In an increasingly crowded and pay-to-play world, America’s 640 million acres of public lands – including our national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands–have become the nation’s mightiest hunting and fishing strongholds. This is especially true in the West, where according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 72 percent of sportsmen depend on access to public lands for hunting. 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. Gone also would be a very basic American value: the unique and abundant freedom we’ve known for all of us, rich and poor and in-between, to experience our undeveloped and wild spaces, natural wonders, wildlife and waters, and the assets that have made life and citizenship in our country the envy of the world.
In Part Eight of our series, we stop in at Utah’s Book Cliffs.
Stretching almost 200 miles from Price, Utah, to Palisades, Colorado, the Book Cliffs comprise the longest continuous escarpment in the world. High plateaus of ponderosa pines, firs, and aspen groves, and staggered lines of towering cliffs and isolated canyons, open out onto arid plains. Because the terrain and the vegetation changes so much with altitude, it is near-perfect mule deer and elk country, where summer range and winter range are closely connected.
When American sportsmen began restoring the wildlife lost during the settlement of the West, it was BLM public lands like those in the Book Cliffs that made the experiment the most successful wildlife recovery on earth. Today, there’s a limited draw hunt for trophy elk and mule deer here. Colorado River cutthroat trout, wild bison, and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep have been restored, and pronghorn numbers are strong. All of these success stories were written almost entirely using sportsmen’s dollars on healthy public lands accessible to all Americans.
In 2012, the Utah legislature passed H.B. 148, “Transfer of Public Lands Act and Related Study,” a demand for 31 million acres of public lands like those in the Book Cliffs to be given to the state. You see, the cliffs are also a rich source of natural gas, coal, oil, helium, and potentially new reserves of oil.
Energy development under federal management has already been extensive enough here to pose real threats to big game and other wildlife resources. Federal management under the principles of multiple-use and sustained yield has forced the BLM to create management plans that at least lessen the impact of development on wildlife.
As reported in a recent Utah study, the transfer of public lands would mean that the state would face huge new expenses for land management—an estimated $280 million per year. Utah has already sold 4.1 million of the 7.5 million acres it was granted at statehood, and millions of acres of the most valuable public lands could still be sold to foreign companies and billionaires, cutting off public access forever. If the state were to retain energy-rich lands like the Book Cliffs, it would need to aggressively develop mineral resources in order to cover the enormous costs associated with the management of its other lands. Energy-producing landscapes like the Book Cliffs would be industrialized at a scale that far exceeds levels under federal management, leaving nothing behind worth accessing.
Utah remains the epicenter of the land seizure movement, and two bills were passed during the 2015 state legislative session that are aimed at undermining America’s public lands heritage. Fortunately, Utah’s fervor for public lands seizure is not matched in most other states, and sportsmen will continue working to keep it that way.
Here are three ways you can support sportsmen’s access on public lands.
Stay tuned. In the rest of this 10-part series, we’ll continue to cover some of America’s finest hunting and fishing destinations that could be permanently seized from the public if politicians have their way.
When will these Land Grabbing Conservatives STOP? My guess, NEVER!!!
Access by foot only on B. L. M. & Forest Service land is a direct act of discrimination against disabled or elderly people. At the same time the Government Employees drive into these areas.
There are a number of reasons to keep the lands in question under federal control, however, the federal government doesn’t efficiently oversee most of these lands unless they fall under very specific, very high nationally distributed traffic, e.g., Yellowstone. If there is not a large draw for people from all over the country to visit then the federal government oversight is very limited but they won’t allow the states to control and make improvements while following federal guidelines.
There are a number of parks and recreational areas in Utah and the other immediately surrounding states that are under-developed and not well kept due to a lack of interest on the part of the federal government because of the lack of national traffic. It seems that the federal funds are only directed to the larger parks that get consistent national coverage from a campaigning point of view. There are a lot of land areas that are of interest only to hunters and shooters so they get no federal funds. Laws in the states deny access for shooting sportsmen, ATVs, and other types of activities that would use the land. Since we’re banned by our activities from these areas there is next to no traffic on the lands. The governments look at the lack of use and determine that the lands are unimportant to us. Once the lack of importance is determined they decide the lands can be better put to use for energy development, housing, or other privatized use.
So in response to David Allan Cole above all of us ‘land grabbing conservatives’ want control of our lands back so we can put them to use. You have no idea how much I would love to get out on the central Utah and Idaho prairies and do some long range target shooting or explore gullies and washes in the middle of nowhere for semi-precious stones and photography opportunities.
In response to John A. Musgrove it’s not discriminatory to deny improving specific public lands to the point of wheelchair access. It’s not possible without destroying the ecosystem, or at the very least the picturesque nature, of parks to put in miles and miles of pavement or elevated wood construction paths. What’s more who would pay for it? It seems that very few people are willing to look at the ecological or economic impact of these types of improvements. I’m partially disabled myself. Both of my knees are functional but I can’t hike the rough trails I did as a young adult due to significant damage. But I don’t bemoan the fact that 20-somethings are able to get out and climb what are relatively mild trails. I understand what my limitations are and push myself when I can but I also understand that there are some places I simply cannot get to and I refuse to request or allow such destructive ‘improvements’ as would be required to allow access for the disabled. It’s an unfortunate situation but it’s a disability. People, particularly the PC police, really need to accept that it’s not a judgement, just a realization and a statement of fact.