Public Lands: Is bigger better?

[hikryrdg <hikryrdg@evansville.net>]

   With the fires raging our west, and with other management problems that
seem
to come up every month, I thought this article was very timely.  I'm amazed
that the Federal Land Managers tell us all the time that they do not have
enough money to maintain the trails we have. Yet, here we have a case being
made for more land to be managed with the same funds. In other words, we will
have even fewer funds in the future for trail maintenance.  As sure as I am
siting at this computer, you will then see the Feds close more trails due to
lack of funding or what ever excuse they may come up with.  It seems to me, we
have a disaster brewing in Washington D.C.  So what to do? Demand more funding
for our trails and the public lands we now have. That is if you want access to
the Federal Lands in the next 20 to 50 years.   Jerry Fruth, Chairman-AERC
Trails Committee>   
>
>Public lands: Is bigger better?
>
>by Holly Lippke Fretwell
>A bill considered by many to be the most important
>conservation legislation in years -- and possibly the
>capstone to President Clinton's environmental legacy
>-- is wending its way through Congress. But watch out!
>The $3 billion legislation, known as the Conservation
>and Reinvestment Act (CARA), has little to do with
>conservation, and will, in fact, perpetuate the
>degradation of federal lands.
>
>Why? Because CARA is bass ackwards in its approach to
>federal land management. While the bill provides a
>large pool of money for the acquisition of more
>federal lands, it provides no funds for addressing
>critical resource management problems and no reform
>for our ailing public-land agencies. This is a huge
>oversight at a time when the poor and declining
>condition of our public lands has been so
>well-documented that only catastrophic events are
>newsworthy any more.
>
>The fires that raced through Los Alamos this spring
>and Colorado this summer reveal the perilous condition
>of our forests -- unnaturally dense and fire-prone.
>Forty million acres of national forest land are at
>extreme risk to uncontrolled wildfire. And that is
>just one of the problems created by federal land
>stewardship.
>
>In the Great Basin, invasive, non-native species have
>devastated millions of acres of grazing lands. In
>Yellowstone National Park, sewage spills into nearby
>native trout streams. At Gettysburg National Military
>Park, rain from leaky roofs soaks Civil War relics.
>Even our national refuge system is showing signs of
>neglect.
>
>Based on this track record, why would anyone want the
>federal government to manage more land?
>

>Nevertheless, this bill has received strong support
>from not only Democrats, but Republicans and even
>staunch supporters of private-property rights. Why?
>Because it is pork barrel politics at its best. CARA
>would funnel billions of dollars to the states for
>land acquisitions. Alaska, home to two of the bill's
>strongest supporters, Sen. Frank Murkowski (R) and
>Rep. Don. Young (R), would be a big winner in the CARA
>sweepstakes, receiving $163 million annually.
>California tops even that, with $324 million every
>year. Politicians find such numbers hard to ignore.
>
>The federal government already controls one-third of
>the land area of the United States and continues to
>add more than 800,000 acres per year. The pace will
>quicken much more rapidly if CARA is passed. But the
>funds for managing these new lands are nowhere to be
>seen.
>
>Any land manager, whether working for a federal agency
>or overseeing a private farm or ranch, knows that
>protecting resources comes at a price. A recent PERC
>study shows that in 1999 federal land management alone
>cost more than $6.6 billion, excluding the costs of
>facility construction and major repair. And management
>costs more than tripled from 1962 to 1997, jumping
>from $3 per acre to $10 per acre in inflation adjusted
>dollars.
>
>Unlike the federal government, conservation groups
>recognize that management is costly. Many insist on an
>endowment to cover management costs before they
>purchase any new land. The Nature Conservancy recently
>announced a plan to buy a pristine atoll in the
>Pacific Ocean. It is raising funds for both the
>purchase and for an endowment fund that will be
>dedicated to the care and protection of this nature
>preserve.
>
>Similarly, the National Audubon Society requires an
>endowment fund to care for any land that it accepts as
>a donation. In this way, it guarantees that the lands
>will always be protected and that resources dedicated
>to existing Audubon lands will not be redirected to
>cover the costs of managing the new property.
>
>Conservation groups have sought new approaches to help
>them cover the costs of land management over the long
>term. The Nature Conservancy has created an unusual
>partnership with private landowners in Virginia's
>Clinch Valley. To protect the ecological health and
>long-term economic productivity of the valley's
>forest, the landowners allow the conservancy to manage
>and harvest trees on their land. Dividends are paid to
>the owners, while the conservancy assumes the
>management risks and provides a steady stream of wood
>to local mills and businesses.
>
>The government could learn from these examples. It
>could sell lands without assets, such as wildlife
>habitat or scenic value, and use the proceeds to
>manage lands with higher conservation values.
>Recreational lands could be made to pay their own way.
>
>To protect America's most valued lands, we must reform
>federal land-management policies and encourage private
>conservation efforts. Until then, we should not jump
>hastily onto a legislative bandwagon that will only
>lead us further into the wilderness of mismanaged

>landscapes.
>
>
>Holly Lippke Fretwell is a contributor to Writers on
>the Range, a service of High Country News
>(<http://www.hcn.org/>www.hcn.org). She is a research associate
>specializing in public lands at the Political Economy
>Research Center in Bozeman, Mont.
>
>
>
>