Public Lands, Public Debates: A Century of Controversy

Sell Off

141 Sell Off in 2006, there was some good news emanating from the public lands. The bush administration’s controversial proposal to sell upwards of 300,000 acres of national forests and grasslands to underwrite the reauthorization of the secure Rural schools and community self-determination act of 2000 did not happen. The White House had proposed the land sales—which were to come exclusively from the national-forest system—to considerable fanfare early that February, a real kick-in-the-green-pants birthday card for the u.s. Forest service, which had just concluded its year-long centennial celebrations. Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture, downplayed the significance of the proposal, assuring the Rocky Mountain News that none of the three thousand parcels bundled for sale were “strictly speaking, the crown jewels” of the national forests; they were instead “isolated tracts no longer integral to Forest service needs” and easily disposed of, a conclusion that provoked howls of protest and reams of heated editorials that have since framed the extensive public debate. Former Forest service chief Jack Ward Thomas, over a companionable breakfast in Milford, Pennsylvania, early that april, had speculated that the bush initiative was dead on arrival. How apt that we were chowing down in the ancestral hometown of Gifford Pinchot, founding chief of the agency, to talk with Forest service personnel about leadership development in an organization that is set within an intensely politicized environment. stark proof of its politicization was the proposed land sale itself; the only reason so much of its landed inventory was to have gone on the auction block was so that it could generate an estimated $800 million to pay for public education and roads in the nation’s forested counties. in retrospect, the proposed fire sale felt like a common business maneuver: dumping assets to generate cash to invest in potentially more profitable arenas. For some critics, the administration’s action smacked not of its financial integrity but of failed budgeting. “This is just a government living beyond their means,” charged Montana Governor brian schweitzer. “That’s a damn poor way to run a ranch and a worse way to run a government.” Republican senator Michael enzi from Wyoming echoed, “There are towns that are hurting, there are ways we ought to take care of them, but selling off the public lands isn’t one of them.” 142 public lands, public debates some wondered at the time if there was not a more Machiavellian reason for the sales, a clever administrative ploy to sell off non-essential lands, thereby establishing much-needed precedent for the subsequent sale of the forests themselves. “This proposal is merely the camel’s nose under the tent,” charged Representative Rick boucher, a Virginia democrat. “if this passes, the administration will be back with more proposals for larger sales of national forest land.” There seemed some basis for this anticipated anxiety: only five months earlier, california Republican Representative Richard Pombo, the staunch anti-environmentalist chair of the House natural Resources committee, had pushed legislation to sell off some national parks in lieu of drilling in the arctic; not to be outdone, Representative tom tancredo of colorado wanted to hock department of interior lands to pay for Katrina cleanup and relief efforts. Offloading public land as an easy way to pay some very big bills was not as far-fetched as it may have sounded at first. no wonder Jack Ward Thomas and i focused more on the latest controversy to swirl around the Forest service than the food before us. no wonder, given his experience as an embattled chief, Thomas offered this caveat as we pushed back from the table: The sale “may be a non-starter,” but that did not mean “we shouldn’t take it seriously. There’s too much at stake.” There has always been a lot riding on the national forests. although not officially named until 1907, the idea of a national forest system had emerged in the late nineteenth century in response to warnings that the rapid harvesting of timber from the nation’s forests would imperil future economic prosperity. This conservationist principle was given early voice in George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature, and its arguments gave rise to a kaleidoscopic array of grassroots activists, hunters and fishermen, women’s groups and scientists who pressured local, state, and national governments to better regulate the public domain. Or what was left of it. Throughout the nineteenth century, the General land Office...