Privatization
As you drive across the huge space of the West, you may be unaware that much of what you see belongs to the public—to you. The West holds the vast majority of this country’s federal lands, including 264 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and much of the 193 million acres in the nation’s National Forests.
Some of us remember the short reign in the early 1980s of Interior Secretary James Watt, who proposed that vast tracts of public land be sold to offset the country's deficit. His boss, Ronald Reagan, declared himself to be a "Sagebrush Rebel" in solidarity with the ranchers, miners, and developers who wanted to see all public lands in private hands. The American public scoffed, Watt resigned, and the idea of large-scale sell-offs went out of favor.
BLM lands are most vulnerable to the threat of privatization. Far from being protected, BLM lands are subject to many intensive uses, from mining to grazing to off-road-vehicle use.
Beginning in 2000 the Western Lands Project had to expand its mission beyond land exchanges to include scrutiny of other types of projects that seek to privatize federal lands.
Watt and his ilk don't often win with broad strokes, but the fervor to sell-off public land never really goes away -- it just gets quieter. Every year, scores of bills and projects that privatize federal land get through in a smaller-scale, more stealthy manner, tucked into huge appropriations bills or couched in cryptic language.
Population growth has put more and more pressure on our public lands, and Congress has turned with new alacrity to schemes that would turn our public lands over to private interests.
- Every year, Congress enacts “conveyances” of public land that give federal parcels over to local government. Sometimes these projects are in the public interest—such as when a small community cemetery on public land is turned over a local entity, or a small-town fire station needs land.
But Congress also makes gifts of federal land to favored constituents. For instance:
- A Nevada Senator sought in 2005 to turn over more than 200 acres of public land near Las Vegas for a heliport for helicopters that take tourists to the Grand Canyon. These commercial concerns would pay nothing—and they have been staunch supporters of the Senator’s campaigns.
- In 2002, a Pennsylvania congressman tried to give away more than 100 acres in California’s Angeles National Forest to an astronomical observatory that was leasing the land, and on whose board sat the congressman’s chief of staff. The bill, which died of exposure in the Los Angeles Times, would have given away for free land worth more than $100 million.
In myriad other ways, the public control of federal land is threatened:
- As part of a huge federal land-use scheme for Owyhee County in southwest Idaho, Congress would create a board of directors—ranchers, environmentalists, off-road vehicle enthusiasts, and county commissioners—to oversee the management of more than 3 million acres of federal land. This project represents a new trend toward privatizing the control of the public lands.
- A bill passed in 2004 mandated that the BLM lease 940 acres in central Wyoming to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon Church. Martin’s Cove is the site of four pioneer trails and is a national Registered Historic Place. But the Mormons have long wished to own the site because several Mormon pioneers died there in a blizzard in the 1850s. After legislation failed to pass that would have sold this public land to the Church, a subsequent bill required that the Bureau of Land Management issue the Church a 25-year lease. The Church seized virtually complete control over activities on the land; co-mingled its logo with that of the BLM on signs posted along an interpretive trail; and engaged in exclusive interpretation and proselytizing. The Church’s control was so pervasive that it might as well have owned the land. (Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Western Lands and co-plaintiffs — including Church members — sued the BLM and successfully settled the case).
Since 2000, our organization has witnessed with dismay a new and accelerating trend: the use of public land trades or disposals as a way of “buying” wilderness protection.
This approach is gaining the cooperation of wilderness coalitions across the West, and stands to have a huge impact on public lands politics and policy. In their quest to protect certain areas, some wilderness advocates are also negotiating non-wilderness provisions designed to win support from anti-wilderness “stakeholders”—ranchers, local politicians, developers, ORV enthusiasts, etc.—often by tying federal land exchanges and disposals to wilderness protection. We call this phenomenon “quid pro quo wilderness.”
The Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act of 2004 was one such project. Along with provisions for wilderness protection, the bill:
- Marked for immediate sale 100,000 acres of federal land, and gave away almost 15,000 acres of federal land to the County and the State.
- Gave the Southern Nevada Water Authority and other private and public water interests free pipeline rights-of-way across more than 450 miles of federal land so that they can explore for and transport water from outlying areas into the Las Vegas Valley. In addition, water rights within a newly established Wilderness Area will belong to the State.
A land-use bill for central Idaho introduced in 2005 proposed to outright give away federal land to local and state government to develop as they chose to generate tax revenues—a chilling precedent that would use federal land as a cash cow to alleviate local economic problems.
In other ways, public land may be treated as something to be cashed out when money is tight:
- While enacting deep cuts in the Forest Service budget, Congress is encouraging (and sometimes forcing) the agency to sell of pieces of its property to fund maintenance and repair of buildings, and tracts of land to fund the construction of new facilities.
In late 2005, anti-environmental members of Congress brought out a host of schemes to sell off public lands—again using the deficit, but also post-Hurricane Katrina costs, to justify cashing out tracts in national forests, national parks, and "vacant" lands of the public domain. In one of the most alarming proposals, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) proposed that mining corporations be allowed to purchase lands at fire-sale prices wherever they held claims. Millions of acres could have gone on the block and ended up covered in subdivisions, golf courses, and second homes. The public recognized this belligerent scheme for what it was, and soon even pro-mining, pro-privatization politicians were falling all over each other to be the loudest champion of our public land. Pombo's plan was withdrawn. Pombo was voted out of office in November 2006.
The Bush Administration's 2006 and 2007 budget proposals have both included a sell-off of 300,000 acres of national forest land to pay for a rural schools program. They also favored a plan to expand a Bureau of Land Management land sale program and redirect the proceeds of the sales from land acquisition to the General Treasury—the first proposal in more than 20 years that would hack off pieces of the public domain and sacrifice them to the ever-growing deficit.
Because of the expertise we gained through our scrutiny of land exchanges, it was incumbent upon the Western Lands Project to take on the broader issue of public land privatization. We will fight any and all attempts to turn public lands into a cash cow.
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