The Quiet Plan To Sell Off America’s National Forests

A proposal to seize and sell off America’s national forests and other public lands could make its way into the House GOP’s budget resolution when it is announced this week.

In a recent memo to the House Budget Committee, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, proposed that America’s public lands be transferred to state control. He then requested $50 million of taxpayer money to be spent to enable transfers to “start immediately.” The memo states that public lands “create a burden for the surrounding states and communities,” and “the solution is to convey land without strings to state, local, and tribal governments.”

Bishop’s plan and similar proposals to give away America’s public lands are controversial. A majority of voters in those regions believe the proposals would likely result in states having to raise taxes, open prized recreation areas to drilling and mining, or sell lands to private interests to cover the substantial costs of management.

Despite these concerns — and despite the fact that these proposals are extremely expensive, unpopular, and most importantly,unconstitutional — there is a strong likelihood that Rep. Bishop’s request will be included in the House GOP’s budget, thanks to intensive lobbying efforts by a handful of right wing politicians and special interest groups.

As reported by E&E Daily, the American Lands Council (ALC), an organization founded by Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory (R), hired a lobbyist at the end of last year to “educate congressional lawmakers on the benefits of relinquishing federal lands to the states.” Federal lobbyingdisclosure forms show that the ALC paid the lobbyist, Michael Swenson, $150,000 for just three months of lobbying work.

Swenson, whose other clients include a Utah mining company, has denied being paid the sum. He told E&E the lobbying disclosure form was a “mistake,” and that he was paid just $20,000 in the last quarter of 2014.

ALC’s lobbying payments have drawn additional scrutiny because the organization’s budget is dependent on taxpayer money, contributed by county governments in the West. According to the Center for Western Priorities (CWP), 47 county governments have spent a total of more than $219,000 for ALC membership. Most of these county governments receive substantial federal grant money through the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program (PILT), raising questions about whether American taxpayer dollars are being channeled to fund lobbying of the federal government. A federal law, known as the Byrd Amendment, prohibits the use of federal funds from a grant to be used for lobbying federal officials.

A recent flood of state-level proposals to seize and sell off America’s public lands is the result, in part, of efforts by the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to disseminate ‘model legislation’ to conservative lawmakers in Western states.

The state of Utah is thus far the only state to have passed such a measure, however. In 2012, the Utah legislature passed a bill demanding public lands be transferred to state control by December 2014. The state plans to sue the federal government and is currently accepting proposals to launch a $2 million fight.

Politicians in nine other states are also developing and advancing similar legislative proposals, supported by expensive taxpayer-funded studies. According to a CWP analysis, Western states have spent a total of $816,000 of taxpayer funds on such studies in recent years.

Whether Rep. Bishop’s proposal makes it into the House GOP budget or not, the Congressman has made it clear that disposing of national forests and public lands will be one of his top priorities as chair. The House Republican majority is expected to release its 2016 budget resolution this week.

Claire Moser is the Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser.

thinkprogress.org/climate/2015…/gop-budget-public-lands/

A powerful Republican chairman in the House of Representatives just shared with his constituents his desire to begin selling our national parks. Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida was caught on video in a local town meeting. Here is what he said:"I got attacked in a previous town meeting for not supporting another national park in this country, a 200-mile trailway. And I told the man that we don't need more national parks in this country, we need to actually sell off some of our national parks."

He went on to compare national parks to owning a Cadillac -- nice to have, but something you should sell when times get tight. That's right -- apparently he thinks of the Grand Canyon as a car. Thanks to ThinkProgress, you can watch the whole video.

Rep. Stearns didn't specify which national parks he had in mind. Was he thinking of his home state of Florida? After all, many a land speculator would love to get his hands on a few million acres of The Everglades. And who wouldn't want to get his hands on the right to privatize the Canaveral National Seashore? Or maybe he was thinking of selling off other people's national parks -- the ones in states Rep. Stearns doesn't represent and may never visit.

