Tag: public lands
U.S. Lawmaker Scraps Bill To Sell Public Lands After Intense Backlash

U.S. Lawmaker Scraps Bill To Sell Public Lands After Intense Backlash

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Congressman Jason Chaffetz said on Thursday he plans to withdraw a bill that would have sold off more than 3 million acres of federal land to private interests after it drew a barrage of negative comments from hunters and outdoor enthusiasts.

Chaffetz said in a post on the Instagram social media site that he would scrap the so-called Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2017, which he introduced last week, saying he feared it sent “the wrong message.”

“I’m a proud gun owner, hunter, and love our public lands,” the Utah representative said in a comment, beneath a photo he posted of himself outdoors wearing hunting gear and holding a dog. “I hear you and HR 621 dies tomorrow,” added Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

HR 621 is the abbreviated name of the bill, which would have directed the Interior Department to sell off 3.3 million acres of federal land including “to non-federal entities” across 10 western states, which Chaffetz had said were “small parcels of land” that former President Bill Clinton previously identified as “serving no public purpose.”

Sportsmen and women, hunting groups, and outdoor gear retailers had flooded Chaffetz’s Instagram account with thousands of posts, urging him to “say no to HR 621” and to “#keepitpublic.”

Conservation, hunting, and gaming advocacy groups have been raising concerns over the past month about what they see an aggressive strategy by Congress to make it easier to transfer public lands to state control or sell it off.

Last month, on the first day of the new Congress, the House passed a rules package that contained a measure that would facilitate a public lands sell-off by directing the Congressional Budget Office, which provides lawmakers data for budget decisions, to assign no monetary value to the lands.

Outdoors groups say public lands hold value for the outdoor recreation economy. The Wilderness Society values that industry at over $646 billion.

“I don’t think anybody had expected the backlash that has happened as a result of these bills. People are upset out here in the west and it is one of the hottest political issues in western states,” said Brad Brooks, Idaho Deputy Regional Director for the Wilderness Society.

President Donald Trump has advocated for opening up public land for more drilling and mining, although he has said that public land should stay under federal control.

(Reporting By Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Tom Brown)

IMAGE: U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz is interviewed during the 2017 “Congress of Tomorrow” Joint Republican Issues Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. January 25, 2017.  REUTERS/Mark Makela

After Acquittals, Federal Prosecutors Prepare For Second Malheur Trial

After Acquittals, Federal Prosecutors Prepare For Second Malheur Trial

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors on Friday regrouped to strategize for their next trial of armed militants who occupied a wildlife center in Oregon the day after seven others at a related trial were surprisingly acquitted of all charges.

The group’s leader, Ammon Bundy, and six others were declared not guilty on Thursday of conspiracy charges stemming from their role in the armed takeover and 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

The stinging defeat left federal prosecutors scrambling as they prepare to try in February seven others who were part of the same occupation.

The criminal counts brought against them, which include conspiracy to impede federal officers, are similar to the charges on which Bundy and other were acquitted.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland abruptly canceled a news conference to discuss Thursday’s verdict.

“We’re just regrouping with our trial team for pending litigation,” said Kevin Sonoff, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon.

Bundy and his brother, Ryan, still face assault, conspiracy and other charges from a separate armed standoff in 2014 in Nevada.

The acquittal on criminal conspiracy counts and weapons charges delivered in federal court in Portland on Thursday also encouraged the group’s supporters.

Bundy and others cast the occupation of the wildlife refuge as a patriotic act of civil disobedience. Prosecutors called it a lawless scheme to seize federal property by force.

The relative silence of U.S. prosecutors on Friday gave little indication of how they will proceed with the trial against the Bundys in Nevada and the case against the second group of defendants in the Oregon occupation.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden in Nevada in a statement on Friday said the criminal case in that state is proceeding as planned with trial set for February, the same month as the second trial in Oregon.

“The Oregon case and charges are separate and unrelated to the Nevada case and charges,” Bogden said.

The Nevada case stems from a face-off the Bundy brothers and their supporters had near the Nevada ranch of their father, Cliven Bundy, with federal agents who had seized his cattle for his failure to pay grazing fees for his use of public land.

The Bundy brothers and their father remain jailed while awaiting trial in Nevada.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax in New York, Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

IMAGE: clockwise from top left) Ryan Bundy, Ammon Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Peter Santilli, Shawna Cox, Ryan Payne and Joseph O’Shaughnessy, limited-government activists who led an armed 41-day takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, are seen in a combination of police jail booking photos released by the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Portland, Oregon January 27, 2016.   Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters/File Photo

Federal Lands Don’t Belong To The States

Federal Lands Don’t Belong To The States

The federal government owns large chunks of the West. It owns 65 percent of Utah, 69 percent of Alaska, and 83 percent of Nevada. Some Westerners see unfairness in that. They should not.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska recently slipped an item into a non-binding budget resolution, calling on the federal government to dispose of all its land other than the national parks and monuments. That would put U.S. national forests and wildlife refuges — from the Arctic to the Everglades — up for grabs. The Senate narrowly passed it.

Three years ago, Utah’s Republican governor, Gary Herbert, demanded that the federal government turn millions of its acres over to his state. Just like that.

Thing is, the land is not Utah’s to take. Federal lands do have an owner, the people of the United States. Those acres belong as much to residents of New Jersey and Ohio as they do to the folks in Salt Lake City.

Has anyone asked you whether you want to give away federal land? Me, neither.

Some insist that the laws creating the Western states required the federal government to hand over much of the land it retained. Not so, says University of Utah law professor Robert Keiter.

On the contrary. The Utah Enabling Act stated that the inhabitants of the proposed state had to “forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof.” That sounds pretty straightforward.

The property clause of the U.S. Constitution and subsequent Supreme Court cases hold that the U.S. keeps public lands in trust for all Americans. The government may keep, sell or give away the land — as well as decide what may be done on it.

Even if the federal government were obligated to unload that land, Keiter writes, “that obligation does not require the federal government to give land to the states.”

Sales of federally owned land should go to the highest bidder, with the proceeds dropped in the U.S. Treasury. If the state of Utah cares to participate in the auction, good luck to it.

In reality, the federal government has, over the years, disposed of many millions of its acres — some sold, some given to homesteaders, some handed to the states.

Western states didn’t care about this mostly parched land until the feds started building huge irrigation projects in the 1920s. Many states, including Utah, actually refused offers of public lands because they didn’t want to lose federal reclamation funds, mineral revenue, and highway money.

Federal ownership does have its advantages. About 330 million acres of federal lands are used for grazing cattle and sheep. Ranchers last year paid only $18.5 million in fees to use that land, whereas the feds appropriated $144 million for the grazing programs, according to a Center for Biological Diversity study.

“Had the federal government charged the average private forage market rate for non-irrigated lands in the western states,” the study says, “grazing receipts would have been on average $261 million, greatly exceeding annual appropriations.”

The oil and gas industries operating on public lands currently enjoy discounted royalty rates, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. We really ought to be charging them market rates.

Ronald Reagan famously said of the Panama Canal, “We built it. We paid for it. It’s ours.”

How did the federal government originally obtain title to the Western lands? Through treaties with France, Britain, and Mexico.

So American taxpayers did indeed pay for that land and made it more fruitful. That’s why it’s ours, all of ours.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr