It ain't what you know...update
It ain’t what you know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just
It ain't what you know...update
10 min read
It ain’t what you know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. Mark Twain, author, humorist and social critic, 1835-1910
Update: A plan to sell millions of acres of public lands has been ruled out of the Republican-led megabill by the Senate parliamentarian. Lee vows to revise bill.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/senate-referee-rules-out-public-land-sales-in-megabill/
Utah U.S. Senator Mike Lee wants the federal government to sell some 400 million acres of federal land to private interests. His website explains why.
“When Utah first entered the Union, a ratified agreement called the Utah Enabling Act stipulated that “public lands lying within said State… shall be sold by the United States subsequent to the admission of said State into the Union.”
“Unfortunately,” Senator Lee explains, “The federal government has not held up its end of the bargain and has retained vast amounts of Utah acreage limiting Utahns' ability to maintain, conserve, recreate, and responsibly produce on the lands within their own state.”
Senator Lee believes much of this land should be transferred to the state as promised so that Utah’s natural resources can be better managed to conserve the land, provide for the state’s constituents, and serve its multi-use purposes.
He insists that “Utah has a great track record of responsibly managing public lands and caring for its environment, while ensuring economic prosperity for its communities, families, and industries dependent on access to the land, like agriculture, energy, and outdoor recreation.”
His proposal will resonate with millions of westerners whose businesses, lives, families and health have been compromised by lousy federal land management policies and litigious groups that oppose all forms of active conservation involving the 630 million acres that Uncle Sam owns in the 11 contiguous western states.
Especially galling is the fact that more than half of the West’s federal forest estate is dying, dead or burnt to a crisp – a direct result of federal land management policies that have encouraged a “hands off” approach for the last 35 years.
So why are the Idaho and Montana House and Senate delegations unanimous in their opposition to Senator Lee’s proposal? We think it is because the Forest Service controls a mere 8.1 million acres in Utah but in Montana it controls 17 million acres and in Idaho 20.4 million acres. These lands are huge cash cows for the outdoor recreation industry.
More than 930,000 Idahoans and Montanans hold hunting and fishing licenses, activities that are centered in National Forests in the two states. About half as many Utahns hunt and fish. But if you add the three states together, you have more than 1.4 million hunters and anglers who aren’t going to be happy to hear that Senator Lee wants to sell their paradise.
Lee’s proposal has understandably spawned some heartburn and even more hysteria, which is its own very lucrative and lawyerly cash cow.
We can credit the Wilderness Society with the local version of nationwide hysteria ignited by the organization's press release. A June 22 Coeur d’Alene Press story reports that “the bulk of the Coeur d’ Alene and St. Joe National Forests are included in Lee’s proposal. Technically, these two forests ceased to exist when they were combined with the Kaniksu National Forest in 1973 to form the 2.5 million acre Idaho Panhandle National Forest.
I’ve fished both rivers since my boyhood, some 70 years ago. Mostly the old North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River because it was was closer to home that the Joe. Both rivers are beautiful cutthroat fisheries and there is already a good deal of private land along their lower stretches. Old hayfields have become RV parks at water’s edge. Hundreds of trailers, fifth-wheels and campers and more rubber rafts and tire tubes than you can count.
The upper reaches of the North Fork are accessed by a narrow Forest Service paved road that isn’t plowed above the Murray intersection in the winter. It’s a school bus loop that serves schools in Wallace and Kellogg, depending on whether the buses go downriver to Kellogg or up Beaver Creek and over Dobson Pass.
There are powerlines that serve a few summer homes above the Murray junction, but there is no Internet or phone service above the homes. There are several nice Forest Service campgrounds further up the river with outdoor toilets and potable water but no power. If you have Starlink and a generator you're golden.
It would cost developers millions to bring power and phone service to any land above Devil’s Elbow if you could get the necessary permits from the Forest Service. And the road, though paved, is riddled with chuck holes. Again, cue the lawyers.
Senator Lee’s idea isn’t new. After President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, the federal government sold 270 million acres of land to westward bound homesteaders for $1.25 per acre in 160 acre allotments. The hope was that they would start communities, which they did along railroad routes as the Great Northern, Central Pacific, Union Pacific and Northern Pacific rolled west.
Historian and author Steven Ambrose tells the story of the first transcontinental linkup between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific at Promontory Summit, Utah in May, 1869. If you've never read Nothing Like It In The World, do so.
It took the two railroads six years to complete their 1,776 mile route from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California. More than 1,000 Chinese laborers were killed, mostly along the Central Pacific's treacherous Sierra Nevada route.
The Great Northern and Northern Pacific followed more difficult routes through the mountainous Rockies and Cascades. Settlers found the region's forests to be so impenetrable that clearing land for farms was nearly impossible.
Uncle Sam ended up giving millions of acres to states when they were granted statehood on the promise that they would help fund rural school districts. Some states [think Oregon] still can't keep this promise. And some U.S. Senators [think Mike Lee] think the feds didn't keep their promises either.
A few years ago, someone suggested the West’s National Forest and Bureau of Land Management forests be transferred to State ownership because state’s do a much better job of managing their forests than federal agencies. State foresters poo-pooed the idea because they couldn’t see how states could afford to care for so much federal land.