Unfortunately, Rep. Stearns isn't the only prominent politician who thinks of the conservation legacy of Theodore Roosevelt as just so much surplus property. Some of the current candidates for leader of the free world have also mused about putting America's national heritage on the chopping block, and the House of Representatives has actually passed or considered favorably a series of radical bills in this Congress that amount to an all-out war on the concept of holding public lands in trust for future generations.

Selling off, selling out or just plain giving away our national parks, wildlife refuges, national forests, BLM lands and national monuments is now all too common a theme in the House. The Wilderness Society has cataloged some of these legislative efforts in a chilling report "Wilderness Under Siege." In addition to wanting to turn wildlife refuges into oil fields, some in the House are pursuing an agenda that includes substituting the border patrol for forest rangers, giving away the best public lands for sale to developers, and threatening the Grand Canyon watershed with toxic uranium mines.

One hundred years ago, the Congress passed a landmark bill to protect our Eastern watersheds by acquiring public land. It created Glacier National Park and conceived of a national system of such iconic public lands now known as the National Park System. It was a time of big thinking about a big land with a big future, in line with Roosevelt's inspiring statement:"Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us."

Now we are reduced to "we need to actually sell off some of our national parks" -- a sentiment as remote from the thinking of Roosevelt as the moon is from Miami.

Those who care about protecting our national heritage need to recognize the perilous times in which we live. If our children are to experience the great outdoors tomorrow, we need to fight for it today.

This blog was originally posted on The Wilderness Society blog

well lets see what happens to our nation's treasures with the gop in charge now.

Sssssh.that's a secret

[IMG:http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/nps/npark.gif]

For all that Roosevelt achieved in the preservation of federal land, he did not remove the clause leftover from Yellowstone's park bill that granted Congress the power to repeal protection from National Parks where economic development was feasible. The preservationists felt vindicated when the Yosemite Valley won National Park Status in 1890 and was given 1500 additional acres of timber and grasslands along the ecologically delicate but highly developable foothills of the majestic Sierra Nevada mountains. In 1905, local timber companies and farmers lobbied ardently enough to reclaim valuable timber, grazing, and mineral areas totalling roughly 540 square miles, or one-third of the protected land surveyed in 1890. This reversal of federal protection did not bode well for preservationists. John Muir and fellow ecologically-minded opponents objected strenuously to park reduction, but they could not defend the gentle foothills and rolling lands from economic exploitation by claiming them as National Monuments; they were not the rugged peaks of the Sierras or the centuries-old antiquities of American history. They were simply not majestic enough, nor economically worthless enough, to qualify as a monument to America.

Shortly after this strike against Yosemite, the city of San Francisco dealt another blow to the ecological sanctity of the valley in 1905. San Francisco, 200 miles to the west, was in search of a source of fresh water for the city. After years of looking, their search continually led them to the Hetch-Hetchy Valley, which lay in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. Preservationists claimed that Hetch-Hetchy was equal to Yosemite Valley in its sublimity, but not many visitors to Yosemite had seen it because access to Hetch- Hetchy was limited to rough hiking trails which most park tourists did not explore. Despite the preservationists' outspoken protests against the suggestion to dam the Hetch-Hetchy valley to create a reservoir, the needs of 500,000 San Franciscans took priority over preservation. Although preservationists were able to defend the valley for nearly 20 years thanks to sympathetic public officials, by 1905 Secretary of the Interior James A. Garfield approved San Francisco's request and permitted a dam in the gorge.

San Francisco engineers and dam proponents alike fought public relations battles with the preservationists over the Hetch-Hetchy controversy. Enhanced photographs and artistic renderings attempted to show that building a reservoir would not destroy the beauty of the area, but enhance it. This view was grounded in the idea of the technological sublime, arguing that technology could create an object more beautiful than nature. The dam would be a tribute to human ingenuity and technological achievement. Rather than sustaining two valleys of equal natural beauty, America could have a monument to nature's accomplishment in Yosemite Valley and a shrine to human craftwork in Hetch-Hetchy. The engineers insistence on technology's ability to simulate and compete with nature's beauty won their case, much to the dismay of the preservationists.

