Energy companies drilling the Niobrara shale explored for oil on private land before beginning to drill public land in Northeast Colorado. Here at the Pawnee Buttes, on the Pawnee National Grasslands in Weld County, Colorado, the butte to the left is on public land, and the drilling rig in the background is on private property. The difference is simple: The public has a chance to comment on drilling activities on public land. The public's avenues of recourse regarding extraction activities on private land are much more difficult to navigate. Image © 2010 by Bobby Magill.

Several news bits over the last couple of months are a reminder that Sagebrush Rebellion sentiments still linger. And, it might show just how removed many of our politicians are from our public lands.

First, there was this story from the Logan, Utah, Herald Journal:

A Utah lawmaker is proposing legislation that could result in a monumental battle with the federal government over land in the state.

Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, visited Logan on Friday to talk to a political science class at Utah State University about the bill, and he spoke with The Herald Journal afterward. …

Ivory’s legislation will call for the federal government to dispose of all public lands in the state, except for American Indian lands, which are reserved in the act. The bill establishes a deadline of Dec. 31, 2014, for the federal government to do so. There is also a deadline of Oct. 31, 2012, for Congress to “confirm its intent to begin the process” of disposing the public land to the state.

A Utah Public Lands Commission would be created to manage the multiple use of the public land.

The story says Ivory is working with lawmakers in states surrounding Utah to try to introduce similar legislation there. At the Fort Collins Coloradoan, where I cover environment and business issues part-time, I emailed Ivory several weeks ago to find out which lawmaker he is working with in Colorado. A week later, my email was returned by Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, a Sterling Republican, who said he’d like to see the feds hand over all of Colorado’s public lands to the state for either state management or auction. All public lands, that is, except the national parks.

It’s not clear how the state might accomplish such an extraordinarily improbable task. No such bill has been introduced in Colorado so far this legislative session. In Utah, Ivory’s bill is called the “Transfer and Taxation of Public Lands Act,” HB 148, but so far Ivory apparently hasn’t added any substance. The bill, today at least, appears to be blank.

Then, there was this comment from Mitt Romney on the campaign trail in Nevada last week:

Unless there’s a valid, and legitimate, and compelling governmental purpose, I don’t know why the government owns so much of this land.

So I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land, so I don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m about to hand it over.” But where government ownership of land is designed to satisfy, let’s say, the most extreme environmentalists, from keeping a population from developing their coal, their gold, their other resources for the benefit of the state, I would find that to be unacceptable.

Mitt Romney’s home state of Massachusetts is composed of only 2 percent federal land, while Nevada is 84 percent federal land. He hasn’t thought much about why the feds own so much land in the wild West and what should be done with it, but you can easily think of it: Colorado’s more than 23 million acres of public lands — all our national forests, national wildlife refuges and Bureau of Land Management land — turned over to the state for possible auction. If such a thing were ever possible, which is very, very highly unlikely, I think there would be hell to pay from most of the people in Colorado who enjoy the public lands here and elsewhere, which is likely most of the people in Colorado.

But the point is this: Remnant sentiments of the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1980s are alive and well, most likely because of the recent federal budget crisis and broad demands to cut government spending. Conservative think tanks have long considered how the feds would be required to dispose of the federal estate, which amounts to well over 600 million acres nationwide. Here’s how the Cato Institute described the disposal in a 1999 report:

Just this month, Cato again recommended auctioning public lands, turning over BLM land to the states, giving national parks over to self-supporting fiduciary trusts and essentially eviscerating the federal government’s land management obligations as a way to downsize the government and cut costs. Here’s the report’s conclusion:

Congress should move ahead with a combination of reforms to the Department of the Interior—privatization, transfers to state governments, and the establishment of fiduciary trusts. Most BLM lands should be turned over to the states or privatized. Major national parks and wildlife refuges are good candidates to establish as fiduciary trusts. Parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, for example, could easily cover their costs through user charges. Smaller parks and refuges that are mainly visited by in-state residents should be transferred to those states.

The important thing is that policymakers start exploring alternatives to Interior’s costly, bureaucratic, and underperforming system of managing lands and resources. Given that the lands held by Interior cover one-fifth the area of the United States, it is crucial that they be managed as effectively as possible.

One of the themes running through these Cato analyses and the statements of Sonnenberg and others favoring the privatization of public lands is the idea that the feds trash the land and better stewardship would occur if it were in private hands. Sell it to the highest bidder, whatever, let the free market determine the best use and best stewardship of the land.

Scott Lehmann, in his 1995 book “Privatizing Public Lands,” describes how the free-market approach to privatizing lands that provide nearly innumerable services to the public (biodiversity, intact watersheds, clean air, recreation, room to roam, etc.) is suspect:

If those who see themselves in a “world of marvels” are less likely to waste their time here, then concern for individuals dictates concern for the marvels of the world, human and natural. Unfortunately, the protection of our natural and cultural heritage can’t be entrusted to the free market. Even if the most valued use, reckoned in terms of aggregate willingness-to-pay, of some resource is its contribution to this heritage, transaction costs will often block that use. Without zoning restrictions, the city block now graced by a Louis Sullivan or Henry Richardson building would be put to more profitable use, a parking garage, perhaps. Without museums subsidized by taxes — or the corporate grants that so displease free-marketeers who believe the business of firms is profit-maximization — their paintings, sculpture, and other artifacts would be dispersed to private collections and generally inaccessible. It is government intervention, not private initiative, that honors Theodore Roosevelt’s advice on the Grand Canyon: “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

Furthermore, it’s not at all clear that actual consumer preferences dictate the preservation of these things.

No, it’s clear that the preference of the most moneyed consumers for much public land — the Pawnee National Grasslands of Weld County, Colorado, for example — is likely resource extraction rather than resource conservation or recreation.

When considering the fiscal sustainability of federal lands, it’s important to keep in mind what these lands provide to the public, whether you visit those lands personally or not. Here’s the Wilderness Society’s take on the value of federally-owned wilderness areas:

Federally designated wilderness areas provide incredibly valuable services—like increasing local income and employment, boosting recreation and tourism, and naturally filtering our air and drinking water.

More than 100 economists and academics signed a letter to President Obama in November, asking him to support new protections for federal land. Here’s why they say federally-owned public land is vital to the West’s economy and quality of life: