Plan to sell public lands isn’t justified

The Bush administration was talking to somebody last month before announcing federal budget proposals to sell 300,000 acres of national forest land and potentially 500,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land.

But the public obviously wasn’t in the loop.

For more than three decades, Americans have clearly rejected liquidation of the public lands we enjoy for the timeless benefits of outdoor recreation, open space, water quality control and wildlife conservation.

President Reagan was savvy enough to let his environmental henchman, Interior Secretary James Watt, take heat for the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion. When the public shredded his plan for privatizing public lands like wolves on carcass, Reagan accepted Watt’s resignation with a shrug and moved on.

Last year, the proposal from House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA) to sell millions of acres of Western public lands was decisively rejected.

A year later, Bush naively or arrogantly comes back with the “Secure Rural Schools Forest Service 2007 Initiative.”

Even if the president had been honest enough to call this the “Pay for War Initiative” the sale of public land would not be justified.

The reasons are in many of our favorite outdoor destinations along the Grande Ronde River, in Lincoln County scablands, through the Juniper Dunes Wilderness, up the Okanogan Valley and St. Joe River.

These areas are better protected and more accessible today thanks to land managers who judiciously exchanged scattered fragments of “surplus” public ground.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management operations in Washington illustrate an important evolution in public land policy the Bush administration has chosen to ignore.

BLM was formed in 1946 primarily to manage livestock grazing as well as to dispose of public land that had not already been turned over for homesteading, mining and other development.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, BLM made a push to dispose of its scattered lands in Washington. Thousands of acres were unloaded, but BLM officials this week couldn’t easily find records that say how many acres were sold or how much money they raised for the treasury.

The public land, the income and the value simply vaporized.

But that was the end of an era, as the nation’s attitude toward public lands was already evolving into a sense of ownership.

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 changed BLM’s direction toward maintaining public property. A section of that law gave the agency authority to acquire land.

Washington’s remaining BLM lands were scattered in relatively small parcels across the state. They were unprofitable outcroppings, sagebrush and other leftovers from 20th century government programs to get commerce rolling on lands ranging from the San Juan Islands to inland deserts, river canyons and forests.

By the early 1980s, the agency was getting public approval for resource management plans that emphasized land exchanges and consolidation. Officials realized, for example, that 100 acres of BLM forest land with no public access in Stevens County could be sold to the adjoining private timber company for enough money to buy maybe 400 acres of wildlife-rich Lincoln County scablands serviced by public roads.Using this formula, BLM has increased its Washington landholdings from about 308,000 acres in 1985 to about 435,000 acres in 2006. The largest gains have been in Lincoln County, where the agency has expanded from 7,000 acres to large blocks totaling 75,000 acres open to hunting, fishing and other public uses.

In other words, the small scattered tracts once earmarked for disposal have been the raw materials needed to engineer exchanges for lands that provide significant recreation or natural resources protection.The Forest Service works under different rules, but in the past 30 years, the agency has used its authority for land exchanges to block up checkerboard lands and protect significant conservation areas, such as old-growth forest along Trapper Creek north of Upper Priest Lake.

Dave O’Brien, Idaho Panhandle National Forests spokesman in Coeur d’Alene, received dozens and dozens of calls last week from locals outraged to hear that English Point, the Forest Service land overlooking Hayden Lake, was still on the list of lands proposed for sale.

O’Brien prefers to look at the positive side of the flap over the 11,000 Panhandle acres earmarked for disposal.

“Maybe all this volatile public reaction is a benefit,” he said. “Back in Washington, D.C., they’re beginning to hear loudly and clearly once again that national forests contribute a treasured part of our lifestyle in the West. That’s good.”

Wise landowners rarely sell their property, with two notable exceptions – to buy better land or to bail out of a desperate situation.

Now it’s up to you to decide which part of that observation fits the Bush administration’s proposal.