Editorial: Salazar's efforts to get local input on federal lands commendable

Ken Salazar says he wants to get more people involved in designating which of the millions of acres of public land across the country, but mostly in the West, should be protected as wilderness. When the secretary of the Department of the Interior announced last month that he would back off his earlier decision to let the federal Bureau of Land Management resume its legal authority over designating protection-worthy federal land, he encouraged local governments and state leaders to come up with their own plans. Now he has requested input from members of Congress. He wants them to make lists of the “crown jewels” in their states, areas worthy of federal protection. Salazar’s efforts are commendable. He seems genuinely interested in hearing from the people who live and make their livings surrounded by national forests, national parks and huge tracts of land managed by the BLM. But the fact is, federal land does not belong to those people or to their local elected officials or even members of their congressional delegations. Federal land belongs to all Americans...more

When you see a paper like the Salt Lake Tribune going out of it's way to remind everyone these lands are nationally owned and that should determine decisions, it can only mean one thing: there is not much local support to designate these areas as Wilderness. Enviros don't like decisions to be made on the local level and neither apparently does the Salt Lake Tribune.