law firms to work alongside federal attorneys against the state's claims.

Steve Bloch, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said a majority of Utah's road claims are primitive dirt tracks, not the "highways" that the 1866 law aimed to protect.

"The overwhelming majority of these routes simply noodle out into the desert," Bloch said.

The claims run through every national park except Bryce Canyon and Arches and through at least two designated wilderness areas and would fragment habitat for vehicle-skittish elk and sage grouse, according to SUWA.

The road claims also travel more than 500 miles of wilderness study areas, 2,000 miles of national monuments and 3,600 miles of proposed wilderness, SUWA said. Few of them lead to grocery stores or schools or promote commerce, Bloch said.

"They're really out to thwart congressional wilderness designation," he said. "That's why the stakes are so high in Utah."

Barring a settlement, the legal battle promises to be a costly one -- one rural county in southeast Utah has already spent $1 million litigating a single road in Canyonlands National Park -- and could easily last decades.

"If we can't resolve them ourselves amidst negotiation, we have no choice but to go to court," Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) said in an interview. "I'm not willing to continue to kick the can down the road and put off getting that answer."

If Utah prevails, experts say other Western states could follow suit, kicking off an even larger battle.

'Short, sweet and enigmatic'

Utah's road claims -- filed in several massive complaints in spring 2012 -- fall under an obscure 1866 mining law designed to promote settlement in the Western frontier.

"And be it further enacted," R.S. 2477 read, "that the right of way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted."

The law was "short, sweet and enigmatic," according to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2005 ruling.

The law was an opportunity for miners and homesteaders to build trails or roads over any public lands not yet reserved or claimed for private use. Most of the roads in the West were established under its authority.

As Utah's Supreme Court noted more than 80 years ago, "It was a standing offer of a free right of way over the public domain," which required no formal acceptance or approval by the federal authorities.

That all changed in 1976 when Congress repealed R.S. 2477 as part of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, a watershed law that directed BLM to retain and preserve its lands rather than dispose them for private development.

But Congress grandfathered any valid R.S. 2477 right that existed at the time.

As a result, counties seeking legal recognition of their R.S. 2477 claims must prove -- through historical records, photos or witness testimony -- that the roads were used as far back as the 1960s.

But witnesses who can testify to using the roads are getting old and dying, creating a sense of urgency for Utah counties.

"We've probably lost between half and three-quarters of our witnesses to death," Rampton said. "We're losing more every day."

The state is currently deposing hundreds of "at-risk" witnesses in courthouses, schools, county commission chambers, BLM offices and people's homes.

"'I killed my first buck here. We corralled cattle here,'" Rampton said. "That's the kind of detail we're able to get from these witnesses."

Last month alone, attorneys from the Justice Department, Utah and its counties, and SUWA visited Tooele, Garfield, Beaver, Grand and San Juan counties to take testimony from 10 witnesses.

Pete Steele, a 76-year-old witness from San Juan, testified for three days on roughly 100 roads. Steele, a former cattle rancher, tour guide, BLM employee and San Juan employee, said he used R.S. 2477 roads south of Canyonlands for livestock operations, hunting, predator control, hiking, and other recreation and traveling, according to his affidavit.

"When you spend time with the people who live and work on these roads and have lived there all their lives, you realize they are important, and they're important for intangible reasons," Rampton said. "For instance, there are a lot of hunters who use these roads. They have places they've gone all their lives. They've gone with their fathers and grandfathers and families. Traditions have built up around the use of these roads."

'The whole thing is a travesty'

But critics of Utah's claims say the vast majority of the roads are so-called Class D routes that have never been maintained and aren't critical to the state's transportation needs.

Many were created by off-roaders, oil and gas prospectors or wanderers who left the trodden path decades ago. In the arid desert, where plants and shrubs take hundreds of years to regrow, an improvised two-track can take centuries to fully restore itself.

"People argue about the meaning of the word 'highway,' but it's hard to imagine it means a random oil and gas seismic line from the '60s that hasn't been driven except once every five years," said Kevin Walker, a SUWA volunteer who lives in Moab and works for Microsoft. "To me that seems like abusing the law."

On a searing hot July day, Walker hunted for R.S. 2477 claims along Browns Hole Road, a dirt route that heads east from U.S. 191 toward the La Sal Mountains.

"See that faint line over there?" he asked, pointing to a strip of younger, lighter sagebrush that vanished into a hillside.

It was an oil and gas seismic line, one of thousands that were carved in the 1950s and '60s by prospectors who used dynamite to locate mineral deposits. San Juan County is claiming it under R.S. 2477.

"They were never planning on coming back," Walker said of the prospectors, who are said to have been paid by the mile. "Someone else comes along and sees the tire tracks and tries the road, even though there's nothing there."

Wearing a blue bucket hat, running shorts and sandals, Walker said he takes pride in finding the faintest R.S. 2477 claims. He mapped many of these routes decades ago while taking an inventory of roadless lands for the Utah Wilderness Coalition, of which SUWA is a member.

He said many of the counties' R.S. 2477 routes were even fainter when he first walked them 15 years ago. Since the lawsuits were filed, counties have systematically driven all the routes, he said.

"When the counties claim they need these roads, it's disingenuous and demonstrably false," he said. "What they really want is to control the land."

Once an R.S. 2477 claim is granted, BLM has almost no way to close them down, even if it needs to preserve them for wildlife or quiet recreation. It effectively precludes future wilderness.

"These are federal lands, and the federal government should be able to manage them in a rational way and not encumbered by this loophole in a very ancient law," Walker said. "To me, the whole thing is a travesty."

A handful of other R.S. 2477 road claims spur haphazardly from the Browns Hole Road. One of them narrows into a rocky trough before petering out into the juniper and pinyon flats.

In the late 1990s, Grand County decided to increase the miles of Class B roads in its system to prevent a reduction in state subsidies for road maintenance, Walker said. It unilaterally bladed minor roads and unmaintained jeep trails, he said, but "BLM didn't have the guts to stand up to them."

Several miles south of here, the R.S. 2477 battle is playing out at Hatch Point, a sagebrush plateau coveted by oil and gas and potash developers as well as SUWA and the Sierra Club, which have proposed including the land in a 1.4-million-acre Greater Canyonlands National Monument.

A 22-mile paved road takes visitors to the Needles Overlook, which offers miles of stunning views over labyrinth red rock canyons underneath Canyonlands park.

Hatch Point has plenty of dirt roads, though the area's dense brush, rock buttes and spires make them hard to see. San Juan has staked dozens of R.S. 2477 claims here.

One of them leads to a dried-up stock pond and a field of invasive cheatgrass and Russian thistle. It fades a couple of hundred yards into the desert before disappearing.

"It just goes out here and dies," said Liz Thomas, an attorney for SUWA. "It doesn't circle back. It wasn't intended to go anywhere."

Court-awarded road claims would make the area an easier target for mineral development and potentially a weaker candidate for a national monument.

'A wasting kind of witness'

Roads support San Juan's mineral economy -- oil, gas and mining account for 60 percent of its tax base -- but they also preserve recreation, said John Fellmeth, who helps run the county's roads preservation project.

San Juan claimed roughly 1,800 roads in its R.S. 2477 lawsuit, even though some have never been driven by county officials.

