By Jim Bailey, Wildlife
Biologist
Our federal lands are an important
public trust resource. They are owned by the public and managed by
trustees (government agencies) to benefit current and future
generations. Some refer to the public lands as “commons”. They
note a tragic history of such lands. Without regulations, competing
individuals have trashed the commons as each tried to obtain more
than their share of benefits. Today, this threat to federal public
trust lands is supposed to be controlled with prudent management by
our trustee agencies, mostly the Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau
of Land Management and Fish & Wildlife Service.
About 30 percent of Montana is federal
public land. These lands are essential to the quality of life in our
“Big Sky Country”. They are the scenery, the backdrop to our
lives. They are vital components of the habitat for fish and
wildlife that we treasure. They are places for all sorts of outdoor
recreation. They are essential to tourism, our state’s largest
industry. Public benefits from Montana’s federal lands are large
and diverse. They must be protected for use and enjoyment by the
people.
But, the tragedy of the commons is
still with us. There are individuals and industries hell-bent on
turning our federal lands into private profits. Their strategy is
capture and control. Capture special or
exclusive access to the land. Control the trustees, our government
agencies and legislatures, to bend management policies in ways that
favor special interests on our lands.
Capturing the public resource
Industries and other special interests
have used laws, government policies and historical precedent to
capture permanent, often exclusive, access to our federal public
lands.
The 1872 mining law is one example.
Mining interests extract $2-3 billion annually from the public trust,
mostly at the minimal cost of $2.50 to $5.00/acre. The 1872 mining
law is a blatant case of private capture of the public trust.
Results can be locally
devastating. Yet, the amount of land involved is small by
comparison with other private uses of the public land.
The most widespread capture of public
land is the federal livestock grazing program. Over 14,000 square
miles, about 10 percent of
Montana, is federal land
grazed by private
livestock. Most of this land is managed by the BLM and
Forest Service, but National Monuments and Wildlife Refuges are
included. Grazing fees are low and have not kept pace with
inflation. In some programs, half the funds from grazing fees must
be reused to further enhance the private grazing. But, taxpayers pay
most of the costs from the federal grazing program.
Many public-land livestock operators
believe they have a permanent “right” to their allotments. Banks
often recognize this idea by considering the value from using the
public land as private loan collateral. While legal standards
proclaim that a public grazing allotment is a “privilege”, not a
right, our land-management agencies rarely revoke the permanent
connection of an allotment to a landowner’s private land.
Moreover, new laws, such as wilderness designations, and court
decisions often provide exceptions for livestock operators to use the
public lands in contrast to the rights of all others. Each such new
law or court decision strengthens the legal argument that the
public’s right to determine how the public land will be used has
been diminished.
Other federal lands are dedicated for
coal and petroleum production. Impacts of these industries are large
and growing in some parts of Montana. Wildlife populations have been
decimated and rivers degraded. Historically, reclamation following
these projects has often been lacking. Industry lobbyists in
Congress and in the state legislature always oppose industry
restrictions or regulations. Industry propagandists tell us that
their impacts upon our landscape are minor while their contributions
to the public welfare are large. Usually, as we look farther, in
both space and time, from each industrial project on the public land,
the costs increase and the benefits decrease for a larger number of
the owners of the public land.
Ultimate control of federal land can be
contrived by arranging for private access to land where public access
has been eliminated. Small units of the federal land trust are
isolated by private land and inaccessible without permission. The
Forest Service and BLM have little say in managing many of these
parcels.
Many larger units of federal land have
only a few public roads for access across adjacent private land.
Private interests often seek to close these public roads. Limiting
public access may provide an adjacent landowner with special benefits
- without the tax assessments - from our public land. Such
combinations of private and otherwise inaccessible public land can be
a valuable commodity when sold to a hunting outfitter who will treat
the public land as a private hunting reserve.
Controlling the public trustee
Private interests control our
government trustees of the public lands in very many, sometimes
obscure, ways. The most obvious approach is to fund the elections of
friendly legislators and governors. However, the tactics of the
resulting trustees of our public lands are often far from obvious.
Uses of the public lands are skewed toward private benefits and away
from long-term public values in very many ways. I can only refer to
a few examples.
The ultimate government policy
statement is a budget. Special interests contrive for Congress to
fund the leasing of public lands while restricting funds for
monitoring or regulating these uses. For many federal grazing
allotments, there has not been a review of the allotment management
plan in over a decade. Some have never had environmental costs and
benefits analyzed under the National Environmental Protection Act.
Congress has said that federal agencies may not diminish grazing
allotments on public lands just because monitoring and review have
not been completed. Then Congress fails to adequately fund the
agencies for monitoring and review. Impacts to wildlife habitats
are, at best, unknown or, at worst, serious.
Special interests routinely seek to
weaken the Endangered Species Act. Since its inception, it has been
our nation’s most powerful tool for preserving species and their
habitats. The Act is the only institution providing consistency of
restoration effort across state boundaries and across changes in
state and federal government administrations.
I recently visited National Grasslands
in other states. They are managed by the Forest Service. According
to the National Forest Management Act, the Forest Service is to
provide suitable habitat for native species, well distributed across
its lands. I asked why the Grassland had no bison. One district
ranger replied: “We can’t have bison because we are a
multiple-use agency.” Another ranger said I should discuss bison
with the local grazing association whose cattle use the Grassland. I
wondered what “multiple use” meant to the Forest Service, and why
private grazing associations had replaced the trustees of our public
trust land.
Even state laws and policies contrive
to limit wildlife possibilities in favor of private uses on our
federal lands. Montana law requires that wildlife transplants are
prohibited unless the commission determines there is no threat
of harm to agricultural production. First, this is an impossible
standard. Second, since livestock grazing on federal
lands is “agricultural production”, it prohibits the public from
deciding that a wildlife herd can be more publicly beneficial than a
private grazing allotment on any federal land. As a consequence, FWP
policy is that “any localized removal, transfer, or conversion of
established domestic sheep allotments on public lands for the benefit
of bighorns” should only occur if agreed to by the sheepherder. In
the cases of bighorn sheep and bison, the Beaverhead National Forest
and the C. M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, respectively, use
this law as an excuse for not having adequate bighorn herds on the
Forest or any bison on the Refuge. Thus, private interests capture
uses on our federal lands by controlling the trustees of our public
wildlife and our federal lands.
Conclusion
These are but a few examples of private
capture of our federal lands and control of our public trustees.
Such activity is abundant, widespread and relentless. Each
special-interest project seems small or perhaps moderate in scope.
Consequently, public awareness of the threat is limited but the
cumulative results are enormous and increasing. Meanwhile, public
options for using our lands are being constrained or eliminated,
diminishing our legacy to future generations of Montanans.
