Day: February 27, 2012

Utah’s Sagebrush Rebellion Awakens

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In September Char Miller didn’t give much credit to what he called Rob Bishop’s “Sputtering Sagebrush Rebellion“, [KCET’s “The Back Forty”, 09/21/2011]. Miller suggested that the rebellion might backfire in two ways, first by challenging President Obama to follow Bill Clinton’s lead by either invoking the Antiquities Act to establish yet-another national monument at the end of his term of office, or by helping to rally voters in favor of retaining both the public lands in federal ownership and Obama in the White House come November. But Utah’s Governor Hebert and Utah’s predominantly Republican legislators seem intent on pursuing this “Sagebrush Rebellion” at least as election-year politics, and maybe as a means to gain traction in the upcoming battle over federal education dollars in what we’ve called the “Secure Rural Schools” or “County Payments” debate that will heat up this summer. [Note: Rob Bishop is Chair of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, US House of Representatives.] A little more on the issue:

(From Ogden Standard-Examiner, Showdown Looms over Utah’s Public Lands, [02/27/2012])

There are four bills now in front of the Utah House of Representatives that form the basis of a legal challenge to the federal government’s right to control approximately two-thirds of the land in the state. The bills invoke promises dating back to when Utah gained statehood in 1896.

One resolution, sponsored by Rep. Roger Barrus, R-Centerville, calls for the federal government to turn over control of the land to the state by Dec. 31, 2014. …

To gain statehood, the Utah Enabling Act contained language stipulating that, as federal lands were transferred to the state, where they could then generate tax revenue, 5 percent of the funds would go to a trust fund for education. Most of the land has never left federal hands, and subsequently, the revenue stream has never developed. A number of officials claim that is why Utah ranks near the bottom of per-pupil funding.
U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, says the land debate raises big constitutional issues. He cites notes from the Constitutional Convention of 1787, in which Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts who would become the fifth vice president of the U.S., worried that federal control of land within a state would allow the federal government to force states to give “humble obedience” to the government.

“That concern 225 years ago still remains today. If you give too much land to the federal government, and let them hold it, and let them declare it (tax) exempt, you have a problem,” Lee said. He said Utah students and teachers deserve the revenue the land should be generating. Lee said Utahns also deserve the right to be on equal footing with other states that have few federal land holdings within their borders.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, estimated in 2011 the revenue the state could generate by being able to impose a small tax on federal land holdings. He suggested that placing a fair tax on those properties, if they are not returned to the private sector, could provide a financial boon to education. He said even sagebrush property taxed at its lowest rate could potentially generate $116 million a year for the state. …

He said the land-use paradigms at the federal level change about every 40 or 50 years. He said it has been almost 50 years since the last change, and he thinks the Legislature’s efforts could be very timely.

“It is time, it is ripe for that discussion,” Bishop said.

[Rep. Roger Barrus, R-Centerville] said he and other lawmakers are prepared for a drawn-out dispute with the federal government. He expects neighboring states, including Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Nevada, to join the fray as well. He said the federal government has just not kept its promises. He likened the problem to the issue facing early colonists in America who had a feudal landlord in Great Britain.

[Update: March 23] Utah Governor Signs Bill Demanding Federal Lands

Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill Friday that demands the federal government relinquish control of public lands in Utah by 2014, setting the table for a potential legal battle over millions of acres in the state. …

What do They Really Want?
While working up this post I ran into an expose of the late-1970s—early-1980s Sagebrush Rebellion, by Frank J. Popper titled “A Timely End of the Sagebrush Rebellion” (pdf), National Affairs 76, Summer 1984. Popper suggests that in the end the “Rebels” may have won a victory from what seemed to many a loss, in part by opening up the process of slowly selling some of the federal lands. It’s a point to ponder, when trying to figure out today’s Rebels want as they prepare for “a drawn-out dispute with the federal government” for control of lands they probably don’t really want—if they stop to think about it. To Popper:

The Sagebrush Rebellion did not fail—it ended because it achieved many of its goals. The Reagan administration rapidly found clever, politically appealing ways to start to transfer some public lands without having to ask Congress for new legislation. Watt’s Interior Department undertook a “good neighbor policy” that allowed state and local governments to request the department’s “surplus” lands. The initiative was soon broadened to an Asset Management Program whereby all federal agencies could sell their excess land in the West and elsewhere; the eventual sale of 35 million acres–an area the size of Iowa–was expected. Separately, the Forest Service prepared to sell up to 17 million acres. The federal land agencies sped up the transfers to Alaska’s state government and Native Americans authorized by the 1958 Statehood Act, the 1971 Native Claims Settlement Act, and the 1980 National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The BLM experimentally revived homesteading in the Kuskokwim Mountains in central Alaska. Numerous federal-Western state land exchanges were in exploratory stages, and seemed most advanced in Utah. [p. 68]

A McKenzie Bridge logging plan takes neighbors by surprise

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(The following article appeared in today’s Eugene Register-Guard. – mk)

McKENZIE BRIDGE — Jerry Gil­mour is able to escape from Bend most weekends and drive over the Santiam Pass to his wooded retreat, a cabin he built on a 4-acre swath of pristine land bordering the Willamette National Forest.

 A few weeks back, Gilmour drove up the narrow road off Highway 126 that leads to his property in the small community of McKenzie Bridge, fired up the 100-year-old wood stove that once burned trash in a locomotive and took his yellow Labrador retriever, Kona, for a walk. It’s a routine.