There is no way in hell Congress would have ever approved such a transfer but the fact that it was proposed points squarely at the underlying problem. The federal government owns more land in the West than it can afford to manage for any purpose, including recreation. It took the Forest Service five years to salvage blowdown timber in Big Hank Campground on the North Fork and the trees around Devil’s Elbow are killing one another because they are too thick.
Honeysuckle Campground – on the Little North Fork – has been closed for two years and is a jumble of fallen trees. It looks like the Forest Service has hired a logger to clean up the mess but it is nothing like it was when I first camped there with my parents in 1948.
A close reading of Senator Lee’s proposal, which is included in Subtitle C of the Senate’s reconciliation package, instructs the Forest Service and the BLM to identify between 0.4 and 0.6 percent of the public land the federal government owns - between two to three million across 11 western states.
Subtitle C requires that these lands be suitable for housing or community development needs that have been identified by states or local governments. Definitely not the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River or the St. Joe.
An idea that we floated about 20 years ago is finally bearing legislative fruit. In a speech to the members of the Intertribal Timber Council [ITC] I suggested the time had come for the federal government to return western federal lands it had stolen from Indian tribes via treaty violations in the last half of the 1880s.
Our reasoning was simple. Federal resource management agencies do a lousy job because Congress refuses to appropriate enough money to do the job the way it should be done. On the other hand, tribes do a marvelous job of managing forests and grasslands on their reservations with far less per acre funding from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA].
Congress has also ratified several major pieces of legislation that give tribes the authority to thin federal forests adjacent to their forests that pose insect, disease and wildfire risks. Why Congress didn't grant the same thinning authorities to the Forest Service and BLM is beyond us.
The big tribes in the West have completed a congressionally approved self-determination process that gives them the right to manage their lands as they see fit without BIA interference. They still exceed the requirements of the Endangered Species Act – feats the Forest Service and BLM can’t match because millions of acres of critical habitat have been destroyed in big wildfires that weren’t contained when they were small fires.
If you want to know why tribes excel as land managers, read any of the last three ITC reports we researched and published: Forestry In Indian Country: Models for Sustainability in National Forests [2005], Forestry in Indian Country 2014] or IFMAT 4: Progress in Indian Country [2023]
I co-write the prologue for the 2014 report. It’s titled Earth Gifts. You will find it on Page 4 of Forestry in Indian Country, 2014. Here's the text, but please read the entire report when you have time:
We are Indian People. As the First Stewards, we have cared for the Land since before time began. Our natural resource management practices are rooted in the traditions, knowledge, and wisdom handed down to us by our ancestors over countless generations.
Our Creator has entrusted us with the care of our Land and its resources. In exchange, He has blessed us with precious gifts of life: foods, clothing, medicines, fuel, shelter and goods for trade and commerce - the means to nurture our bodies, minds and spirits.
We share a deeply-felt responsibility to protect the land for those who will follow in our footsteps. The future of our peoples depends on stewardship of the natural resources that are both our heritage and legacy. We care for Earth, so she will continue to care for us. We are part of the Land and the Land is part of us. It is the Indian Way.
This is how federally-owned lands in the West should be managed.
Update: Although this bill has been put on hold, many Republican Senators including Crapo-ID, Risch-ID, Sheehey-MT, and Daines MT have spoken out against Lee's proposal.
Find your state below to make a call:
IF LEAVING VOICEMAIL: Leave your full street address to ensure your call is tallied.
☎️ U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 (You can ask to be connected to any Senator's office).
ALASKA • Sen. Lisa Murkowski: (202) 224-6665 • Sen. Dan Sullivan: (202) 224-3004
ARIZONA • Sen. Mark Kelly: (202) 224-2235 • Sen. Ruben Gallego: (202) 224-4521
CALIFORNIA • Sen. Alex Padilla: (202) 224-3553 • Sen. Adam Schiff: (202) 224-3841
COLORADO • Sen. Michael Bennet: (202) 224-5852 • Sen. John Hickenlooper: (202) 224-5941
IDAHO • Sen. Mike Crapo: (202) 224-6142 • Sen. Jim Risch: (202) 224-2752
NEVADA • Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto: (202) 224-3542 • Sen. Jacky Rosen: (202) 224-6244
NEW MEXICO • Sen. Martin Heinrich: (202) 224-5521 • Sen. Ben Ray Luján: (202) 224-6621
OREGON • Sen. Ron Wyden: (202) 224-5244 • Sen. Jeff Merkley: (202) 224-3753
UTAH • Sen. Mike Lee: (202) 224-5444 • Sen. Mitt Romney: (202) 224-5251
WASHINGTON • Sen. Maria Cantwell: (202) 224-3441 • Sen. Patty Murray: (202) 224-2621
WYOMING • Sen. John Barrasso: (202) 224-6441 • Sen. Cynthia Lummis: (202) 224-3424
MONTANA - Tim Sheehey: 202-224-2644 and Steve Daines: 202-224-2651" (though Montana is not on the list of state lands for sale)
IF YOU PREFER TO EMAIL USE THIS LINK TO FIND YOUR SENATOR:
U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators
