From E&E News today….
Former Interior chief Norton faults state bids for federal tracts
Published: Friday, December 5, 2014
Utah’s Legislature in March 2012 passed a law demanding that the federal government by Dec. 31 this year relinquish 31.2 million acres owned mostly by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to the Beehive State. Proponents of the law believe Utah is owed the lands under its 1894 Enabling Act, but legal scholars say the demand is unconstitutional (E&ENews PM, Oct. 29).
While that effort is still in limbo, Norton, who led Interior in the George W. Bush administration, pointed to a previous attempt, known as “Project Bold,” that unsuccessfully tried to consolidate control of “checkerboard lands” in Utah, where federal parcels are interspersed with state and private lands.
“Even during the Reagan administration, that went down in flames,” she said.
Instead, Norton recommended that state lawmakers “explore some sophisticated approaches that can provide benefits that are more obvious to the public” than the loosely supported arguments they’ve offered so far (Greenwire, Dec. 5).
“I think a lot of people are really concerned about the notion that anything that’s not in federal ownership is immediately going to be paved over,” she said. “Clearly, that’s not the case, but that’s the concern you need to address.”
Furthermore, people across the country need to be assured that states can responsibly manage federal lands, Norton added.
“It’s not just the people of Utah that need to be assured that it can work, but the people of New York and California and so forth,” she said. “So it’s a real uphill battle.”
But Norton told her fellow Republicans that there was still cause for hope: “I’ve heard some discussion of increasing the amount of land that might go into parks or other protected spaces in exchange for releasing some of the lands back to state ownership.”
There could also be “some opportunities for shared management of those lands, especially in the checkerboard lands,” she said.
A land-management example Norton said she sought to follow during her time at Interior was created in part by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), “who you might think would be a real opponent.”
She noted that Reid was one of the original co-sponsors of the 1998 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which requires BLM to sell 27,000 acres of federal land in Clark County over a 20-year period (Land Letter, June 27, 2002).
“Because Las Vegas is completely surrounded by Bureau of Land Management lands, [the bill’s authors] came up with the concept of auctioning off some of those lands with all of that money designated either for conservation use or land acquisition of sensitive lands or things that would have an immediate benefit in the local area,” Norton explained. “Well, as a result, they got the support of environmentalists as well as the real estate developers and the local community.”
Sales authorized under the law had generated more than $2.7 billion, “which is huge in the context of public land management budgets,” she said. “That’s the kind of sophisticated approach and localized really targeted approach that I think might be successful.”
I want to comment to two of Gale Norton’s comments. The first has to do with “… people across the country need to be assured that states can responsibly manage federal lands,” The other, which I will save for another time, has to do with the 1998 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act..
Much of the forest lands in Federal jurisdiction are in the West. Three of the four states that I follow have shown exemplary leadership and progress in the area of public forest management. These states include Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Idaho has gone so far as to experiment with various forms of institutional arrangements for the husbandry of forest values in that state.. While I am not aware of any comparative audit of ‘land health’ under the various institutional arrangements in these three states and that of the USDA-Forest Service, my own observations of the husbandry of forest values in Region 6 suggest the USDA-Forest Service’s efforts and results are far inferior to those of the states.
With that said, I still can not support the wholesale transfer of Federal forest lands to the states. Before the transfer begins, I suggest that the USDA-FS under the guidance of the Executive Branch look to the states for progressive responses to the needs of modern forest management and start to develop experiments at a larger scale than the approaches showing promise in the states.
Once those who are interested in the management of public lands managed by federal agencies can agree on the values that should be pursued/emphasized, the conversation about transferring these public lands to states will become more meaningful. States manage their lands with a more narrow focus. However, to assume that “modern forest management” will lend itself to be sufficient in the husbandry of forest values leaves a lot of questions to be answered: What is “modern forest management”? Which forest values? How does husbandry allow us to realize our desired conditions of the forested landscapes, grasslands, and prairies? Which desired conditions? Active or passive management? And where do the states plan to get the funds necessary to accomplish all this management and husbandry?
That’s a lot of loose ends to tie up before making a credible proposal to transfer lands.
Actually, Bill,
The time for giving “federal” oversight a chance to “work” is long gone. 20 years of paralysis has the meter ticking faster and faster.
States getting lands on a sustained-yield net-present-value base, and hiring interested Feds (not the parkies) who want to spend the rest of their careers on a forest or tract, under involved rational local and state government oversight, is far more attractive than waiting for CONGRESS to dither and pander. Example — Defense bill cramnibus.
Interesting comments. I believe that most observers feel the states are doing a far better job of management (making the land useful to society) than the feds. It’s certainly true here in Florida. If we delay action till the questions of values (which is “better” a dozen oranges, the color mauve or a C minor chord?) is settled nothing will ever be accomplished. Currently feds try to be all things to all men with the Congress making the process even more unworkable .
Select a featured use based on the land and its attributes, allow compatible uses and manage.
WV – I appreciate your “all things to all men” comment. It certainly appears that the federal agencies are the victims of a dispersed approach in providing useful services to society…and that’s the biggest difference between how states and federal agencies manage their respective public lands. Using your hypothetical list of values, it would certainly be a lot easier to manage land if the focus was ONLY “a dozen oranges.” If the federal agencies had the opportunity to be as focused in their management as states, I would argue that the differences would be much less, and the conversation of transferring land from federal to state ownership/management would be unnecessary.