Rob Bishop: Republicans seek 'paradigm shift' in federal land management

WASHINGTON — Four days after Donald Trump took office, Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz introduced legislation to dispose of 3.3 million acres of federal land in 10 Western states. Nine days later, after public protests and irate phone calls from sportsmen and others, he withdrew the bill.

Last week, Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop, another Utah Republican, wrote to colleagues, saying “it’s time for a paradigm shift in our nation’s approach to federal land management” and called for $50 million to be set aside to facilitate conveyances of federal land to state, local and tribal governments.

Both proposals illustrate the radical shift in public land policy that has been a goal of Republicans for several years.

 The 2016 Republican Party Platform pointed to 640 million acres of land owned or controlled by the federal government. “It is absurd to think that all that acreage must remain under the absentee ownership or management of official Washington,” the policy statement reads. “Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing for a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to states.”

Overall public land policy — which includes resource extraction, wildfire policy, efforts to restore the timber industry and record-breaking declarations of national monument acreage by President Barack Obama — has been in flux for some time. But with one-party government in Washington, Republicans think the time is right to make significant changes.

The shift comes at a time when armed vigilantes — who took over an Oregon federal bird sanctuary for five weeks last year in a protest against federal management of public lands —  threatening violence, were acquitted by a jury of their peers. Three of the defendants were sons of Cliven Bundy, who staged a similar armed standoff in 2014 in Nevada after refusing to pay the fees for grazing his cattle on federal lands.

On the first day of the new Congress, on a largely party-line vote, Republicans passed a rule that made it easier to transfer federal lands by treating such conveyances as cost free to the federal government even if they reduce federal revenue from mining, oil and gas drilling, grazing rights and other sources. Its author was Bishop, who said the rule change “democratizes our process by eliminating bureaucratic red tape.”

Without the rules change, members of Congress could have blocked land transfers by requiring proponents to show how the lost revenue would be covered by budget cuts or increased revenue from other sources under the pay-as-you-go rules in effect since 2010.

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For millions of Americans and for groups like the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and Missoula, Mont.-based Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the aggressive campaign to divest what they consider to be the national heritage for possible commercial development won’t happen without a fight.

And they may have an ally in the new Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke, the former Montana congressman who stepped down as a delegate to the GOP’s national convention in July after the platform language cited earlier was adopted.

However Zinke voted for the House rules changes that included the no-cost land transfers language.

So far, the movement to return federal lands to the states has been met with defiance by opponents.

Matt Keller, senior director of conservation with The Wilderness Society, said Bishop’s 13-page memo to the Budget Committee laying out a variety of policies he hopes it will adopt was buried in the budget process “hoping nobody would notice.”

“Make no mistake,” he said. “America is wide awake to these assaults and will not let a bully like Chairman Bishop use hard-earned taxpayer dollars to ensure oil, gas and mining industries can lay waste to the forests, parks and refuges that belong to us all.”

Back Country Hunters and Anglers CEO Land Tawney said his group planned to “rally the masses: hunters, anglers, kayakers, bikers, mountain bikers, campers. And we’ll do that through state rallies at the legislative level all across the West.”  

The Sierra Club’s “Our Wild America” campaign says public lands should be held “as a ‘public trust’ for and by all Americans,” and helped organize a protest at the Montana state capital in Helena. The Sierra Club calls for further expansions of national monuments and protection of more wilderness areas.

Countering that vision, Bishop’s memo to the Budget Committee says his committee will work with the Trump administration “to identify previously declared monuments that are suitable to be rescinded or diminished in size.” He calls for the Bureau of Land Management to create a searchable database “of all lands that have been identified for disposal.” Bishop said his committee “does not support acquiring additional lands until basic responsibilities are met on the 80 million acres managed by” the National Park Service or adding to the 193 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

Bishop notes that the park service's deferred maintenance backlog, now nearly $12 billion, suggests misplaced "management priorities," rather than inadequate funding.

Then-Interior secretary Sally Jewell issued an order in January 2016 ending new coal leases on federal land until an environmental impact statement was completed which would look at coal’s impact on climate change and “the social cost of carbon.” Bishop has called for the Trump administration to revoke the moratorium on new leases and narrow the scope of the impact statement.

Congress appropriated a one-time cash infusion of $622 million to help the Forest Service meet wildfire costs last year, a strategy Obama’s director of Management and Budget, Shaun Donovan, called “a Band-Aid approach.” The problem of “fire borrowing” that takes money from other Forest Service accounts to fight catastrophic wild wires has been debated for years. Bishop would make it federal policy to treat wildfires like any other natural disaster and let the service have access to the Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Relief Fund, avoiding fund transfers when its fire suppression budget is exceeded.

Eight days before leaving office, Obama added 48,000 acres to the Cascades-Siskiyou National Monument in Jackson and Klamath counties in Oregon and Siskiyou County in California to the delight of some environmentalists but angering others.

The expansion plan had drawn opposition in a region where federal land use issues led to the armed standoff in southeast Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last year.

Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors chairman Michael N. Kobseff said the county was officially opposed to the expansion just as it had been to the original designation by Bill Clinton 16 years before because of its effect on wildfire-fighting and property rights.

“It creates a more volatile environment with the government on your back doorstep,” Kobseff added. “It’s not a win for liberty.”

Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., who represents the area, said the expansion was a misuse of the Antiquities Act, the 1906 law signed by President Theodore Roosevelt that he used to protect the Grand Canyon, among other national treasures. LaMalfa said he would work to have the Cascades monument expansion rescinded.

Just weeks before he left office, Obama also created the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument, long sought by a coalition of Native American tribes, in Bishop’s home state of Utah. Bishop has been a critic of the Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to unilaterally designate protected land without input from Congress or local governments. Bishop had opposed Bears Ears. He is working on legislation that would require local consent before a monument could be established.

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Bears Ears is in Chaffetz’s district and he has asked Trump to rescind the designation. Along with his plan for selling off excess land, now withdrawn, Chaffetz also introduced a bill to get federal Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management rangers off federal lands and let local law enforcement patrol them. Its rationale is to minimize conflicts between federal agents and local residents like what happened at Malheur, he has said.

The bill Chaffetz withdrew would have authorized the sale at fair market value of BLM land identified in 1997 as excess and disposable. That includes 21,400 acres in Maricopa County, Ariz., worth an estimated $12.6 million in 1997; 560 acres in Larimer County, Colo, estimated at $224,000; and one acre of private timberland in Marion County, Oregon, worth $1,000.

It also includes 55,889 acres with an estimated 1997 value of $5.3 million in Chaffetz’s district.

Land Tawney of the Backcountry Hunters says he still believes a democratic society is driven to act "by the people who show up," and he's convinced that large numbers don't support the proposed land give-aways.

"The response from hunters and angler's to Rep. Chaffetz's bill to dispose of 3 million acres of public lands was swift and unapologetic," he said by email this week. "In unprecedented fashion, he withdrew his bill within days of its introduction. Rep. Bishop should heed the call of American sportsmen and abandon his misguided legislation or he'll likewise experience the ire of public lands users, including those from his home district in Utah."