Western lore often portrays rural communities
adjacent to public lands as joined at the hip with the federal
government. Many people assume that if federal land managers reduce
logging or curtail mining on public land, the tax base of the
neighboring communities will plummet. Not true, says a new report
by the Wilderness Society. After studying 100 counties within the
Interior Columbia River Basin, which contains 75 million acres of
federal land, the report concludes that the “conflict between
generating county revenue and protecting the environment is more
perception than reality.” In 86 of the 100 counties, federal
payments account for 5 percent or less of county revenues. The
study – part of an ongoing social and economic analysis of the
basin – also shows that congressional programs to repair damaged
ecosystems can successfully augment declining commodity revenues.
In much of the West, concludes the report, the local tax base is
now diversified and no longer dependent solely on resource
extraction.
For a copy of the 53-page, Federal
Lands Payment Programs in the Columbia River Basin, send $5 to the
Wilderness Society, Northern Rockies Regional Office, 105 W. Main
St., Suite E, Bozeman, MT 59715 (406/586-1600 or fax
406/586-4700).
*John
Rosapepe
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Severed at the hip.
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