News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
A9
Third of a four-part series
Our federal lands
The Conservation Movement
1891 The Forest Reserve Act or
“Creative Act” allows the president to
set aside forest reserves from the
public domain. President Benjamin
Harrison puts 13 million acres into
forested reserve. Largely regarded
as the beginning of the “conserva-
tion movement.”
1893 McRae Bill authorizes 15 forest
reserves.
1897 The “Organic Act” authorizes
funds for administration of forest
reserves from the Department of the
Army to the General Land Office.
President Grover Cleveland creates
21.4 million acres of forested
reserveland. His successor,
President William McKinley, adds 7
million acres.
Spanish-American War
eventually leading
to the creation of
the U.S. Forest
Service.
1906 Antiquities Act permits federal
protection of prehistoric, historic and
scientifically significant sites and
create national monuments.
1907 An amendment to the Ag Bill
strips presidential power to create
reserve land through executive
order. President Theodore Roosevelt
and Gifford Pinchot create 16 million
acres of reserve land before the law
goes into effect.
1913-19 Several western state
legislatures pass resolutions calling
for ceding unreserved federal lands
to the states.
World War I
1917-18
1898
1905 Congress transfers manage-
ment of forest reserves to the
Department of Agriculture,
1928 District land offices reduced to
29 from a high of 123 in 1890.
President Theodore Roosevelt (left) and naturalist
John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, on Glacier
Point in Yosemite National Park, 1906.
1929 The Great Depression begins;
President Herbert Hoover proposes
unallocated federal lands be ceded
to state control. A subsequent bill
fails to gain congressional support.
1934 Taylor Grazing Act places 80
million acres, mostly rangeland, into
grazing districts to help protect
against overuse.
World War II
1941-45
1940 U.S. Fish
and Wildlife
Service is
created within
the Department
of the Interior.
Sources: Congressional Research Service; U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management; USDA Forest Service; The Forest History Society; EO Media Group research
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
Next week: The Immutable Public Lands
Bill would allow states to buy national forest land
EO Media Group
Western Watershed Proj-
ect, agreed the public
would lose out on public
lands, and said the state
might also take on costs it
couldn’t handle.
In Utah, the legislature
passed a bill in 2012 requir-
ing the transfer of federal
land to the state. A 784-page
report estimates the cost to
the state could be about $245
million per year. Whether or
not the state makes up that
money would depend on a
number of factors around the
initial transition.
“Any individual state that
takes over has to pay for the
upkeep that might now be
shared among 50 states,” said
Wuerthner, a former bota-
nist with the Bureau of Land
Management in Idaho.
Young’s bill remains
under consideration in the
House Committee on Natural
Resources.
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Ny
d
An Alaska congressman
wants to allow states to ac-
quire up to 2 million acres of
national forest land from the
federal government to man-
age primarily for logging.
Republican Rep. Don
Young introduced the State
National Forest Management
Act of 2015 in September,
four months before armed
militants began occupying
the Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge near Burns.
The militants, led by Am-
mon Bundy, decried the per-
ceived mismanagement of
public lands during the 41-
day standoff and demanded
they be returned to local con-
trol. Young’s bill — the State
National Forest Management
Act of 2015 — would let state
legislatures decide if they
want to buy national forest
land from the Forest Service,
or exchange land of equal val-
ue with the feds.
The goal is to spur timber
production on the forests. At
a House committee hearing
on Thursday, Young referred
primarily to southeast Alas-
ka and the Tongass National
Not everyone agrees.
Corey Fisher, senior pub-
lic lands policy director for
Trout Unlimited in Missou-
la, Montana, said such a bill
would jeopardize multiple
uses and recreation on mil-
lions of acres.
“Hunters and anglers
will continue to reject these
ill-conceived ideas, because
we know these lands and we
know just how much we have
to lose,” Fisher said.
Fisher said the organiza-
tion understands there are is-
sues with land management,
but argued the solution isn’t
to change ownership. He said
it’s about working together
to address problems from the
ground up.
George Wuerthner, Or-
egon state director for the
’s
By George Plaven
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Or-
egon, sat next to Young at
Thursday’s hearing to testify
on another bill. Walden did,
however, speak generally
about the impact of federal
forest management on Eastern
Oregon communities.
“We’re creating, through
federal policies and litigation,
impoverished communities
and impoverished people, and
that’s not what we should be
doing,” Walden said.
A spokesman said Walden
is supportive of more state
and local control of feder-
al lands to increase active
management, improve forest
health and restore jobs. He
said Young’s bill is an excel-
lent idea, and should be one of
many options on the table to
¿ x forest policy.
am
Forest, but the bill does not
exclude other states with na-
tional forests.
“The worst managed lands
in the United States by our
federal government is the
Forest Service lands,” Young
said. “It’s because they be-
come park rangers instead of
silviculturists. They don’t un-
derstand the harvesting. They
don’t understand the impact
on communities.”
In Eastern Oregon, more
than 17 mills have closed over
the last 25 years with 1,200
jobs lost, according to a for-
est policy analyst with Boise
Cascade. Meanwhile, the For-
est Service spent more than
half its budget to ¿ ght wild-
¿ res in 2015.
Young’s bill would require
the Forest Service to convey
land back to the state if its leg-
islature passes a bill to do so,
along with all buildings used
to manage that land.
The bill does not include
wilderness or other protected
areas to transfer, and caps the
amount of land at 2 million
acres per state. By compar-
ison, the Umatilla Nation-
al Forest covers 1.4 million
acres.
Forest employees who
are not retained by the state
would have the option of be-
ing placed within an “equiv-
alent position in the federal
government,” according to
the bill.
Legislation
intended to
boost logging
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