Why are many people—including the militiamen occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon—angry that the federal government owns almost half of the land in the American West? We consulted two experts on public lands and natural resources about the longstanding controversies over federal control of public lands.
Robert Keiter, professor of law, University of Utah: The fact that public lands cover much of the West is a recipe for conflict over national and local values. Many rural western communities earn major revenues from public lands, so federal efforts to manage these lands more actively have historically provoked negative responses. The 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion and the 1990s County Supremacy Movement are examples.
Changes at the national and international levels in recent decades have altered federal land management policies and reduced activities such as logging, mining, and livestock grazing that provide revenues to western communities. Demographically, the West is the nation’s fastest-growing and most urban region. Newcomers with strong environmental values are moving in and diversifying western state economies. In many ranching communities, wealthy outsiders who don’t share local residents’ values or concerns are buying up ranches. And when the federal government designates land for new national parks and wilderness areas, it puts those acres off-limits for traditional activities.
Laws such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act have increased regulation of public lands over the past several decades. And the courts have become more involved in public land controversies. These changes fuel local anger toward the federal government because critics see them as threats to rural western communities and lifestyles.
Robert Nelson, professor of public policy, University of Maryland: The West has historically been more ambivalent about federal ownership of western land than current rhetoric might suggest. Perhaps the truest statement ever made about the West and its attitude to the large federal presence there is, “Go away and give us more money.”
Today westerners of all political stripes resolutely oppose proposals to privatize public lands. At the same time, they are increasingly willing to consider transferring federal lands to the states or other steps that would radically decentralize management authority while keeping land in public ownership. I have recently proposed, for example, the creation of “charter forests,” modeled after urban charter schools.
From the western point of view, however, rather than going away, federal control has been steadily tightening, especially under the Obama administration. Most public land decisions involve deep conflicts over competing values, such as economic development versus protecting and restoring nature in its historic natural condition. An example would be choosing whether to build a ski resort or establish a mountain wilderness. This means that nationally based values, most forcefully advocated by the environmental movement, often are coercively imposed on rural westerners who have very different values. In some cases these conflicts can even take on a quasi-religious character.
Elsewhere in the United States, where there is far less federal land, similarly deep value conflicts are much more frequently resolved among state and local governments and private land-owners. This discrepancy is a major reason why rural westerners believe that they are being treated unequally and unjustly. Moreover, federal land management in the West has become increasingly dysfunctional, reflecting wider trends at the federal level. And in recent years the federal government has had less money to send to the West. The federal-state mutual accord has been federally and unilaterally abrogated.
