Outdoor enthusiasts oppose transfer of public lands

Across the West, sportsmen and other outdoor enthusiasts are making their voices heard. Their message? “Keep your hands off our public lands.”

That is exactly what a group of Idaho sportsmen had to say during a recent protest on the steps of their state capitol in Boise. Their message appears to be a pre-emptive strike against efforts by Western politicians to wrest control of public lands from federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

Call it pre-emptive because there has not — as yet — been a “move on the part of the Idaho Legislature to take over the state’s 34 million acres of public land,” according to a Feb. 12 article by Boise Weekly reporter Harrison Berry.

However, such efforts are underway in Nevada and eight other Western states — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. In Nevada, for example, Senate Joint Resolution 1 (SJR1), now before the State Legislature, calls for a “phased in” approach to transferring ownership of most federally managed public lands in Nevada to the state.

There also is a groundswell of support by those who want to maintain federal stewardship of America’s public lands. Taking a leading role is the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), which recently rolled out its Sportsmen’s Access Campaign during the 2015 SHOT Show in Las Vegas.

This grass-root campaign, backed by a coalition of hunting and fishing organizations and businesses, is encouraging outdoor enthusiasts to sign a petition asking state and federal legislators and governors to “actively pledge (their) support for America’s public lands legacy and oppose efforts to transfer federal public lands to individual states.”

“The whole intent is to make this bad idea of transferring and selling public lands go away,” said Joel Webster, TRCP Center for Western Lands director.

“When you think of the West, and you think of hunting and fishing, you think of public lands — 640 million acres. These lands provide access to millions of sportsmen. According to the U.S. Fish &Wildlife Service, 72 percent of western hunters use public lands for access. That’s almost three out of four sportsmen.”

Results of the 2015 State of the Rockies Project by Colorado College, a survey of voters in six Western states, support Webster’s position.

“A stunning 95 percent of Western voters have visited public lands managed by U.S. government agencies,” the report said. “A majority (58 percent) of voters say they visit public lands six or more times per year, with 42 percent visiting more than 10 times per year.

“Not surprisingly, sportsmen are the most frequent visitors to public lands: 38 percent have visited more than 20 times per year, and an additional 22 percent visiting more than 10 times each year. Fully 98 percent — virtually all sportsmen — have visited public lands in the last year.”

Also reflected in the finding is the importance Western voters place on protecting their public lands, a stance that knows no political bounds.

“Protecting public lands for future generations is a top priority across every state in the West. Republicans, Democrats and Independents select it most often as the highest priority, and the same is true for all age groups and ethnic backgrounds,” the report states.

Another vital part of the equation to consider is the $646 billion the outdoor recreation industry contributes to the economy every year, and the 6.1 million jobs that are directly tied to lands and waters that are publicly accessible.

In its own report entitled “Locked Out: Public Lands Transfers Threaten Sportsmen’s Access,” the TRCP discusses how public lands in the West came to be public in the first place, the status of lands granted to the Western states by the federal government when they attained statehood, and the challenges states would face if they suddenly took on stewardship of lands currently managed by federal agencies.

Of the West’s public lands, the TRCP report says, “Without these vast expanses of prairie and sagebrush, foothills and towering peaks, the traditions of hunting and fishing as we have known them for the past century would be lost.”

More information regarding the Sportsmen’s Access Campaign and the public lands issue can be found at trcp.org.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His “In the Outdoors” column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.