"It looks like there might be a nice overlook," Fellmeth said, pointing to a narrow rust-colored dirt path at Hatch Point.

He was joined by Nick Sandberg, the county's public lands coordinator who previously worked more than 30 years at BLM's Monticello field office, which oversees Hatch Point.

Neither was sure where the road went or what it was used for.

It likely provided access for livestock growers, Sandberg said, pointing to a salt block on the side of the road that may have nourished cows or sheep.

The road ended at the plateau's edge, where a dirt clearing offered sweeping views of Heart Canyon nearly a thousand feet below and the "six shooter" pinnacle -- a sandstone spire named by early cowboys for its resemblance to pistols. The jagged rocks of Canyonlands could be seen in the distance.

The road certainly led somewhere, though whether it is a "highway" is a matter of dispute that will be decided by a federal judge.

Fellmeth said there are about 80 "at-risk" witnesses in San Juan. Some testify on as many as 60 roads in a day, he said.

"Most of them are fairly old, and even those who are still with us, their mental faculties are deteriorating quite dramatically," he said. "It's a wasting kind of witness."

Critics have questioned whether witnesses in their 70s or 80s could accurately identify the roads they used when Lyndon Johnson was president.

Before they testify, witnesses are driven on the roads by the state's attorneys to "refresh their recollection," said Bloch, the attorney from SUWA.

Courts will have to wrestle with issues of credibility, as they do with all trials.

From the Needles Overlook at Hatch Point, Fellmeth pointed to an airstrip about a thousand feet below that may have been used to transport oil and gas equipment to the Lockhart Basin.

Visual clues like that can help orient R.S. 2477 witnesses, Fellmeth said.

However, they can also be deceiving. Less than a mile away is a similar airstrip with similar red rock surroundings.

'We have a high card'

County officials in Utah see R.S. 2477 as a potent defense against the president's use of the Antiquities Act to designate national monuments.

The 1906 law is controversial in Utah, where President Clinton designated the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996 over the objections of local officials. Monuments bar future mineral claims.

R.S. 2477 adds another twist to Utah's political mine field.

"It just gives the counties an extra card to play that they haven't had in the past," said Lynn Jackson, a councilman for Grand County, whose economy depends heavily on mountain bikers, off-highway vehicle riders and national park visitors.

"We know we have a high card," Jackson said. "For now, we're just going to tuck it up our sleeve, and if we need it, we'll play it."

Utah counties were politically emboldened by Kane County's R.S. 2477 victory, Jackson said. Grand and five other counties are currently negotiating with conservationists and other stakeholders on a major public lands bill.

"SUWA is concerned," Jackson said. "If we take all these 12,000 segments, they're saying 'Holy crap, we're likely to lose all that ... maybe we should negotiate.'"

Jackson, who formerly worked for BLM for 32 years, opposes the proposed Canyonlands National Monument, which he argued would hamper oil and gas and potash development in Grand, stifling economic diversification.

On a recent drive through the butte-marked desert lands northwest of Moab, Jackson pointed to a sandy, riparian wash passable only by motorcycles that descends to an overlook above the Green River.

The path, an R.S. 2477 claim, was kept open in BLM's travel management plan, even though conservationists wanted it closed, Jackson said. The county believes it should have the final say over who uses the road.

"That's a huge draw to the motorized recreation economy," he said. "They're the ones who spend the most money around here."

A spreading fight?

Litigating all of Utah's R.S. 2477 roads to the 10th Circuit could take well over a decade and cost billions of dollars.

"Obviously it's kind of insane to try to litigate 12,000 roads," said one top Interior official who asked not to be named. The first Kane County case, which involved 15 roads, took nine days of trial and field trips, the official said.

The hope is that as cases are decided at the appellate court level, parties will have a better foundation for settlement talks.

Since March, a handful of cases in Garfield, Kane, Emery and San Juan counties have been active. Meanwhile, the state is continuing to depose its old and infirm witnesses in case the rest of the roughly 20 cases become active.

While conservationists have criticized the state's lawsuits as a waste of taxpayer money, the R.S. 2477 campaign is widely supported in the Utah Legislature, where lawmakers earlier this year passed a special appropriation to compensate counties for legal services from outside firms including Holland & Hart. The firm is estimated to have provided at least $1.8 million in services to Kane County alone, The Salt Lake Tribune reported in March, citing former BLM Director and Utah public lands official Kathleen Clarke.

Under the plan, the state would pay for half of the first $700,000 in legal bills a county incurs and would pay the majority of bills beyond that.

Conservationists are skeptical whether the federal government will adequately represent their interests.

According to SUWA's Bloch, conservation groups have twice as many attorneys working on R.S. 2477 cases than the Justice Department. Pro bono work is being provided by law firms Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Cooley LLP and Jenner & Block LLP, he said. There are also two local Salt Lake City firms, former Earthjustice attorney Robert Wiygul, and SUWA and Wilderness Society attorneys working on the cases.

The federal government's appeal of the Kane County case to the 10th Circuit was heartening, Bloch said.

Utah counties have lost some notable R.S. 2477 cases too.

For example, a federal district judge in 2011 rejected San Juan County's claim that several miles of Salt Creek Canyon in Canyonlands National Park was an R.S. 2477 route. "A jeep trail on a creek bed, with its shifting sand and intermittent floods is a by-way, but not a highway," wrote U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins (Land Letter, June 2, 2011).

San Juan and Utah appealed the case to the 10th Circuit, which could issue a decision any day.

Utah's R.S. 2477 claims are being closely watched by environmental attorneys as well as other Western states looking to loosen Washington, D.C.'s reins over public lands.

The Vermont Law School included Utah's road claims in its "Top 10 Environmental Watch List 2013," warning that if federal courts affirm even a fraction of the state's claims, it could set off a cascade of threats to national parks, wilderness study areas, monuments and other protected lands across the West.

"Other western states are likely watching Utah's land grab, waiting to see what the federal courts will do with these 26 claims," wrote Hillary Hoffmann, a professor at the law school, and student Sara Imperiale.

Alaska has already earmarked money to study potential R.S. 2477 claims, and Nevada, the birthplace of the Sagebrush Rebellion, would jump on the R.S. 2477 "bandwagon" if Utah prevails in its lawsuits, Hoffmann and Imperiale said.

Attempts to settle

The ongoing litigation has created a great deal of uncertainty on all sides, including BLM, said Robert Keiter, a professor of public lands for the University of Utah who serves on the board of the National Parks Conservation Association, which has criticized the state's road claims.

"That impacts the BLM's ability to make long-term land and resource management decisions wherever these claims are being pressed," he said.

The road claims also complicate a broader effort by Utah GOP Rep. Rob Bishop to pass a comprehensive public lands bill for six eastern Utah counties -- Uintah, Emery, Carbon, Grand, Wayne and San Juan -- that would consolidate lands for oil and gas, potash and mining development while designating others for off-highway vehicles, mountain bikes and wilderness.

Bishop said conservation groups he is working with -- which include SUWA, the Wilderness Society, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy -- have "legitimate concerns" that future road claims could tarnish wilderness designations, which, by definition, aim to keep the lands "untrammeled by man."