Outraged and angry at the way their past victories had turned against them because of the repeal provisions of the park bill, preservationists realized that they could not have won this battle because they were fighting for the protection of land which most Americans had not even seen, much less appreciate and understand. Runte reports that as late as 1908, nearly 30 years after its establishment as a National Park, Yellowstone had only hosted 13,000 tourists, and the other parks and monuments reported figures equally low. Clearly, Americans could not understand the beauty of these natural spaces unless they could see them for themselves. Even though the preservationists who followed Muir's line of thinking knew it could harm the ecology of the parks, they realized that the key to increased protection was increased visitation. They could not change public perceptions of the wilderness until the public could experience it.

One of the earliest supporters of scenic preservation was printer, publisher, and horticulturist J. Horace McFarland, a Pennsylvanian with a dedicated interest in preservation. He was able to use his position, and his pen, to elicit support through the popular press. The Ladies Home Journal, Century, and Outlook magazines featured McFarland's columns which encouraged support for scenic protection based on worst-case-scenario appeals to preserve America's heritage. In his "Beautiful America" column, he wrote in support of protecting Niagara Falls, saying that:

the engineers calmly agree that Niagara Falls will, in a very few years, be but a memory. A memory of what? Of grandeur, beauty, and natural majesty unexcelled anywhere on earth, for the gain of a few...The words might well be emblazoned in letters of fire across the shamelessly-uncovered bluff of the American Fall: The Monument of America's Shame and Greed. (Runte 86- 87)

McFarland was not against profit, however, appealing also to the economically minded supporters among the preservationists as he criticized the downfall of Niagara in financial terms, reminding Americans that their scenic wonders brought them millions of dollars in tourist revenues each year. Even though preservation on environmental grounds was not easily defended at the time, economic appeals guaranteed ready approval from the public.

Thanks to McFarland and the later support he encouraged from what became the Sierra Club, scenic preservation took off in America. Preservationists agreed with his anti-development stance and businessmen, particularly in the railroad industry, were inspired by his reminder of the tourist dollars at stake in the National Parks. By 1911, when the first National Parks conference convened at Yellowstone to discuss the problematic park management policies and the common difficulties shared by all National Park and Monument overseers, the railroads had committed their energies toward supporting the preservation effort. At the 1911 conference, the presence of several rail delegates demonstrated to the conservationists that their cause was about to reach its peak. Thanks to what Secretary of the Interior Walter Fisher referred to as the "enlightened selfishness" of the railroads, an organized and effective National Park System seemed a reality.

The railroads tried their best to promote the parks for the preservationists. Each major railroad capitalized on its proximity to a National Park, and a few lobbied Congress to install new parks in lands already meeting the "worthless but majestic" criteria for new parks. In 1910, the Great Northern encouraged the establishment of Glacier National Park in Montana almost single-handedly. Meanwhile, Northern Pacific piqued curiosity in Yellowstone, Southern Pacific capitalized on Yosemite's controversial place in the public spotlight to encourage visitation, and the Santa Fe aggressively promoted the Grand Canyon. The map to the left from 1917 shows the proximity of National Parks and Monuments to the major rail lines. Maps of the park system were often published by the railroads, and it seemed as though any mention of a park was necessarily tied to an indication of which rail line most conveniently serviced it. Each rail line additionally assisted by allocating funds to build luxurious lodges and hotels, navigable roads, and networks of hiking trails to encourage forays into the interiors of the parks. In order to encourage travel by rail, they printed photographic guidebooks, brochures, and magazine ads selling potential travellers the best of both worlds--swift, comfortable transportation to sumptiously appointed hotels with first-rate cuisine and the vast majestic wilderness of the Old West as their playground. Railroad efforts were instrumental in park publicity nationwide, and even John Muir grudgingly acknowledged that Southern Pacific bore as much responsibility as the Sierra Club in the eventual protection of Yosemite Valley.

