Every decade or so, people
start pushing the idea of selling off big chunks of public land or
transferring that land to state ownership and management. Outside
of small parcels, it has never happened, probably because most of
us support leaving public lands in federal hands.
With
the recent pronouncements of Idaho’s own Dirk Kempthorne, now
Interior secretary, and Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho that
large-scale federal land sell-offs are politically dead, it might
appear that the latest attempt is finally over. Conventional wisdom
says the West has grown up, and we all realize that we need those
open spaces to bike, shoot, boat, ride, hike, climb and picnic in.
Maybe so, but there are a couple of trends that bear watching as
they lead to privatization of our birthright.
The first
trend has to do with land transfers done in the name of economic
development. In some cases, these transfers, small in acreage, may
make sense if important public purposes are met. But in southern
Utah, for example, it’s much messier. There, booming development in
St. George has led to a proposal to sell off 40 square miles of
federal land, while at the same time protecting some wilderness,
much of it in Zion National Park, and desert tortoise habitat.
Environmentalists oppose the bill; developers and the
county support it. Its main purpose appears to be making more land
available for the “New West” phenomena of second homes and
footloose retiree money. This is a land exchange that caters to the
upper middle class, and the irony here should not escape us. This
is mountain bike country, get-your-piece-of-the-West land. Perhaps
these folks need public land to play on, but they want private land
to live on, preferably close to the public land. And if that
private land needs to be removed from the public estate — so
be it. This is not a small-scale transfer to allow an economically
disadvantaged place like Salmon or Challis, Idaho, get some help.
Just Imagine the cascade effect as other booming towns seek to dig
deeper and deeper into our common estate.
Trend number
two may be worse. It’s the outsourcing virus that is sweeping
agencies like the U.S. Forest Service. Here, an idea that made
sense in the past when applied to urban services, such as trash
collection, may be focused on 75 percent of all the jobs in the
agency, including fire suppression. If we do this long enough, and
the ideologues push for this hard enough, it’s going to go like
this: Why do we need the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management,
even the Park Service or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? So much of
what they do has been outsourced; let’s just get rid of them. Put
some private sector, beltway, politically connected,
market-mantra-chanting consulting firm in charge. It can manage the
land, or else we could transfer the land to states. This move could
make trend number one easier to accomplish.
While we’re
at it, let’s be consistent. Why not outsource the Congress, the
White House and the courts? Clearly, the private sector can be more
efficient in the running of government than politicians can, and
outsourcing is all about efficiency. But since when is efficiency
the primary aim of government?
Through the years I have
been a critic as well as a supporter of federal land management.
But I have a touchstone for what public service can mean. I once
worked as a seasonal ranger at a national park and found that you
cannot replace what rangers and other park staffers do or the way
they approach their jobs. It may sound overwrought and ridiculous,
but many believe they are on the “staff” of the Grand Canyon, of
the Sawtooths, Escalante, Rocky Mountain National Park. They work
for the land they love. Can that kind of commitment be outsourced?
Right now, a majority of Americans want most public lands
to remain public and under federal management. But pay attention.
The debate won’t be about that, as it should be, and it may not be
a debate at all. The chipping away at our publicly owned lands will
happen incrementally, over time. With the population growth in
places like St. George, Utah, the battles will likely never end.
John Freemuth is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). He is professor of public policy and senior fellow at
the Cecil Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University
in Idaho.
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