Wise Rulings End Unwise Fight

The so-called “wise-use” or county supremacy movement received a double dose of reality this month.

A U.S. district judge and the Idaho Supreme Court ruled separately that counties have no authority to manage state and federal lands within their borders. These lands belong to citizens throughout the state or country, not just those who happen to live closest to them.

Any high school senior enrolled in a civics class could have told us that.

Yet, commissioners in Boundary County, Idaho, and Nye County, Nev., squandered tens of thousands of dollars fighting this clear constitutional point. Let’s hope some 100 other Western counties that also tried to annex public lands illegally have paid attention.

The wise-use movement has fueled contempt for the federal government and has invited violence against its employees. Now, rebellious counties such as Boundary, which consists of nearly 80 percent state and federal land, and Nye, at 93 percent, must learn again to cooperate with public lands managers - not agitate against them.

Grasping for a silver lining in his county’s legal defeat, Commissioner Merle Dinning said Boundary County sent “a wakeup call to federal agencies. All we were looking for was a little cooperation and to be involved in decisions about surrounding public lands.”

Dinning, of course, is guilty of revisionism.

Originally, Boundary County commissioners ordained themselves as the sole managers of public lands within the county. They also outlawed all wilderness designations in the county and targeted some public land for sale or trade. Later, they backtracked, stating the ordinance passed in 1992 was advisory only.

Dinning makes one good point, though: Public lands managers must cooperate, too.

Arrogant, unilateral decisions by federal and state land managers touched off the original “Sagebrush Rebellion” as well as the wiseuse movement. State and federal officials should seek local input before imposing rules that cost jobs in the forest, mining and agriculture industries.

A compromise fashioned last year among the timber industry, environmentalists and the U.S. Forest Service provides a model for cooperation. The three sides agreed to common-sense road closures that protected Priest Lake grizzly bears but also allowed logging to continue.

Cooperation makes more sense than legal struggles that waste money and stir contempt for government.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board