Scott Groene, executive director of SUWA, said Washington County in 2009 agreed to have wilderness designations under legislation passed by former Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) but has since filed R.S. 2477 claims in those areas.

"Utah's 20-plus lawsuits against the United States over R.S. 2477 may be the biggest hurdle to overcome in trying to reach agreement here," Groene said. "Fortunately, Congressman Bishop has said he believes the R.S. 2477 issue should be resolved as part of this legislation. We are in agreement with him on this point."

Last month, the various sides reached a rare accord to amicably resolve a handful of the disputed road claims in remote mountains west of Salt Lake City.

BLM, Utah, Juab County and environmental groups announced a settlement designed to balance the protection of primitive lands in the Deep Creek Mountains wilderness study area with access for motorized vehicle users (Greenwire, Aug. 20).

It marked the first negotiated settlement in Utah's larger bid over the R.S. 2477 claims.

Congress has tried unsuccessfully a handful of times to address the conflict.

Bills by then-Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) nearly a decade ago sought to narrow the definition of R.S. 2477 rights of ways. Bills by Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) in 2006 and 2007 would have given states and counties more influence in the process. But lawmakers have done little since then.

Some observers are hopeful Bishop can resolve some claims in eastern Utah.

"There's an opportunity for some, if not all, of those roads to be addressed as a result of this legislative process," said Cody Stewart, an energy adviser for Herbert and former Bishop aide. "It may be one of the negotiated pieces that helps bring this across the finish line."

Obama Administration Backs Away From Wilderness Plan

Wilderness Society president "deeply disappointed" at the decision

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar at left as Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey speaks about an initiative that would allow the BLM to designate and protect wilderness areas on Thursday, Dec. 23, 2010 outside of REI in Denver. (AP)

FoxNews.com

Washington, D.C. -- The Obama administration is dropping a controversial plan to restore eligibility for federal wilderness protection to millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West after the GOP-led House put up a strong fight.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memo Wednesday that his agency will not designate any of those public lands as "wild lands." Instead Salazar said officials will work with members of Congress to develop recommendations for managing millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Associated Press.

Salazar's decision reverses an order issued in December to reverse a Bush-era policy that opened some Western lands to commercial development.

A budget deal approved by Congress prevented the Interior Department from spending money to implement the wilderness policy. GOP lawmakers complained that the plan would circumvent Congress' authority and could be used to declare a vast swath of public land off-limits to oil-and-gas drilling.

Republican governors in Utah, Alaska and Wyoming, filed suit to block the plan, saying it would hurt their state's economies by taking federal lands off the table for mineral production and other uses.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, hailed Salazar's reversal of what he called a "misguided" policy that would have harmed Utah's economy.

"Since the majority of land in Utah is owned by the federal government, it is critically important to strike a balance between the needs of our local communities and the protection of public lands that truly do have wilderness characteristics rather than pandering to environmental extremists," Hatch said. "Today's announcement is a positive step toward restoring that balance."

Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, also cheered the announcement, calling it a "positive."

"I'm glad to see the administration move in the right direction on this," he said. "We all share the common bond of loving our public lands, and ensuring access to them is important. We will continue to be vigilant and make sure that future designations of public lands are made by consensus, not by executive fiat."

William Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society, said he was deeply disappointed at the decision, which he said ignores the Bureau of Land Management's obligation to protect wilderness values.

"Without strong and decisive action from the Department of Interior, wilderness will not be given the protection it is due, putting millions of acres of public lands at risk," Meadows said.

Bob Abbey, director of the land management bureau, said the December directive would not have required protection for any particular areas. Designation as wild land could only be made after public comments and review and would not necessarily prohibit motor vehicle use or the staking of new mining claims, Abbey said.

The measure blocking implementation of the wild lands policy was included in a budget bill for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.

Owls, Mules and Lizards: the makeup of federal land management

Today we have federal employees who are paid to stop productivity

by Marita Noon

Marita Noon

Farming, ranching, mining, and extraction are the foundation for everything else. They are what make food, energy and manufacturing possible by proving the raw materials for our personal and economic growth. Yet these bedrock American industries have, little-by-little, been chiseled away—so subtly that most of us did not notice until now; now, when the economy continues to teeter with a slight uptick one month, back down the next. The public, America’s citizens, people who’ve never paid attention to politics or the economy, want to know what happened; they want to know, “Why?”

The answer is really quite simple and reversing the trend—growing the economy—is equally simple. But America’s citizens must push for policy-induced prosperity.

Today we have federal employees who are paid to stop productivity. Their job is to enforce regulations, not encourage expansion. The federal government used to help people establish a farm or ranch, or stake a claim. Remember the whole idea of “homesteading?” People took a barren parcel of federal land, treated it as their own and made something from nothing. Their efforts were rewarded with the deed.

While homesteading is a thing of the history books, policy that stopped development didn’t begin until the seventies. Initial results of a new study indicate that major industries once prevalent in the west, such as logging, cattle ranching, and mining, have moved out—in fact, been chased out. Instead of exporting, we now import.

What happened in the seventies to change federal lands management? The birth of the environmental movement in the late 1960s.

This shift in policy is most evident through the story of the spotted owl—a declining species said to favor “old growth forest.” The effort to protect the owl began in 1968. It was ultimately listed as “endangered” in 1990. Observing history, we see the owls’ numbers have not increased with the protection and they’ve been found in locations they supposedly do not like. While the listing had little impact on the owl, it did have a killing effect on the logging industry. Logging on federal lands once accounted for more than half of Oregon’s harvest. By 2008, less than ten percent.

In New Mexico’s Gila Forest access to federal lands has been continually cut back. Today, based on numbers from the 1970’s, there are thirty percent fewer cattle. Because of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and wilderness designations, the Forest Service required Terrell Shelley, whose family has continuously raised cattle on the same land for 125 years, to use mules to make repairs to concrete dams on his allotment. 250 mule loads of concrete were hand mixed. Not many people today are willing to continue ranching under such restrictive conditions.

Mining faces similar obstacles. In Montana, exploration for tungsten was completed in the seventies by Union Carbide. To extract the resource from what is now an “inventoried roadless area,” the Forest Service requires that the drilling equipment be hauled by pack mules—who are feed “certified weed free hay,” and that the land be cleared and then reclaimed using hand tools. Once again, productive activity is discouraged.

Due to punitive federal policy, we now have less logging, less ranching, and less mining; less jobs, less productivity, and less wealth creation.

The oil and gas industry of West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico is next. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed that the Sand Dune Lizard (AKA Dunes Sagebrush Lizard) be listed as an endangered species under the ESA. This lizard frequents sites where oil and gas development provides good paying jobs and economic stability. If the FWS proceeds with the “endangered” listing, the entire region could well go the way of logging in the Pacific Northwest or Cattle Ranching in the Gila Forest.

Now, we see how industries have been shuttered and jobs lost. We watched while entire communities became ghost towns. “Protection” and “wilderness” sound like nice ideas until you see the economic destruction they have wrought. With the benefit of history, America’s citizens can take a stand and reverse the trend. Federal agencies hold hearings where we can comment. We can make phone calls and send e-mails.

