It cannot be stated often enough, nor apparently loud enough and by enough people/voters/constituents. So the plea goes out yet again: Stop the madness.
For some baffling reason, the shortsighted proposal to transfer ownership of vast swaths of federally managed public lands to underfunded states continues to be resurrected in the halls of government despite clear objection to the notion by sportsmen, conservation groups and nonpartisan polling of residents in the states where the majority of federal public land is found.
The most recent assault on our nation's collective backyard occurred a little more than a week ago, when the U.S. Senate passed a budget amendment sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, that encourages Congress to "sell, or transfer to, or exchange with, a state or local government any Federal land that is not within the boundaries of a National Park, National Preserve, or National Monument ..." While Murkowski's amendment lacks any genuine authority, prevailing thought holds that the senator was testing the waters to gauge how her colleagues might vote on a formal land transfer bill in the future. Some anticipate legislation will be introduced in the fall...more
Apparently, this writer for the Denver Post doesn't even want the feds to exchange lands with a state. The states aren't "underfunded", the feds are overfunded.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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