A New Era of Public Lands Management Begins to Take Hold
I foresee a much more robust future for our public lands and the agencies charged with managing them, than at any time since the Great Depression or the heady days of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt.
The current attacks by the Trump administration have brought our public lands into focus for the American people in a way that has not been seen before. We must face the fact that our land agencies have been in erosive decline for decades now, starved of revenue, dismissed or ridiculed by Congress, suffering from decreasing staffing, declining employee morale, and reduced effectiveness. The agencies and their employees have a declining presence in the rural communities that abut the lands they manage. There have been tremendous successes (sadly, mostly unheralded—the US Forest Service and the BLM have utterly failed to tell their best stories to the public which funds them), but these widely reported negatives have served to blind many Americans to the glories and wonders and real values of the lands themselves. The utterly unique fact of this vast, irreplaceable 640-million-acre public estate is unequalled in all the world.
When we as a nation have weathered this current storm, I believe that we are going to create an entirely new vision for our public lands, one that honors their creation story in a way that we have failed to do during the past 100 years.
The need for fuels reduction and watershed restoration on a grand scale to respond to a changing climate and a growing human population across the US, is irrefutable. Resilient ecosystem services are the basis of the economy. Sixty-two percent of all the available water in the arid West originates on federally-managed public land (which is no mistake, it is partly why these lands were set aside from divestiture in the first place). These watersheds need to be restored to full function. If that means better managing livestock grazing, and the restoration of beavers in headwater streams, so be it. If it means better maintenance of access roads, impeccable culvert systems, major buffers along permanent and ephemeral creeks, we can do that.
Extraction economics—logging and mining—will be balanced with the overarching need for the ecosystem services. It is perhaps time to stop talking so much about recreational economies. Recreation is the interest on the principle of well-managed public lands. It is powerful and important on many levels. But, alone, recreation and the recreational economy don’t convince enough of the American shareholders in the public lands that all of these places are worthy of keeping.
Recreation is the interest on the principle of well-managed public lands. It is powerful and important on many levels. But, alone, recreation and the recreational economy don’t convince enough of the American shareholders in the public lands that all of these places are worthy of keeping.
It is time to focus on the other economies created and supported by our public lands. Water, first. And to maintain that crucial element, whole economies can be built. The need for workers to conduct thinning operations, re-planting and restoration projects, road and trail maintenance, fuels reduction projects, controlled burns, research and applied sciences such as silviculture, hydrology, geomorphology, biology, and fire science can become the cornerstone of rural and small-town economies. No more crews of exploited visa workers imported from desperate lands doing these labor jobs for a pittance. We need American citizens, trained in these skills by a renewed AmeriCorps, with wages that stay in our communities, to build mass support for keeping public lands in public hands.
The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are the agencies that employ young people, as in the Montana Conservation Corps, already. We need to build on that model and scale it up, advertise it to high school and college graduates as the opportunity for the grand adventure that it truly is—just as the predecessor, the Civilian Conservation Corps, did for Americans during the Great Depression. It is no secret, nor any mystery, that America took pride in our public lands in the years before and after WW2—more citizens had experienced these lands firsthand, lived in adjacent communities, and benefited, financially and experientially, from these lands. More people knew how powerful this shared gift of land and freedom actually is.
If the Payment in Lieu of Taxes program has not kept up with inflation or the needs of counties with a majority of their lands in public ownership, then those PILT payments need to be increased to reflect the true value of these undeveloped lands. One of those values is simply that undeveloped lands do not require infrastructure or use more water (which is unavailable in most of the West—development in arid lands simply increases the stressors and exacerbates the conflicts for existing communities). It is time to recognize that the highest and best use of some public lands is simply to leave them in an undisturbed condition, while allowing for local needs. If the land can support moderate grazing or logging without impairment, maybe it could be carefully managed for extremely local beef and timber supplies.
Such management and careful use also increases the needs for workers—cowboys to move stock frequently, crews to restore creeks to maximum function, sagebrush and bunchgrass ecosystem restoration planters, a sawmill (perhaps subsidized by federal dollars, as they have done in southeast Alaska and elsewhere)—more robust local employment, more kids in rural schools, better staffed volunteer fire and ambulance services, and more diverse economies. Environmentalists who want zero use will not like this. Neither will those who want to graze the lands into dust, or clearcut the watersheds.
Conflict and a vigorous marketplace of ideas will provide the path forward. That path will hold to the True North of best management—the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest foreseeable time. But it will weave and wander, we will fail along it, as we always have, and we will remain true to our goals and open to different ways of achieving them.
If public lands must be divested for expanding communities or infrastructure needs, established law will be applicable. We already have such law, in the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 and a more modern version, the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1998, which was extremely flawed, but from which we can learn and create a better plan. The goal is no net loss of public lands, but allowing carefully designed and publicly accountable exchanges that benefit the resource and the public which owns these lands.
There is, of course, a lot more to be said, and planned. Which is also wonderful—part of the grand adventure. Once we have thoroughly marginalized the voices of divestiture by building public support for our public lands through success stories, we’ll tackle the challenge of the checkerboard ownership, consolidate our lands, and manage for a challenging and extraordinary future.