The employees at the various federal agencies don’t make the policies. They are simply enforcing the regulations. But if we speak up, we can change the game.

The public comment period for the proposed lizard listing ends May 9. Make the effort, pick up the phone. Talk to the federal employees (Debra M. Hill: 505-761-4719, Tom Buckley: 505-248-6455).

Wouldn’t it be great if the federal government once again helped, instead of hindered?

Marita Noon is the Executive Director at Energy Makes America Great Inc. the advocacy arm of the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy. Find out more at http://www.energymakesamericagreat.org/.

Governor approves use of eminent domain to take federal land

Brock Vergakis
The Associated Press
Salt Lake Tribune

Fed up with federal ownership of more than half the land in Utah, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert on Saturday authorized the use of eminent domain to take some of the U.S. government's most valuable parcels.

Herbert signed a pair of bills into law that supporters hope will trigger a flood of similar legislation throughout the West, where lawmakers contend that federal ownership restricts economic development in an energy-rich part of the country.

Governments use eminent domain to take private property for public use.

The goal is to spark a U.S. Supreme Court battle that legislators' own attorneys acknowledge has little chance of success.

But Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and other Republicans say the case is still worth fighting, since the state could reap millions of dollars for state schools each year if it wins.

More than 60 percent of Utah is owned by the U.S. government, and policy makers here have long complained that federal ownership hinders their ability to generate tax revenue and adequately fund public schools.

Utah spends less per student than any other state and has the nation's largest class sizes. Under the measure Herbert has approved, the state will set aside $3 million to defend the law.

Lawmakers recently slashed education funding by $10 million and raised taxes on cigarettes by $1 a pack. Democrats have decried the eminent domain measure as a waste of money, and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful

Peter Corroon is making it an issue in this year's special election.

But if the law is as bad as Democrats say it is, a court will quickly overturn it and the state won't have to spend much money defending it, Herbert said.

Initially, the state would target three areas for the use of eminent domain, including the Kaiparowits plateau in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which is home to large coal reserves.

Many people in Utah are still angry that then-President Bill Clinton's designated the area as a national monument in 1996, a move that stopped development on the land and greatly pleased environmentalists as he ran for re-election.

Utah lawmakers contend the federal government should have long ago sold the land it owns in the state. Because it hasn't, the federal government has violated a contract made with Utah when statehood was granted, they say.

Eminent domain would also be used on parcels of land where Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last year scrapped 77 oil and gas leases around national parks and wild areas.

In Utah, a move to seize federal land

The state House passes a bill allowing the use of eminent domain to take protected land from the federal government. Utah wants to develop a stretch outside Arches National Park and other areas.

By Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Salt Lake City - Long frustrated by Washington's control over much of their state, Utah legislators are proposing a novel way to deal with federal land -- seize it and develop it.

The Utah House of Representatives last week passed a bill allowing the state to use eminent domain to take land the federal government owns and has long protected from development.

The state wants to develop three hotly contested areas -- national forest land in the Wasatch Mountains north of Salt Lake City, land in a proposed wilderness area in the red rock southwestern corner of the state, and a stretch of desert outside of Arches National Park that the Obama administration has declared off-limits to oil and gas development.

Supporters argue that provisions in the legislation that granted Utah statehood allow it to make such a land grab. They also hope to spark a showdown in the Supreme Court that would rearrange the balance of power between states and the federal government.

Some legal experts say the effort is unlikely to succeed, but Republican state Rep. Chris Herrod, one of the authors of the bill, said the state had little choice.

"I love America, and I'm a peaceful guy," Herrod said, "but the only real option we have is rebellion, which I don't believe in, and the courts."

The eminent domain proposal is among the most audacious yet in a state accustomed to heated battles over the two-thirds of its land owned by the federal government.

This is the state, after all, where local officials bulldozed their own roads through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, tore down signs barring off-roading in Canyonlands National Park and, with funding from the statehouse, spent years unsuccessfully defending those actions in federal court.

The eminent domain proposal quickly drew scorn from environmental groups.

"This is an ideological fantasy," said Scott Groene, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in Moab. "Everybody knows this isn't going to happen. The federal public lands are the thing that makes the American West so great."

The proposal is one of a host in statehouses nationwide that show a deep discontent with federal authority. Eight legislatures have passed resolutions asserting, to various degrees, the sovereignty of their states.

In Utah, a dozen measures have been introduced since January that defy the federal government. It has reached such a pitch that the House's Democratic leader last week complained that Republicans were spending too much time on such proposals.

The most aggressive efforts are generally by conservative groups, but Michael Boldin of the 10th Amendment Center in Los Angeles -- named for the constitutional clause that some contend limits federal power over states -- said that states' rights were also being cited by liberals in support of state proposals to legalize marijuana and gay marriage.

In the Intermountain West, particularly in rural areas, residents have long complained that federal preservation of land has prevented development that could provide reliable jobs and bolster the tax base.

Last week, a Utah congressman warned that the Obama administration was plotting to create two national monuments in the state, and Republican Gov. Gary Herbert announced that he would meet with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to urge him to reconsider.

The administration said the hullabaloo was sparked by a memo identifying areas that could be protected at some point in the future, not imminently.

A spokeswoman said Herbert supported the concept of the eminent domain proposal but was unsure whether it would survive a legal challenge. The bill's authors contend they can rely on the legislation that brought Utah into the union in 1896, which they read as requiring the federal government to sell its land in the state and give Utah a 5% cut.

The legislators want to seize and open two roads through national forest land that the federal government closed. This would allow access to state land that they hope to sell to developers to build high-end cabins.

A third area would be more provocative: a swath of federal land outside Arches National Park where the George W. Bush administration, on the eve of the 2008 election, authorized oil and gas exploration. The Obama administration reversed the decision.

Legal experts contend that the federal government is under no obligation to sell its land in Utah and that no state could successfully seize federal property.

"It flies in the face of history and is also inconsistent as a point of law," said Bob Keiter, a law professor at the University of Utah.

Keiter and others argue that the move illustrates a pattern in recent Western history -- a conservative backlash to the election of a Democratic president. After Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, the movement known as the Sagebrush Rebellion helped lock up the West for the GOP and put Ronald Reagan in the White House.

President Clinton faced a similar backlash, aggravated by his creation before the 1996 presidential election of Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument.

"Utah has this history of grand conservation gains," Groene said. "Every time it happens it triggers this anger. And 20 years later we always look back and agree that conservation was a wise idea."

White House land grab

Proposal to seize land would favor animals over Americans

By Sen. Jim DeMint
Washington Times



You'd think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they're planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.

A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job-creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that's essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.

President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.

At a time when our national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, it is unbelievable anyone would be looking to stop job-creating energy enterprises, yet that's exactly what's happening.

The document lists 14 properties that, according to the document, "might be good candidates" for Mr. Obama to nab through presidential proclamation. Apparently, Washington bureaucrats believe it's more important to preserve grass and rocks for birdwatchers and backpackers than to keep these local economies thriving.

Administration officials claim the document is merely the product of a brainstorming session, but anyone who reads this memo can see that it is a wish list for the environmentalist left. It discusses, in detail, what kinds of animal populations would benefit from limiting human activity in those areas.

