Determining the cost to the state of Montana to take over management of roughly 25 million acres of federal land within its borders is no easy task, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation puts such a deal at close to half a billion dollars.
“There’s a whole new sector of land management that would be needed to manage public lands,” said John Grassy, information officer for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. “We’re being asked to project how we would staff and program an additional 25 million acres. It’s something we’ve never done before.”
Despite the difficulties, the DNRC is still trying to come up with some figures, possibly by this fall.
Gov. Steve Bullock has made it clear that he does not endorse a takeover of federal lands in Montana, calling such public property the birthright of state residents. But the Montana Republican Party in June endorsed such a move, including it as one of the planks of its platform.
The GOP resolution states, among other things, that such a takeover would benefit Montana residents by allowing a larger timber harvest and clearing forests of fuels that are now burning in historically large wildland fires – thereby creating jobs and reducing air pollution; increase access to public lands, especially for motorized users; and give local governments a greater say in land management in their counties. The state of Utah, which has been leading the federal land takeover charge in the West, has excluded tribal lands, national parks and wilderness areas from its proposed takeover. Given that Montana has about 3.4 million acres of designated wilderness, then the amount of federal land the state might lay claim to is about 21.6 million acres. The BLM also manages about 37.8 million subsurface acres for mineral, oil and gas extraction.
The DNRC oversees management of 5.1 million acres, so in acreage alone if the DNRC were to take on the responsibility of Forest Service and BLM land, its workload would increase fourfold...
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