Worst Idea Ever?

[Tim Smith]

I just don't see how a sportsman can even dream of supporting this idea.

This summer my son walked from Denver to Durango on the Colorado Trail...485 miles through wilderness without a person or house or road in sight most of the time. His son, my grandson could do that. You could do that. You could fish the whole way if you wanted. You can hunt for deer and elk and moose almost from end to end. Heck on this last trip we almost walked up the butt end of a bull moose taller than I could reach. But that's all gone if we parcel it off that land to the highest bidders. My grandson won't ever make that walk if this stuff happens. Your grandson won't. No one will. Ever.

I don't think anyone who loves the outdoors (and isn't a billionaire that can buy 10,000 acres of their own) could ever want that land to go away if they understood what it is and what's possible there.

Is wilderness really as unimportant as that?

[ozark trout fisher]

I just don't see how a sportsman can even dream of supporting this idea.

This summer my son walked from Denver to Durango on the Colorado Trail...485 miles through wilderness without a person or house or road in sight most of the time. His son, my grandson could do that. You could do that. You could fish the whole way if you wanted. You can hunt for deer and elk and moose almost from end to end. Heck on this last trip we almost walked up the butt end of a bull moose taller than I could reach. But that's all gone if we parcel it off that land to the highest bidders. My grandson won't ever make that walk if this stuff happens. Your grandson won't. No one will. Ever.

I don't think anyone who loves the outdoors (and isn't a billionaire that can buy 10,000 acres of their own) could ever want that land to go away if they understood what it is and what's possible there.

Is wilderness really as unimportant as that?

Yep, that's the beauty of the western United States as currently configured, and if these folks get their way, a large part of that goes by the wayside. Having just spent time on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, the sense of the "wide open spaces" out there is something that you just can't grasp if you don't spend time in that part of the world.

If no trespassing signs and (much more terrifying) upscale housing developments start popping up in some of those BLM or NF areas, that's going to change. And it will be a tragedy.

[Al Agnew]

Yes, this is simply unbelievable to me that anybody who isn't very rich, or a miner or rancher, would ever think this was a good idea. In many cases the feds are STILL managing this land for the benefit of private individuals, just not to the extent they once did, and that's making the private individuals that are making money off public lands a little nervous so they are pushing for privatization. But I don't care how badly or well you think the feds are managing it, privatizing any public lands means reserving them for those who can pay big bucks to own them or access them. How anybody who even dreams of one day going hunting, fishing, backpacking, or camping in the West could think this was a good idea is beyond me.

[bfishn]

It seems much of the renewed momentum of this thing can be attributed to a contracted report that says the western states can turn a fair profit where the BLM incurs a loss;

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CEgQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fleg.mt.gov%2Fcontent%2FCommittees%2FInterim%2F2013-2014%2FEQC%2FCommittee-Topics%2Fsj-15%2Fmatrix-references%2Fstate-vs-fed-land-management-costs-baughman-presentation.pdf&ei=vWn6U-D5GoOg8QHLiYCwBw&usg=AFQjCNFiRzfNnv4Ywt9JPhR_OzTi0SGE5g&bvm=bv.73612305,d.b2U

While prepared for Nevada, both Idaho and Utah are pointing and jumping up and down as well. Surprisingly, the report was prepared by a renewable energy consulting firm... A brief review had me scratching my head when it said (in so many words) that costs for fire prevention could be greatly reduced if you didn't have any trees... hmmm...

We fishers and hunters were taken into account... as an economic indicator.

[Al Agnew]

So that report is advocating turning the federal public lands over to state or county management but supposedly keeping them as public lands. Although it shows the state can turn a profit on THEIR public lands, it does not take into account that just maybe the federal public lands are not exactly comparable to state lands. Look at Missouri. You could say the state parks in Missouri are "concentrated cool places", smallish acreages that have a lot of recreational and tourism attractions in those small areas. They are easy to patrol, easy to control access, and the attractions are great enough that they get lots and lots of visitors. If you charge those visitors to visit, to camp, etc. you're going to be bringing in a lot of revenue out of relatively small acreages. Compare that to the national forest lands in Missouri. Much larger acreages, much more difficult to patrol, protect, control access. Far fewer visitors per acre, at least visitors that are doing something that you could charge them for. Because of the size of the areas, there are more miles of roads to keep up, more acres to protect from fires, etc. So it kinda stands to reason that you could get less revenue per acre from a national forest than from a state park.

Now, look at some of the Western public lands. I suspect that, although the feds do have the chance to get revenue from logging, mining, and grazing fees on their lands, a pretty fair percentage of their lands are bare rock, not thick forest or grazing lands. I wonder if you can say the same thing about state lands in the West as a whole. I also noted that grazing fees on state lands average considerably higher per cow/calf unit than on federal lands. A significant percentage of the profits on state lands come from those higher grazing fees. Which is interesting, because I wonder if the ranchers would be very happy if the states took over the federal grazing lands and charged their fees instead of the much cheaper fees the feds are charging.