The 21-page document, marked "Internal Draft-NOT FOR RELEASE," names 14 different lands Mr. Obama could completely close for development by unilaterally designating them as "monuments" under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

It says all kinds of animals would be better off by doing so, like the coyotes, badgers, grouse, chickens and lizards. But giving the chickens more room to roost is no reason for the government to override states' rights.

Rep. Robert Bishop, Utah Republican, made the memo public because he didn't want another unilateral land grab by the White House, like what happened under former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Using the Antiquities Act, President Carter locked up more land than any other president had before him, taking more than 50 million acres in Alaska despite strong opposition from the state.

President Clinton used the authority 22 times to prohibit hunting, recreational vehicles, mining, forestry and even grazing in 5.9 million acres scattered around the country. The law allowed him to single-handedly create 19 new national monuments and expand three others without consulting anyone.

One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. But, President Clinton put an end to developing those resources.

President Obama could do the same in other energy-rich places unless Congress takes action. At least 13.5 million acres are already on his Department of Interior's real estate shopping list.

This includes a 58,000-acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to "avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered."

In Nevada, the Obama administration might make another monument in the Heart of the Great Basin because it, supposedly, is a "center of climate change scientific research."

In Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is "currently under the threat of oil and gas development."

Americans should be wary of any plans a president has to seize land from the states without their consent. Any new plans to take away states' freedom to use land as they see fit must be stopped.

That's why I sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as "monuments." Unfortunately, the Senate, led by Democrats, rejected it on Thursday evening by a vote of 58-38.

It was particularly disappointing that the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, voted against the amendment. The government owns more than 80 percent of the land in Nevada and the unemployment rate there is 12.8 percent. Surely it would help job prospects if more land were open for business.

This is a nationwide problem. The government currently owns 650 million acres, or 29 percent of the nation's total land.

Federal bureaucrats shouldn't be wasting time thinking up ways to acquire more, especially in the middle of a recession. Taking the nation's resources offline will stifle job creation and dry up tax revenues.

If anything, the government should be selling land off, not locking more up. By voting against my amendment, the Democrats tacitly endorsed Mr. Obama's secret plan to close off millions more acres to commerce.

If enacted, the plan would mean fewer jobs for Americans.

The Democratic Congress refused to stop it, but one sure way Americans could help block it is if they decide some Democrats should lose their jobs in November.

Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, is chairman of the U.S. Senate Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators.

Tim DeChristopher's wild legal ride

He disrupted an oil and gas lease auction last year by posing as a buyer. Now a judge has rejected his last-ditch defense strategy.

Tim DeChristopher.

OPINION
Los Angeles Times

Tim DeChristopher created quite a circus at an auction of federal oil and gas leases in Utah last December when he bid for and won 14 parcels worth $1.8 million -- and then announced that he had neither the intention nor the money to pay for them. In fact, he was just a college student (an economics major, it turns out) unleashing a bit of havoc to protest drilling and global warming, an environmentalist frustrated by "incrementalism" who was desperately trying to shake things up.

He succeeded. His stunt halted the bidding, grabbed national headlines and renewed debate about civil disobedience and the appropriate limits of protest. Many of the leases, which would have permitted drilling on more than 110,000 pristine acres of public land in Utah, including some of America's most beautiful and environmentally sensitive red-rock desert, were subsequently canceled. But for DeChristopher, there have been serious consequences. He was charged with making false statements and interfering with an auction (who knew that was a felony?) and faces up to 10 years in prison and fines of $750,000 if he is convicted on both counts.

Hero? Lawbreaker? Stooge? The answer probably lies somewhere in between. It's hard not to sympathize with DeChristopher's sense that signing petitions and turning off the lights are an insufficient stand to take against something as enormous and potentially catastrophic as global warming. It's also hard not to applaud the sheer audacity and comedy of his scam. At the same time, DeChristopher did break the law, and people who break the law in acts of civil disobedience generally have to pay the consequences for their audaciousness -- it's a part of the tactic. That's what we said in an editorial last year, expecting the controversy to die down soon.

But it turns out that DeChristopher wasn't quite done with us. With his trial approaching, he and his lawyers announced that they would mount what's known as a "defense of necessity" or "choice of evils" defense. Rather than hiding behind technicalities or throwing himself on the mercy of the court, DeChristopher planned to address the issue head on, arguing that global warming poses such an immediate and dire threat that his illegal actions were justified. His lawyers said they hoped to call witnesses such as former Interior Secretary Cecil D. Andrus and NASA scientist James Hansen, who has been leading the fight against greenhouse gas emissions since the 1980s. In short, DeChristopher hoped to turn a relatively straightforward criminal case into a judicial inquest on climate disruption; global warming itself would be on trial.

The tactic is not entirely new. A similar defense was brought in the case of six Greenpeace activists who caused about $50,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station called Kingsnorth in Britain in 2007 while occupying a smokestack in an effort to shut down the plant. A jury acquitted all six.

But last week, DeChristopher's attorneys were informed by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson that they had not met the threshold requirements for a choice-of-evils defense. Benson, who had already said he was "reluctant to open my courtroom to a lengthy hearing on global warming," ruled that the supposed harm that would have resulted from the sales of the leases was not imminent in the sense that, say, a fire causes imminent danger. What's more, DeChristopher had "reasonable, legal" ways to stop the auction other than breaking the law -- such as filing a lawsuit or demonstrating with the other activists outside the building. Nor, the judge said, could DeChristopher have reasonably anticipated that his actions would stop the sales.

So much for that bit of guerrilla theater; it's back to square one for DeChristopher and his lawyers. In our view, the judge was probably right, but it's a shame. A global warming trial would have been more sensational, more educational and, frankly, more fun. As for DeChristopher, we still believe he must pay a price for flouting the law, but it would be disappointing if he had to spend too much time atoning for what was, in the end, a creative act of civil disobedience.

Park Service Protests Big Solar Expansion in Nevada Desert

National Parks Will Suffer from Water Withdrawals, Pollution and Habitat Loss

PRESS RELEASE
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

Washington, DC - The National Park Service is sounding an alarm about plans for scores of big solar power plants in Southern Nevada, according to an inter-agency memo posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). NPS predicts harm to national parks in the region due to water scarcity, habitat disturbance, air pollution, sound pollution and light pollution lightening night skies.

The February 9, 2009 memo from NPS Pacific Regional Director Jon Jarvis to the Acting Nevada U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Amy Leuders details concerns about 63 utility-scale solar projects slated for BLM lands in southern Nevada. Jarvis cites potential negative impacts for Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Mojave National Preserve, and the Devils Hole section of Death Valley National Park.

Above all, Jarvis stressed the lack of water to operate the solar facilities:

"The NPS asserts that it is not in the public interest for BLM to approve plans of development for water-cooled solar energy projects in the arid basins of southern Nevada, some of which are already over-appropriated, where there may be no reasonable expectation of acquiring new water rights in some basins, and where transference of existing points of diversion may be heavily constrained for some basins."

"Except for the sun, there is little that will be 'green' about mega-solar plants in the desert," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that a key dilemma is that the places of greatest solar potential are also the most arid. "There is not enough water in the desert to run utility-scale water-cooled solar plants."

