PUBLIC LANDS: Salazar, green groups want RNC to quit pushing states to acquire federal land
Scott Streater, E&E reporter
Greenwire: Thursday, August 14, 2014
Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is helping lead an effort with dozens of conservation groups and business leaders to beat back recent attempts by Western states to acquire millions of acres of federal land.
Salazar, who led the Interior Department during President Obama's first term before leaving early last year, said today in a statement that public lands should remain public, and that contrary to the suggestions of some lawmakers, they are huge economic drivers in local communities across the West.
"The nation's public lands are the birthright and priceless heritage of all Americans," Salazar said today in a statement. "Our policymakers and elected leaders should be working to preserve and enhance these multiple use economic engines."
Salazar is expected to discuss the issue in more detail later today on a conference call with reporters.
As part of the effort to protect federal oversight of public lands, more than 40 conservation groups mostly affiliated with the National Wildlife Federation sent a letter to the Republican National Committee urging it to rescind a formal resolution approved earlier this year supporting efforts by Western states to force the federal government to hand over federal lands within their boundaries.
"Despite the economic importance of federal lands to wildlife and people, they remain under constant threat," the groups wrote to the RNC. "In recent years, several state legislative proposals have called on the federal government to transfer ownership of public lands to the states, which in turn would pass them off to private interests in many instances."
The latest effort is targeted mostly at efforts by states like Utah, which has passed legislation demanding that the United States hand over 20 million acres to the state by Dec. 31. Other states like Nevada have approved efforts to at least study the issue.
A spokeswoman with the RNC did not respond to a request to comment on this story by publication time.
It's unlikely the RNC would rescind the resolution the committee approved during its winter meeting in January, titled "In Support of Western States Taking Back Public Lands."
Conservative congressional leaders and state legislatures across the West have championed returning federal lands back to the states as a way to boost state and regional economies. The federal government controls more than half the lands in many Western states like Utah and Nevada.
The coalition of groups, from the Colorado Wildlife Federation to the Environmental League of Massachusetts, note in the two-page letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus that President Theodore Roosevelt and others were "part of a long line of Republican conservation leaders committed to the wise stewardship of our natural resources and the multiple uses of our public lands."
Despite the fact that federal lands support sensitive wildlife and a multibillion-dollar outdoor recreation industry, "several state legislative proposals have called on the federal government to transfer ownership of public lands to the states, which in turn would pass them off to private interests in many instances," the coalition stated in the letter.
"Not only are these proposals legally questionable and unlikely to pass constitutional review," they wrote, "the principle of discarding public lands opens the door to a multitude of unsustainable land management practices including unrestricted timber harvest, fossil fuel extraction, and mining."
They urged the RNC "to stay true to the party's deep conservation roots and rescind this resolution to ensure the continued protection of public lands that provide so much benefit to our communities and for all Americans."
The RNC resolution it approved in January "calls upon the federal government" to transfer title of federal lands back to the states that want them.
In addition, the three-page resolution "calls upon all national and state leaders and representatives to exert their utmost power and influence to urge the imminent transfer of public lands to all willing western states for the benefit of these western states and for the nation as a whole."
The RNC resolution endorses the logic of states like Utah, which has argued that the Bureau of Land Management must adhere to the Utah Enabling Act of 1894, which laid out conditions for Utah to become the 45th state in the union. Supporters have argued that the law, among other things, contains a stipulation that the federal government would sell its land holdings in the state and give 5 percent of the proceeds to the state school trust fund.
The RNC resolution states that the federal government "promised" as a condition of statehood that "it would transfer title to the public lands" back to the states.
"This promise to transfer title to the public lands is the same for all states east and west of Colorado," the resolution reads. The federal government "honored this promise with Hawaii and all states east of Colorado," it says, but not in the West, noting more than half of the lands in states like Alaska, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico remain federally owned.
But Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) in 1976, ending the federal government's nearly-200-year "public policy of beneficially transferring ownership of public lands" back to the states, according to the resolution.
The resolution states that the public lands since FLPMA are "being managed perpetually for their conservation value," whereas before they were "held in trust for the individual states" and "managed for their resource value."
The result, according to the RNC resolution, is that local, state and national economies "are all being adversely impacted by the loss of use of the natural resources thus being managed."
What's more, federal land management "discourages capital investment and job creation by taking 10 times longer to approve energy development permits than states."
That view is supported by a June Interior inspector general report that found BLM in 2012 took an average of 228 calendar days to approve each drilling permit -- nearly three times as long as state regulators say they take to approve wells (Greenwire, July 1).
But Western governors have acknowledged it's unlikely that the United States would turn over federal lands to the states.
Speaking at the Western Governors' Association's annual meeting in June, the governors said doing so would require congressional action, and they do not expect Congress to act (Greenwire, June 11).
"Every few decades this idea of selling off public land pops up, and public opinion always beats it back," David Chadwick, executive director of the Montana Wildlife Federation, said in a statement. "We need our elected officials to quit wasting time on these speculative, ideological proposals and instead take action on the common-sense, collaborative efforts under way all over the country to improve land management."