The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, c. 1890
"The Last Outpost of Civilization"

Thanks to the sharp increase in park visitation and the realization of the National Park System's profit potential, the National Park Act of 1916 travelled quickly through both houses of Congress, creating central management committed to the protection of each park and preserve. Even during Congressional hearings, however, the role of economics was crucial to the life of the park bill. Railroad officials from nearly every major line testified of the value of scenic preservation--not for ecology of course, but in tourist revenues. America could profit as a whole from the newly created demand for scenery. Although wilderness--wilderness in the west especially--had long provided a source of pride and heritage for Americans, it was not protected and officially identified as icon of America's identity until it also provided a source of profit through such protection. With the rise of tourist revenues, America at last claimed the most complete monument to its identity. The nation had invented a lasting sense of history and enduring cultural identity through its wilderness, but it had also discovered a new way to profit from this created demand for a national heritage. The National Parks embodied the best intentions of the American character and the basic opportunist instincts of the American motivation, and continue to showcase both sides today.

History

By the Act of March 1, 1872, Congress established Yellowstone National Park in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming "as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and placed it "under exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior." The founding of Yellowstone National Park began a worldwide national park movement. Today more than 100 nations contain some 1,200 national parks or equivalent preserves.

In the years following the establishment of Yellowstone, the United States authorized additional national parks and monuments, many of them carved from the federal lands of the West. These, also, were administered by the Department of the Interior, while other monuments and natural and historical areas were administered by the War Department and the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture. No single agency provided unified management of the varied federal parklands.

White House letter to Stephen Mather after the President signed the Organic Act creating the National Park Service on August 25, 1916.

On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service, a new federal bureau in the Department of the Interior responsible for protecting the 35 national parks and monuments then managed by the department and those yet to be established. This "Organic Act" states that "the Service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments and reservations…by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

An Executive Order in 1933 transferred 56 national monuments and military sites from the Forest Service and the War Department to the National Park Service. This action was a major step in the development of today's truly national system of parks—a system that includes areas of historical as well as scenic and scientific importance. Congress declared in the General Authorities Act of 1970 "that the National Park System, which began with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, has since grown to include superlative natural, historic, and recreation areas in every region…and that it is the purpose of this Act to include all such areas in the System…."

The National Park System of the United States now comprises more than 400 areas covering more than 84 million acres in 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands. These areas are of such national significance as to justify special recognition and protection in accordance with various acts of Congress.

Additions to the National Park System are now generally made through acts of Congress, and national parks can be created only through such acts. But the President has authority, under the Antiquities Act of 1906, to proclaim national monuments on lands already under federal jurisdiction. The Secretary of the Interior is usually asked by Congress for recommendations on proposed additions to the System. The Secretary is counseled by the National Park System Advisory Board, composed of private citizens, which advises on possible additions to the System and policies for its management.

The National Park Service still strives to meet its original goals, while filling many other roles as well: guardian of our diverse cultural and recreational resources; environmental advocate; partner in community revitalization, world leader in the parks and preservation community; and pioneer in the drive to protect America's open space.

Today more than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 401 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at nps.gov.

WiseOldOwl wrote:

hikerboy wrote:

Rasty wrote:

How is it quiet if it's the proposal is public record?

Sssssh.that's a secret

robbishop.house.gov/UploadedFiles/050714_PLI_Update.pdf

its right on his website. PDF and all - one location is slated for exspansion - oh those nasty devious republicans...Serious so it goes back to the state.... where's the crime in that? Who is the better steward the State or the Feds? Didn't the Feds forestry service start selling of the Sequoia trees for clear cutting?

not quite: forcechange.com/8597/protect-c…woods-from-clear-cutting/

loe.org/shows/segments.html?pr…=00-P13-00023&segmentID=9