Concerns about the negative impacts of big solar facilities and the transmission corridors they require to deliver power to market has led U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) to propose the creation of a new national monument covering more than a half-million Mojave Desert acres to exclude BLM solar leases.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has promised to assemble a comprehensive energy plan that will presumably minimize these inter-agency conflicts. In February, Secretary Salazar suspended BLM oil and gas lease sales in Utah following protests from NPS about negative effects on nearby national parks.

"A comprehensive energy plan is needed but cannot depend solely on public lands," added Ruch. "America's deserts should not become national sacrifice zones for energy farms."

PEER is urging alternative approaches such as rooftop solar installations. Southern California has vast areas of open roofs that do not require huge new transmission corridors. In addition, there are large private lands, such as degraded cotton and alfalfa farms, that have little current ecological value. On public lands, BLM should limit "Big Solar" power-plants to desert areas that have already been despoiled, such as toxic waste sites and abandoned mines. Co-locating solar plants with already compromised lands not only minimizes loss of wild habitat but also reduces the maintenance burden on BLM of keeping these damaged lands in exclusion.

Student is charged with obstructing Utah land auction

He says his false bids on oil and gas parcels were acts of civil disobedience against the exploitation of public sites. The two felony charges carry up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.

Associated Press




Tim De Christopher.


Salt Lake City -- A college student was charged with two federal felonies Wednesday for what he contends were acts of civil disobedience -- making false bids to run up auction prices on oil and gas parcels on public land near Utah's national parks.

At the Dec. 19 lease sale, Tim DeChristopher grabbed a bidder's paddle, drove up prices and won 22,000 acres of land for $1.79 million, an amount he later said he didn't have the means or intention to pay.

DeChristopher "repeatedly said he intended to disrupt the lease-bidding process," U.S. Atty. Brett Tolman said in announcing the charges. "Today's indictment is our answer to his decision."

A grand jury charged DeChristopher with one count of interfering with a federal auction and one count of making false representations at an auction, Tolman said. The penalty could range from no punishment to a combined sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.

DeChristopher, 27, a University of Utah economics student, will be issued a summons to appear in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City. No arraignment date has been set.

He isn't affiliated with any major environmental group but has said that he infiltrated the auction as a protest. He made no apologies Wednesday for obstructing the lease of land in Utah's red-rock country.

"This auction was a fraud against the American people and a threat to our future," DeChristopher said. "My motivation to act came against the exploitation of public lands, the lack of a transparent and participatory government and the imminent danger of climate change."

One of his lawyers, Patrick Shea, said prosecutors hinted weeks ago that the case could be settled with a misdemeanor plea bargain instead of a felony punishable by prison time.

"Nobody was hurt. No property was destroyed," Shea said.

The auction was already being challenged by environmental groups, who won a court stay on the sale of some parcels. Weeks later, new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rescinded 77 of the leases, saying they were too close to national parks and never should have gone up for sale under the Bush administration.

The defense contends that DeChristopher caused no financial harm to the government or legitimate bidders, but at least one bidder disputes that.

"We are angry," said Daniel Gunnell, managing partner of Twilight Resources of Orem, Utah, who said he lost parcels when Salazar rescinded them and paid extra for other parcels when DeChristopher ran up bids.

"Tim DeChristopher is a guy who walked in the auction without a penny and cost our company $600,000," Gunnell said.

Extensive lands protection bill could thwart new energy development

By SCOTT STREATER
New York Times

The 111th Congress is poised to usher in the largest expansion of the nation's wilderness in a generation, with 2.1 million acres of public land in line for the strictest environmental protections allowed under federal law.

An omnibus lands bill that could receive final congressional approval this month would create new wilderness areas in nine states -- from the San Gabriel Mountains of California to Michigan's Lake Superior shoreline to a portion of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia -- covering almost as much land as the 2.4 million acres designated during the entire eight years of the Bush presidency.

Meanwhile, Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), and Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) last month introduced the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, which would designate 24 million acres of mostly Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land in five states as wilderness area.

The wilderness proposals carry significant implications, particularly for BLM and the Forest Service, which must manage public lands for multiple uses, including oil and gas drilling, minerals mining, timber harvesting and a variety of recreational uses.

By contrast, wilderness areas are by their very definition sanctuaries of quiet solitude, or as the 1964 law states, areas "where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." In practical terms, that means wilderness is off limits to all human activities except hiking, canoeing and some hunting and fishing.

The surge in congressional interest in wilderness designations, particularly by Democrats but also some Republicans, is a tonic to many conservation groups who are still angered by Bush administration policies that they say favored natural resource extraction priorities like mining and drilling over land preservation.

"If you've ever gone out and taken a look at areas intensively drilled for oil and gas, you're talking about lands that look like a moonscape. They're ecologically devastated," said Paul Spitler, national wilderness campaigns associate director for the Wilderness Society. "These designations are significant because people don't realize that public lands are open to a wide variety of uses that can be just as damaging as putting up a bunch of condos."

There are, however, potential drawbacks to expanding wilderness designations, especially when it comes to energy production.

Roughly a third of the country's domestic energy is produced on lands managed by the Interior Department, officials say, and those numbers are expected to grow as more wind and solar energy projects are approved on public lands.

But wind farms, solar arrays and geothermal plants are forbidden in wilderness areas, said Mike Olsen, a former Interior senior administrator now with the environmental strategies group at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani.

That is a huge concern, Olsen said, because the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes billions of dollars in incentives and tax breaks to encourage the development of renewable energy.

"You are in effect closing these lands off to domestic energy development," Olsen said. "In this world, where domestic energy production is so important, what does this mean to have additional public land taken off the table for energy development? I'm not placing value on one over the other. But we need to consider these impacts."

Spitler acknowledged the wilderness designations could affect some alternative energy development. He also is sensitive to the concerns of those who worry the wilderness designations could lessen their enjoyment of public land. Motorized vehicles such as snowmobiles are forbidden in wilderness areas.

But he and other conservationists say the increased protections are necessary.

"Between energy production and off-road vehicles we're losing land at a rapid pace," Spitler said. "We need these areas to receive permanent protection before they're lost."

A new vision

At issue is the National Wilderness Preservation System and attempts to add to the 107 million acres of public land already designated as wilderness.

The centerpiece of the latest effort to expand wilderness designations is the "Omnibus Public Land Management Act," which the Senate approved in January. The bill consolidates dozens of individual wilderness bills, from designating 37,000 acres within the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia to 700,000 acres and 105 miles of rivers and streams in California.

If Congress approves the measure, it will be the single largest wilderness designation since the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, which extended the highest federal protection to 3.5 million acres of BLM lands in the Mojave Desert.

The new push for wilderness represents a stark change from the Bush administration and 12 years of the Republican-controlled Congresses, which tended to view public lands as resources that should be tapped for their abundant fossil fuels, timber and minerals, said Myke Bybee, a public lands representative for the Sierra Club.

"The wilderness designations in the omnibus bill will add a level of protection that's far more extensive than what they are now, and I think it's necessary," said Bill Wade, executive council chairman of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, which was critical of the Bush administration's conservation policies.