But on this trip, as Gilmour trudged past his favorite old maple tree and through the woods on the edge of his property, something was different. Stapled to the trees were bright blue signs, bright orange markers, and flags dangling from the branches.

“Boundary cutting unit,” the signs read. The author: the U.S. Forest Service. The telltale markers of a soon-to-commence logging operation.

Gilmour was surprised, but as a part-time resident, he figured maybe he’d just been out of the loop. He did some investigating on the Internet and found the description and documents relating to the Goose Project, a 2,134-acre timber sale that will produce 38 million board feet of lumber, enough to fill 7,000 log trucks.

Then Gilmour drove to Edgar Exum and Claudette Aras’ house, which rises from a meadow in the shadow of Lookout Ridge on 20 acres that also border the national forest. Had they heard about the Goose Project? They hadn’t. Nor had any of the neighbors they wound up asking. Not even the publisher of the local newspaper, the McKenzie River Reflections, had heard about it.

Eventually, Gilmour and the Exums learned that a couple of conservation groups, Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands, knew about the project, which the Forest Service had approved in 2010. The groups had appealed the sale, arguing that the agency failed to adequately describe how it would protect the 956 acres of spotted owl habitat in the area. The appeal was denied, the project approved, the 45-day window for public comment closed.

Which means Gilmour and his neighbors have no recourse for weighing in on a substantial logging operation that is literally in their backyards. No recourse to file an appeal or a lawsuit, because they didn’t comment on it in the first place. They can only watch and wait, for the buzz of chainsaw and the whir of helicopters to arrive and start plucking trees out of the forest, one by one.

Except, watching and waiting is not in these neighbors’ DNA. They’ve embarked on what may be a quixotic quest to persuade the Forest Service to stop the Goose Project, gather public input, answer questions from people in McKenzie Bridge and consider changes to the operation.

“They just didn’t tell us,” Edgar Exum said. “That’s my major objection.”

Added Aras: “Burying it in the legal notices is not notification. It just isn’t.”

The Forest Service has no obligation to listen. The agency published a notice of the proposed timber sale in the small print of The Register-­Guard’s classified ad section in 2010, and the 45-day public comment period that followed has expired. But Terry Baker, the McKenzie River District ranger, who was not in that post in 2010, said he’s come to a conclusion that may surprise Gilmour and his neighbors:

“As a district, we dropped the ball on contacting some of the adjacent landowners and community members about the project,” he said.

In addition to the legal notice, the district did contact a few community leaders and held a field trip before finishing the project design, Baker said. That resulted in some changes, among them an agreement that no trees greater than 36 inches in diameter will be cut within 350 feet of a private residence. But the Forest Service could have done better, Baker said. What he would have done is study a map of the property and contact all property owners within a quarter-mile of the project, mailing out notices to all involved and inviting them to participate in the discussion, he said.

While he can’t turn back time, Baker said he’s looking at holding a public meeting in the next few weeks and talking with landowners between now and then to discuss their concerns. He also intends to set up a “community monitoring group” that will keep tabs on the project as it develops and provide feedback that could be used to make changes as it progresses or be taken into consideration on future jobs.

Whether any of that will address the residents’ specific concerns depends on how talks with the Forest Service play out in the coming weeks. The first of five sales of timber closed on Thursday, and it’s unlikely that even a renewed effort to gather input would result in major changes to the project.

Still, “If there are site-specific concerns landowners have, I’m willing to work with them,” Baker said. “There’s going to be a threshold. I’m not sure what it is yet.”

Some of the neighbors’ concerns have already been addressed by the Forest Service in its response to the two conservation groups’ appeal of the project.

Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator for Oregon Wild, said the Forest Service should have chosen an alternative that avoids logging in mature forests and in riparian areas and that cuts back on the 7.7 miles of temporary roads that will be built to support the project. Beyond that, he said, the 965 acres of spotted owl habitat should have prompted the agency to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement, a more detailed analysis than what the Forest Service did, which was an Environmental Assessment.

“We shouldn’t be logging mature forests in riparian reserves,” Heiken said.

Most of the project involves thinning young planted stands, which is good for fire suppression and wildlife foraging, Heiken said. In fact, Baker says those are among the key reasons the project is happening in the first place: to improve the forest and reduce hazard fuel levels, along with supplying local communities with sustainably harvested timber.

But some residents in McKenzie Bridge question the Goose Project’s 322 acres of “gap” cutting, which they say is a euphemism for clear-cuts, which could result in scars to an otherwise lush forest.

“That ridge is going to resemble a checkerboard in 20 years,” Edgar Exum said.

Baker said the gap cutting on the project is designed to help species from butterfly to elk to ground squirrels who do better in the brushes and shrubs that comprise “early seral habitat,” areas that exist before conifer trees begin to block out the light. As for riparian reserves, that part of the effort is aimed at improving riparian reserves by doing thinning that could allow larger trees to flourish, he said. And the decision to go with an Environmental Assessment was based on consultations with other agencies that resulted in a conclusion that no endangered species would be harmed by the project.

What bothers Gilmour, Exum, Aras and others is that they never got a chance to ask their questions, raise their concerns and have them answered directly. They see good things about the Goose Project, too, but they want more input, information and involvement.

“People around here ought to have known the answers to these questions,” Gilmour said.