Washington, D.C. – Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, Chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, and Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and Natural Resources, sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore highlighting the significance of Tribal stewardship over lands and waters that make up the National Forest System, and the need to continue collaborative participation from Tribal leadership and governments and the federal government. In their letter, the Senators request the development of a policy for Tribal co-management and stewardship of federal forests and grasslands.
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We encourage the Forest Service to initiate a process for engaging tribal perspectives on co-stewardship, making recommendations for statutory language to further the goals of co-stewardship and to better integrate the core principles of tribal co-stewardship into federal land management.
Some Tribes do not deserve to co manage any land as they exploit the land just like other cultures.
This is not a good idea.
But are these policies all… “coordinate and consider.. I mean consider seriously, I mean take their views into account more than others” without some kinds of changes in the statutes???
Does the letter ask the FS to come up with statutory language (it seems like it)? Shouldn’t the BLM, National Parks and Wildlife Refuges also be co-managed? Many questions, maybe someone could contact the staffs and get answers?
The obvious conclusion is Bennett is either neck and neck, or about to get voted out in Colorado; this is nothing more than vote pandering. Bennett is arrogant to work with, when it comes to interacting with federal employees anyway, and the twelfth richest Senator in Congress.
His advertising on reelection shows him trout fishing, and actually catching a fish! Unfortunately, he bought a one day fishing license, for filming the commercial – one day! Just trying to stay in office…… anyway he can.
My contacts with his office have been lecture-y as well. But I only met staff. Perhaps the Camp Hale thing also fits your idea, but the people Bennet needs to win are probably not the people this made happy.
One need only read the Bears Ears I Intertribal Coalition’s proposed management plan to see what this would look like. Turning management of federal lands over to a bunch of animistic religious practitioners who worship nature and believe that any non-Indian presence on these lands is tantamount to blasphemy would be an utter disaster for public lands. Because their idea of “managing” these lands is that they are the only ones who are allowed to benefit from them. There are also serious first amendment and equal protection concerns there.
Republicans aren’t just fearful of government overreach; they’re frightened public lands will be remanded to the First Nations.
After the Soviet Union fell Republicans began their war on the environment in 1991 substituting a new Green Scare for the old Red Scare.
Today, putting the country on the path of protecting at least 30 percent of our land and 30 percent of our ocean areas by 2030 (30×30) is imperative to preserving public lands especially now as the worst megadrought in at least 1200 years is driving desertification in most of the western United States. A supermajority of registered voters in the Mountain West agrees according to bipartisan polling conducted by the Colorado College State of the Rockies project.
So, one solution to making America the Beautiful again and solving national forest and grasslands management woes is moving the US Forest Service from the US Department of Agriculture into Interior where tribal nations could more easily assume additional responsibilities for stewardship on public land, returning the resources to apply cultural fire to their own holdings and rewilding the West.
Why would moving the FS into Interior allow the Tribal nations to “more readily” do things? Are there different statutes? What if the Tribal Nations don’t want rewilding?
Well, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is in Interior, and in the bureaucratic world, that’s probably important to “more readily.”
In terms of tribal treaty rights, this type of tribal co-management and stewardship is already in place in theory. But in practice it varies widely. With wildfires and accelerated management strategies, this just adds further emphasis to consider the indigenous knowledge and tribal treaty rights that can help us honor those treaty rights and accomplish other objectives.
I don’t think what’s being advocated here is just traditional consultation. What seems to be being advocated now is a model where tribal perspectives matter more than anyone else’s, to the point where tribal views are essentially setting the agenda for federal land management. But of course this only applies when tribes are advocating for an exclusionary agenda that drives all other interest groups out in favor of “rewilding”. Tribes that don’t support a rewilding agenda are conveniently ignored.
Patrick, if I had to guess, based on experience in DC, politicians consider vagueness a feature, not a bug.
I thought we had a federal government whose job it is to manage the lands owned by every US citizen? I’m not sure I remember giving up those lands, heck I’m one of the owners, bought the T shirt even, “Public Land Owner” says right on it, shirt made in Vietnam, $35 included a membership to Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. (only year I joined, t shirt was synthetic and cheap)
I certainly don’t want the folks who caused the extinction of 3/4 of the large mammals in N America “co managing” anything to do with public lands. I spent some time on a rez up by Wolf Point Montana. Open season year round, seems like they’d over hunted everything bigger than a jackrabbit.
And who used to live where? Whoever lived somewhere in 1860 I can guarantee you no one speaking their language lived there when they took it over, often enough by killing every former occupier they could find. The biggest known massacre in South Dakota history occurred 300 years before Columbus.
I keep hoping people will move on to a new hobby, but then they do and things are even nuttier than before.