From the desk of President Ron Cerri:

March 2011

 

The multiple use concept has been working very well for many decades on the millions of acres of federally managed lands in the west. What we have seen happening since about the mid 1970’s has been a steady erosion of this principle. At first there were Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas, Refuges like the Sheldon Antelope Refuge and Monuments like the Grand Escalante Staircase in Utah. Later came Areas of Critical Environmental Concern or ACEC’s, and then last month came a new designation called “Wild Lands.” This new designation was created by the Secretary of Interior Order 3310 and it makes a new classification of “lands with wilderness characteristics” (LWC’s). This order instructs BLM District and Field managers to conduct inventories on public lands to identify LWC’s. Nevada already has over 3,000,000 acres of roadless areas that have been identified for potential Wilderness Areas. These areas are referred to as Wilderness Study Areas (WSA’s). Congress is supposed to look at these WSA’s and decide to either make them a Wilderness Area or release them so they revert back to multiple use. Many WSA’s have been sitting on the shelf since the 1980’s waiting on Congress to act.

If you use our federal lands to recreate, graze, mine or log, this new land classification should concern you. To begin with, current law only allows Congress the authority to create Wilderness Areas and many, particularly western Congressmen, see this as an attempt by the administration to circumvent that process. Furthermore, the BLM is not required to involve the public, local governments, counties, or others with vested interests before creating a Wild Land designation. Some of the other changes to the criteria the BLM uses to follow when determining whether the land should or shouldn’t considered as Wilderness Areas are:

• It would now allow anyone in the public to nominate lands as long as they provided a map, a narrative and photographs. This will surely provide a way for all those narrowly focused, special interest groups to further their agendas and create an even bigger pile of paperwork for an agency already overburdened with FOIA requests and endless litigation.
• It used to be the area being considered had to be 5,000 acres or greater. Now any size is acceptable as long as it provides naturalness, solitude, and primitive and unconfined recreation. If approved, the end result of this could allow the BLM and other individuals to increase the size of existing Wilderness Areas by adding a few acres here and a few acres there.

The BLM has provided its field offices with a manual that is supposed to give direction on how they are to do an inventory, the procedures to follow, how to conduct the process and how to analyze the wilderness characteristics. I have read it, and it allows the person or persons doing the inventory a lot of discretion and latitude in making a determination. For instance, in determining if the land is in a natural condition, it must appear to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature. But if there are fire towers, bridges, fire suppression facilities, or barely visible two track roads that can still be ok. I am pretty sure if there are any one of these things, there is going to be automobile traffic and more. The manual states that when determining if there is solitude, even a small area could provide an opportunity for solitude if, due to topography or vegetation, visitors could screen themselves from one another. Does this mean that a row of rose bushes dividing two people could be considered solitude?

Preservation can have different meanings from one person to another. I think it can safely be said that most wilderness advocates are urbanites. Their idea of preservation means no uses like logging, mining, livestock grazing, or gas exploration and extraction. To most westerners, preservation means protecting the land and the resources for future generations, not by having a hands-off approach, but by responsible stewardship. By using proper management we can make use of the renewable resources and create food and products that economically sustain local communities and feed the nation, while at the same time benefiting the land and resources.

When men began settling the west the mentality was that the resources such as wood, minerals, wild game and grass were inexhaustible. The west was vast and harsh and if you wanted to survive there you needed to conquer it. A lot of the ranching families left here today are decedents of those early pioneers. It’s not too hard to understand why these same ranchers get angry when after 150 years of taking care of the land, the government now thinks it needs to step in and protect it by placing the land in a new designation such as a Wild Lands Area. The rancher knows one of the first things the government will want to do is reduce the amount of livestock grazing and change the grazing system both he and his cows are used to. The people wanting these wilderness areas just don’t get the fact that the land is pristine and worthy of a Wild Land designation, not in spite of the rancher and his cows, but rather because of him and his dedication to preserving the land and all its resources.

This month’s quote is taken out of the book “This Land of the Free: The pride and purpose of the American West” compiled by CJ Hadley:

The Great Spirit is in all things, he is in the air we breathe. The Great Spirit is our father, but the earth is our mother. She nourishes us, that which we put into the ground, she returns to us.