How do we manage to manage public lands?

The business of managing public lands is messy, somewhat akin to the sausage making of legislatures. And Congress frequently makes it worse. For readers not well-versed in public-lands acronyms, the resource advisory councils, or RACs (not to be confused with the Rec Rac) were created during the Clinton administration to advise the BLM. There are three resource advisory councils in Colorado, each with 15 members — the Front Range RAC, the Southwest RAC and the Northwest RAC, which includes Mesa County. Representatives from this community include Mike Perry with the Museum of Western Colorado, conservationist Charles Kerr and mountain-bike enthusiast Pat Kennedy. There are also ranchers, off-road vehicle users and oil-and-gas industry representatives on the RAC. They examine issues and offer the BLM recommendations on topics ranging from grazing to gas drilling to recreation. That’s right, recreation. These groups, with citizens representing a wide array of interests, already provide recommendations to the BLM regarding things like recreation fees. So why is another bureaucratic beast such as the Rec Rac necessary? Gene King, a Denver-area resident and member of the Front Range RAC, left little doubt during the combined RAC meeting Wednesday what he thought of the issue. “The reason we have this is that it was stuck in an omnibus bill by a congressman from Ohio, I believe, without any public input,” he said. “And now we’re stuck with this piece of crap.” I couldn’t find evidence of who the congressman was, but King was otherwise correct about the origins of the Rec Racs. They were created through the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, which was included in the 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, according to a federal Web site...Grand Junction Sentinel