Federal Land Mismanagement

More than 50 years ago Bernard DeVoto uttered perhaps the truest statement ever made with respect to the public lands and the rural West; the actual western view of the place of the federal government, DeVoto explained, is: "Go away and give us more money." Robert H. Nelson, Our Languishing Public Lands, Policy Review, February & March 2012.

The quote from Bernard DeVoto, unfortunately, is both accurate and damning. The Wyoming Republican Party, in its platform and resolutions, consistently asks for both. Yet the federal government, increasingly dysfunctional, will not go away, and cannot give the western states more money. What, then, to do? Drop the second demand, perhaps?

Robert Nelson, in his article for the Hoover Institution's Policy Review, Our Languishing Public Lands, concentrates on federal land management policy. He broadly divides the history of federal land management into three periods, rought a century each. The first period, from independence until roughly the Progressive era, he calls the "era of disposal".

The overriding policy goal was to transfer the lands out of federal ownership to private owners and to the states, both of whom received hundreds of millions of acres in total. Transferring the lands to new ownership was seen as a first step in putting them to productive use as part of the essential task of building a new nation.

This policy resulted in the transfer of public lands in states east of Colorado (other than the original colonies) to the states or private owners.

The second era was the era of retention. Based on Progressive ideology, the federal government managed the lands itself, using the kind of centralized command and control policies that reached their acme in the Soviet Union. Initially, the lands were managed for economic return. As one might expect, the results were pathetic.

Although the progressives elevated expert planning and management and the attainment of maximum efficiency to their highest goals, 100 years of public land history have shown that the public lands have seldom been managed either expertly or efficiently. Rather, they have been managed mainly in response to strong political pressures. Under political management — and despite the possession of hundreds of millions of acres of land, and large oil and gas, coal, and other valuable mineral assets — the lands proved to be a money-loser for the federal government. The environmental results have not been much better.

But in the 1990s management moved from a primary goal of productivity to "ecosystem management", whatever that means. Perhaps the poster child for ecosystem management is the 1990 listing of the northern spotted owl as an endangered species. This lead to more than $20 billion in losses of timber sales. Few national taxpayers were aware of the contribution they made to the recovery of that species.

Nor are national taxpayers the only contributors here. Traditionally, timber sales have resulted in payments of roughly a quarter to local governments. So that would mean $5 billion that the western counties of Washington, Oregon and northern California did not get – at a time when they had massive unemployment problems due to the same catastrophic cut in timber sales.

And the ecological management was no better. With barred owls moving in from eastern lands, the spotted owl lost ground in spite of the best efforts of the federal government. So there was massive unemployment, destruction of capital, and disruption of homes and communities – all for nought.

Some people blame the recent increase in both the number and intensity of forest fires on anthropogenic global warming. Nelson offers another explanation: Forest Service policies that lead to thick, unnatural underbrush. Instead of lots of small low intensity fires that clear the underbrush and deadfall, we have a few massive and intense fires. These burn hotter, so they kill the trees and scorch the earth, leading to floods and erosion. And, perversely, they lead to more fire fighting (with accompanying expense) by the "Fire Service". So much for ecosystem management.

Is it time for the third period yet? The horrid management during the era of retention has damaged ecologies and economies, some beyond recovery. How, then, to reform federal land management?

Nelson offers a proposal, worth looking at if just to get the conversation started. He proposes to divide the current federal land holdings into three categories, "1) forest lands of significant national environmental and recreational interest; 2) lands of significant state and local environmental and recreational interest; and 3) lands of exceptional timber value that in other respects are 'ordinary' federal forests."

The first category, roughly 20% of the public lands, would go to the National Park Service or Fish and Wildlife for their management. The second, some 60%, would go to the counties, either directly or through timber corporations in which the counties would be major shareholders. The remaining 20% would be privatized.

Yet that discussion has already begun. The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) looked at four western states to see if they manage their lands better than the federal government manages its. The authors concluded that they do. Wyoming, not in the PERC study, has authorized $75,000 for a similar study. Other states are making or have made similar studies.

With approximately half of Wyoming's land in federal hands, it behooves Wyomingites to keep an eye on federal land [mis]management. This article is an excellent background in the history of those public lands.