Some of the wilderness designations in the bill, such as expanding the 14,000-acre Little River Canyon National Preserve in northeast Alabama, would have tremendous environmental value. Little River, atop Lookout Mountain, is one of the nation's longest mountaintop rivers and proponents want to ensure it stays pristine.

Other designations, like the expansion of the Fort Davis National Historic Site in west Texas, are vulnerable but have cultural significance as well. The fort, built in 1854, housed the Army's all-black regiments known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

Most of the proposed wilderness areas in the bill are the result of lengthy negotiations between interest groups, and in some cases the new designations involve trade-offs between preservation and development interests.

For example, Zion National Park in southwest Utah is in the fastest-growing county in the state, and large developments have been proposed to the east and north of the park that could hamper the quality of the natural resource, said David Nimkin, director of the southwest region for the National Parks Conservation Association.

The omnibus lands bill would designate 123,743 acres -- more than 90 percent of the park -- as wilderness. In exchange, lawmakers agreed to sell 9,300 acres of public land to developers and use the money to purchase private parcels within the park boundaries, Nimkin said.

"Getting this thing done is a big deal," he said. "It codifies the protections for the national park into law. There are different administrations, different land managers, and various degrees of local pressure. This takes the administrative decisionmaking and discretion out of the hands of the public land manager."

Planning for global warming

One reason environmentalists are pushing to expand wilderness areas is to protect plants and animals from the damaging effects of climate change.

Scientists have calculated that for every increase in temperature of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, the vegetation belt shifts 60 miles north or 550 feet higher in elevation. As vegetation shifts, so too will thousands of species of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. Those species whose habitat is not obstructed by highways, subdivisions and other development should be able to migrate to more hospitable climates; those that cannot will die.

The Interior Department and Forest Service have worked the past several years with a conservation effort know as the Wildlands Network to develop and maintain carefully plotted corridors connecting already preserved lands to one another. The network's goal is to create a 5,000-mile-long wildlife corridor stretching from Mexico to Alaska -- an effort that would take decades.

To succeed, the program must connect protected parcels that would allow for northward migration of at-risk species, said John Kostyack, executive director of wildlife conservation and global warming for the National Wildlife Federation.

"Global warming is leading to a complete transformation of how we look at conservation," Kostyack said.

Congress acknowledged that fact last year in the failed Climate Security Act of 2008 sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), and John Warner (R-Va.). The bill, which would have been the first to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, included a provision to allocate as much as $7.2 billion a year to BLM, the Park Service, Forest Service and other agencies to purchase conservation easements and restore degraded habitats.

President Obama pledged support for the creation of such a fund during the 2008 campaign. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has listed the creation of such a fund as a priority in any future greenhouse gas legislation.

"All the science tells us that we'll need to have connected landscapes for animals and plants to move as the climate warms, and we've already seen in some cases massive shifts of vegetative communities northward," Kostyack said. "It's certainly a key rationale for expanded wildlife designations."

OHV destruction

Another reason cited by environmental groups for expanding U.S. wilderness areas is to protect wildlife and habitat from damage caused by off-highway vehicles like dirt bikes, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles, which have surged in popularity in recent years.

Snowmobiles in Yosemite National Park, for example, have sparked controversy and court battles, with park managers ultimately setting a daily cap on the number of snowmobiles allowed in the park because their engines scare away wildlife. And in Southern California's Mojave Desert, use of off-highway vehicles on BLM land have crushed hundreds of endangered desert tortoises.

"On the fragile ecosystem in the deserts in the West, where we don't get a lot of rain, the vegetation is already making a living in a very harsh environment," said Ileene Anderson, staff biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity in Los Angeles. "So having somebody come riding their motorcycle or [all-terrain vehicle] through a pristine desert and running over everything, it has a cascading effect on the plants, insects and animals. These fragile lands can't take this continuous assault."

While acknowledging "there are a few knuckleheads" who cause damage to natural resources, Bill Dart, director of land use for the Bakersfield, Calif.-based Off-Road Business Association, a national trade group, said such incidents do not justify a federal prohibition on OHV use by law-abiding citizens on public lands.

"The impacts of off-road vehicles on wildlife have been overblown," Dart said.

Still, Dart said he is encouraged by the fact that federal officials and some advocacy groups have been willing to work with his group when developing wilderness area proposals.

For example, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) consulted the Off-Road Business Association when developing a proposed 27,000-acre wilderness designation in the San Gabriel Mountains in Northern California. The proposed Pleasant View Ridge Wilderness Area is one of the projects in the omnibus lands bill.

"They were willing to take out all the [off-road trails] that were of interest to us," Dart said. "Wildlife designations are appropriate as long as they don't get carried away. There is a way to do this that's a win-win situation for everyone."

A sign of things to come

While larger than anything proposed under the last several Congresses, the 2009 wilderness proposals are just a glimpse of things to come, congressional watchdogs and conservation leaders say.

Once the omnibus lands bill is approved, the floodgates will open and lawmakers will introduce dozens of wilderness proposals covering potentially millions of acres, experts say.

"There's a whole suite of bills ready to go," said Spitler of the Wilderness Society.

Many of the proposals will come as reintroduced bills from the past six years "that just never got their day in their sun," said Bybee, the Sierra Club official.

Many of the proposals will be modest and noncontroversial, such as a bill by Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) to add about 22,000 acres to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area in Washington.

Others are huge proposals covering vast expanses of public land. They include:

• California Wild Heritage: Sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the bill seeks to designate 2.5 million acres of wilderness, and an additional 400 miles of national wild and scenic rivers across the state. Originally introduced in 2002, Boxer is expected to revive the bill this spring.


• America's Red Rock Wilderness: By far the largest proposal, this bill would designate 9 million acres across Utah as wilderness. The proposal has been introduced in every Congress since 1989 but has never won support from a majority of of Utah's congressional delegation. Nevertheless, plans are under way to reintroduce the bill this session.


• Boulder-White Clouds Wilderness: Proposed by Rep. Mike Simpson, (R-Idaho), the bill would extend wilderness protection to roughly 315,000 acres in the Sawtooth and Salmon-Challis national forests in east-central Idaho.

"Up until recently you had a Congress that wasn't very receptive to wilderness designations, particularly on the House side," Spitler said. "We're finally starting to unclog the pipeline on wilderness designations."

Public Lands Bill Threatens Energy, Economy

Written by William F. Jasper
New American

With our economy already staggering under an avalanche of debt, taxes, regulations, and the high costs of energy, Democrats in the Senate have decided to pile on a real economy killer: the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (S. 22). Incredibly, nearly 20 Republicans in the Senate joined with them in support of this destructive bill.

S. 22 is a mammoth piece of legislation combining over 160 bills and running to more than 1,300 pages. It is loaded with pork-barrel spending and harmful provisions, but the most objectionable features of the bill are those that would lock up millions of acres of our most promising areas for badly needed oil, natural gas, and mineral production.

Sponsored by Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and originally introduced in the 110th Congress, the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 passed the Senate on January 15 and is now awaiting action in the House of Representatives. The lopsided 73-21 vote (with four not voting) saw 19 Republicans join with the liberal-left Reid-Boxer-Schumer Democrats in favor of the lock-up. Those Republican senators are: Alexander (Tenn.), Barrasso (Wyo.), Bennett (Utah), Bond (Mo.), Cochran (Miss.), Collins (Maine), Corker (Tenn.), Crapo (Idaho), Enzi (Wy.), Gregg (N.H.), Hatch (Utah), Lugar (Ind.), Martinez (Fla.), Murkowski (Alaska), Risch (Idaho), Snow (Maine), Specter (Pa.), Voinovich (Ohio), and Wicker (Miss.).

