Martin was the co-founder of The Smokey Wire’s predecessor A New Century of Forest Planning back in 2009. Note: it arrvied in my inbox nicely formatted, any formatting issues are my fault.
Martin Nie is Professor of Natural Resources Policy and Director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests at the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of
Montana. He writes here as a public citizen and is in no way representing the University of Montana or the Montana University System.
A post in response to the Smokey Wire’s coverage and criticism of the op-ed written by former Chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), as published in the Denver Post on April 13, 2025. I
was heartened by this letter and the willingness of former Chiefs to speak out and defend our National Forests and public lands writ large. I was dismayed, however, in how the piece was
covered and the statement that widespread fears of divesting and privatizing public lands is standard “fear-mongering” that so exhausts some contributors to the blog.
“Oh for Gifford’s sake! Here we go again with the standard privatization fear-mongering…State’s don’t want them [i.e., public lands], and the private dog (except for local housing) won’t hunt,” states Sharon Friedman, making clever reference to the first Chief of the USFS Gifford Pinchot.
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Cambridge on Fearmongering: “the action of intentionally trying to make people afraid of something when this is not necessary or reasonable.”
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Current fears about the divestiture and privatization of federal public lands are anything but fearmongering. I hope to write more substantively about this when given a moment, but a few
scattered comments and observations.
First is to at least recognize the history of public lands and the centrality of this debate through the years. Public anxiety is deeply rooted in the past. We could go back to where most public
land histories begin—not with Indian Title—but with the story of federal acquisition, disposal, and retention of federal public lands. Or to the gilded age or progressive-era to see the tensions
between public goods and concentrated wealth and the implications for our shared lands (as told in meticulous detail by John Leshy in Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public
Lands.).
“For Gifford’s sake”? No. Pinchot would be all over the Chief’s letter, just as he warned his peers about the dangers of privatization, corporate control, the “Economic Royalists,” State
ownership of National Forests, and “concentrated wealth’s…strangle hold over the general welfare” back in his day (Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, 1947, p. 508). My lord, his
third principle of conservation is “to see to it that the rights of the people to govern themselves shall not be controlled by great monopolies through their power over natural resources.” (Ibid;
see also the collective work of Char Miller, including Gifford Pinchot: Making of Modern Environmentalism).
Pinchot also saw the relationship between state ownership and control and the move towards privatization. He writes in 1920:
“It has been my experience that a Legislature can seldom be induced by considerations from outside to take action against the opposition of interests dominant in the State” [and] “[j]ust as the waterpower monopolists and grazing interests formerly clamored for State control, well-knowing they could themselves control the States, so now the lumbermen will be found almost without exception against Federal and for State control, and for the same reason.” Gifford Pinchot, “National or State Control of Forest Devastation,” Journal of Forestry (Feb. 1920).
The general period of disposal, goes the usual narrative, ends with passage of the Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976, where Congress declares a national policy that:
The public lands be retained in federal ownership, unless as a result of the land use planning procedure provided for in this Act, it is determined that disposal of a particular parcel will serve the national interest.
Some limited options here for disposal, which are now being fully exploited. 1976 is still a good demarcation point for the Sagebrush Rebellion, where most histories and contemporary writing
about privatization begin.
But calls for land transfers to States and related privatization schemes start way earlier and these earlier battles are a more helpful guide for today’s variation. They were most famously tracked
and analyzed by the writer and historian Bernard DeVoto, whose writing for Harpers is just as relevant today than it was when he was targeted by the FBI and McCarthy for being a public
lands-loving Communist. He traced all the innovative land grab schemes of his day, many of which were framed as federal transfers to States: “The plan is to get rid of public lands altogether, turning them over to the states, which can be coerced as the federal government cannot be, and eventually to private ownership.” (“The West Against Itself,” Harpers, 1947).
My sense is that DeVoto was the first to expose the strategy of defunding, defaming and discrediting public land agencies as a pretense to sell the idea of why it is necessary to fix the
(manufactured) problem by transfer or divestment. It’s the story of the old Grazing Service, whose budget was slashed by 60 percent at the end of its days, what DeVoto called a “classic
demonstration on how to assassinate a federal agency.” He also detailed how the “skinning knife” would be used on the USFS: “The idea was to bring it into disrepute, undermine public
confidence in it by every imaginable kind of accusation and propaganda, cut down its authority, and get out of its hands the power to regulate…” (“Two-Gun Desmond is Back,” Harpers, 1951).
It’s also part of a larger story brilliantly told by Nate Schweber in This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the World. My point here is that these are not new tactics or concerns. The case for and against the privatization of public lands and National Forests was also a major theme of scholarship and wonky policy analysis throughout the 1970s and 1980s. This had a particularly economic-oriented flair (see e.g., the collective work of Marion Clawson, including The Federal Lands Revisited (1983). Heated exchanges in the scholarly literature, conferences and symposia, and elsewhere were common and provided some of the ideas and reasoning now being used by those pushing transfer or privatization (see e.g., Adrien Gamache, Selling the Federal Forests (Symposia at College of Forest Resources, University of Washington, 1983). Here is where you find unsettling discussions of how best to convey our public lands to private interests, from highest-bidder to first-in-time, first-in-right.
But let me pick up the pace to get to present-day:
*Instead of an economic framing and arguments for efficiency, different legal strategies are used post-FLPMA to challenge the Constitutionality of public lands in the 1980s through 2000s, all to force their transfer or sale. From Equal Footing and Enclave Clause to Tenth Amendment and everything in between. They fail.
*Utah passes a resolution seeking the transfer of public lands to State ownership in 2012. The language comes from the American Lands Council, providing template cookie-cutter bills and
rhetoric that spread throughout the West and are introduced into every State legislature other than California. How would transferred lands be managed? As State trust lands (which are not public lands)? Will there be protections against disposal and conveyance to private interests? Most fail to say and those that do fail.
*Political protest and confrontation. The Bundy’s and Bunkerville. The occupation and seizure of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. A district court in Nevada calls it “simply delusional to
maintain that all public land within the boundaries of Nevada belongs to the State of Nevada.” (Bundy v. Nevada, 2019).
*Okay, States can’t force the disposal of federal lands. So Utah’s Representative Jason Chaffetz introduces congressional legislation authorizing the disposal of 3.3 million acres of federal land.
*He loses big. #Keep It Public and related campaigns go bigger.
*The transfer and privatization movement learns a lesson and changes tactics. Instead of directly seeking land title and ownership, the movement produces bill after bill that would transfer
control over public lands to States and non-federal actors. Control instead of ownership. The power to make decisions without the costs of firefighting, roads, culverts, and so on.
*Along the way, Republican Party platforms, as a matter of course, contain planks calling for the sale and/or transfer of public lands. At the federal and state level. Do party platforms matter?
Not really but Project 2025 most certainly does. It says little about the National Forest System but its chapter on the Department of Interior was written by William Perry Pendley, the (sort-of)
Director of the BLM during the first Trump Administration and author of “The Federal Government Should Follow the Constitution and Sell Its Western Lands” (2016).
Fearmongering? States don’t want them?
*Let’s jump to present-tense and start with Utah’s Hail Mary throw to SCOTUS and now the lower court in State of Utah v. U.S (2025). Building on decades of futile legal arguments, the
State changes course and challenges federal ownership and management of ~18.5 million acres of “unappropriated land” in the State. “The time has come to bring an end to this patently
unconstitutional state of affairs” says the State. Utah is joined by several others, including Idaho, Alaska, Wyoming and the Arizona legislature….and other public land powerhouses like
Nebraska and Texas. The lawsuit now covers tens of millions of acres of public land. What lands are “unappropriated,” a term not used in the Constitution or found in the major public land statutes? Answer: Those lands managed as multiple use. My elk camp is on “unappropriated public lands.”
*The zone is flooded with Executive and Secretarial Orders that wreck purposeful havoc on our public lands. Engineered chaos. The civil servants hired to fulfill the tasks required by statute are
let go, rehired, lather, rinse and repeat. The agency is given new marching orders in Executive Order 14225 (Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production) and related step down
guidance, but not with the resources and personnel. The press releases and talking points of the future: the USFS can’t get the job done and that’s why it’s necessary to transfer or privatize these lands or their management.
*Who now has special access in the Department of Interior? The Political Economy Research Center (PERC), a think tank out of Montana that just can’t seem to escape the views of its prior
leadership and his calls for the privatization of federal public lands (Terry Anderson, “How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands,” Cato Institute, 1999).
*For Senator Mike Lee, Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and long-time champion of land transfer to the States and privatization, public lands are better viewed as
“Underutilized Space.” His HOUSES Act (the Helping Open Underutilized Space to Ensure Shelter Act) aims to privatize federal lands to increase available housing in the West. (Not as
sweeping of plan as is Homesteading 2.0, a similar vision advanced by the American Enterprise Institute and one that would auction off 850 square miles of developable BLM land.)
*Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark) debate sales of public lands in the budget reconciliation, as a way to fund tax
cuts and build housing. It dies in the Senate. (E&E Daily, 4.2.2025).
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I’ll stop here and will fill in the details and gaps later. Or Maybe we crowdsource this chronology?
But this isn’t fearmongering. The public has every right and reason to be twitchy as hell when it comes to the transfer and privatization of public lands. It’s like when I had to eat lunch with bullies at my cafeteria table in grade school, I always kept my elbows up and one fist free. At the very least, I was aware of my surroundings and the context in which I ate. And context matters here too because the privatization threat is like knapweed and cheatgrass and not limited to auction-like proposals or threats via arcane budget rules and processes. The corner-crossing case in Wyoming is illustrative and you couldn’t get a better cast of characters to illustrate the new gilded age and what it means for our public lands (see Iron Bar Holdings v. Cape et al., 10 th Cir. 2025).
Now some might say that I need to relax because these proposals are deeply unpopular and keep losing in venue after venue and that the past is not prologue. But this is only because of constant public pushback and organizing—what some call fearmongering. It isn’t. It’s the latest chapter, and the most serious chapter, of public lands in my lifetime.