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of the principal opponents of the legislation, outlined some of the many egregious features of the legislation in a press release on his Senate website.

• A provision that takes about 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of oil out of production in Wyoming, according to the Bureau of Land Management. The energy resources walled off by this bill would nearly match the annual production levels of our two largest natural gas production states — Alaska and Texas.


• $3 million for a “road to nowhere” through a wildlife refuge in Alaska.


• $1 billion for a water project designed to save 500 salmon in California. At this price, each salmon would be worth far more than its weight in gold.


• $3.5 million to help celebrate the 450th birthday of St. Augustine Florida, in 2015....


• $5 million on botanical gardens in Hawaii and Florida.

“If the Senate wants to debate lands legislation once we’ve helped stabilize the economy we should begin by better managing the land we already oversee,” says Dr. Coburn. “We have a $9 billion maintenance back log within the national park service because Congress prefers to create new pet projects rather than responsibly oversee the parks we’ve already created. Moreover, we are not suffering from a lack of wilderness areas in the United States. According to the Census Bureau, we have 106 million acres of developed land and 107 million acres of wilderness land. What we are suffering from, however, is a lack of common sense in Washington.”

Other critical analyses of the bill by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Republican Study Committee (RSC) point out many ways S. 22 threatens our nation’s economic viability. Those provisions include:

• Blocking millions of acres from new oil and gas leasing, logging, mining, and all other business activity in these areas.


• Eliminating 1.2 million acres from mineral leasing and energy exploration in Wyoming alone — withdrawing 331 million barrels of recoverable oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from domestic energy supply.


• Designating more than two million acres of land as wilderness areas and permanently eliminating human access to these areas for energy exploration or recreational opportunities.


• Eliminating a proposed terminal site for importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Massachusetts by designating a river that runs through a city as “wild and scenic."


• Authorizing $5.5 billion of new discretionary spending and $915 million of direct spending.


• Codifying the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) within the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), creating a duplicative agency that will tend to greatly restrict or eliminate ranching, mining, logging, hunting, fishing, and recreation on BLM’s massive land holdings.


• Adding over 80 new wilderness designations or additions to federal lands.

The Republican Study Committee's critique of S. 22 notes:

The federal government already owns nearly 650 million acres of land, which amounts to 30 percent of the total land area of the United States. The District of Columbia, established by the Constitution as the federal city, has only 24.7% of its total acreage owned by the federal government. Twelve states rank above DC in federal land ownership. 85% of Nevada is federally owned and the federal government occupies more than 45% of the land in California.

Pew and other public opinion polls have shown repeatedly that Americans favor more offshore drilling for gas and oil and favor opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling, along with other public lands that have been put off limits. With the likelihood that gasoline prices could again shoot up into the $4 range (or higher), it not only makes good economic sense, but also makes good national security sense, since greater domestic production would mean less dependence on foreign suppliers and less transfer of our wealth to regimes that may mean us ill. Instead of yielding to these common sense proposals supported by the public, Senate Democrats and some Senate Republicans have joined hands to tighten the energy stranglehold on America’s energy jugular. Now the fight has moved to the House, and it will take an outpouring of public outrage to stop this legislation and the harm that it would do.

Destroying Both Jobs And Energy Security

OPINION

By NEWT GINGRICH AND ROY INNIS
Investor's Business Daily

Who is really in charge of our public lands and resources? The American public — or the radical left?

The recession continues to worsen. Stores and companies are closing their doors. Millions are unemployed. Families are struggling to pay for homes, food, cars and fuel.

President Obama just signed a controversial, pork-laden, trillion-dollar "stimulus" package. We'll spend another $350 billion this year on imported oil.

And with the stroke of a pen, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 Utah oil and gas leases that had gone through seven years of studies, negotiations and land-use planning. In an instant, he eliminated hundreds of jobs, terminated access to vital oil and gas deposits, and deprived taxpayers of millions in lease bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues.

The canceled leases represent one-third of acreage estimated to contain enough oil to fuel 3 million cars and enough natural gas to heat 14 million homes for 15 years. They were rejected because temporary drilling operations might be "visible" from several national parks more than a mile away.

Secretary Salazar is supposedly a moderate on land use and energy development. But this decision, after one week in office, suggests that he actually has strong anti-energy attitudes — or is too easily "persuaded" by environmental pressure groups.

They've already eliminated logging and mining in most of the West. They're now going after oil, gas, coal, oil shale and uranium — and after that ranching and snowmobiling.

Anti-energy zealots always say these areas only have three weeks or, at most, a few months of oil. But by this logic, why conserve, recycle or reduce pollution? Your personal contribution is trifling. Why plant corn or wheat? Your fields won't make a dent in world hunger.

Obviously, it's the cumulative impact that matters.

According to a 2008 Interior Department "inventory" of federal energy resources, 163 million acres of public lands are off-limits to oil and gas leasing. That's more than the total area of Montana and Wyoming combined.

These land withdrawals make 62% of the oil and 41% of the natural gas in our nation's onshore public lands unavailable — along with the jobs and revenues that developing these vital resources would provide. Another 65 million acres are severely restricted — for an additional 30% of our onshore federal oil and 49% of our gas.

That's right. An area the size of Texas and Oklahoma, 92% of our onshore publicly owned oil, and 90% of our onshore natural gas — are off-limits to Americans suffering through this recession.

This precedent to cancel leases (or never issue them), because drilling rigs might be visible from park and wilderness areas, threatens to make millions of additional acres off-limits. Such shortsighted actions will destroy jobs and drive up energy prices and the cost of everything we eat and do.

Offshore, Secretary Salazar has stalled oil and gas drilling yet again, by extending the comment period of the current leasing plan another eight months. Americans rose up successfully during the summer of 2008, to end the decades-long congressional offshore drilling ban, because it was bad policy. Salazar's actions suggest we might be headed toward new anti-energy policies.

Protecting the environment is crucial. And most people understand that, thanks to modern technologies, we can be pro-energy and protect the environment simultaneously.

For instance, while the left incites fear about offshore oil spills, the facts clearly show that current drilling techniques are enormously successful and incredibly safe. The same is true onshore.

In fact, three-fourths of Americans want more drilling, not less. They want out of this recession. They don't want it prolonged with anti-energy, anti-job, anti-revenue policies imposed on us by the radical left.

In the current economic gloom, there is no reason to revert back to the destructive policies that gave us $4-per-gallon gasoline and record-high heating bills.

Every American who supports a pro-energy agenda should contact the Department of the Interior (http://www.doi.gov/contact.html or 202-208-7351) and tell Secretary Salazar that developing all of our energy resources is the only reasonable option, if we want to create American jobs, improve the American economy, and support American national security.

Gingrich is a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future.

Innis is chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality and author of "Energy Keepers — Energy Killers: The New Civil Rights Battle."