Zinke and his top officials were "caught off guard" when local BLM planners decided to follow the law?
Section 203 of FLPMA states:
Sec. 203. [43 U.S .C
. 1713]
(a) A tract of the
public lands (except land in units of the National Wilderness Preservation
System, National Wild and Scenic Rivers Systems, and National System
of Trails) may be
sold under this Act where, as a result of land use planning required under
section 202 of this Act, the Secretary determines that the sale of such tract meets
the following disposal critteria:
(1) such tract
because of its location or other characteristics is difficult and uneconomic to
manage as part of the public lands, and is not suitable for management by
another Federal department or agency; or
(2) such tract was
acquired for a specific purpose and the tract is no longer required for that
or any other Federal purpose; or
(3) disposal of such
tract will serve important public objectives, including but not limited to, expansion
of communities and economic development…
The reporters, either unaware or ignoring the law, infer the proposed sale is the result of collusion with a private party:
...the preferred alternative identified 16 parcels that could be sold to private developers.Among these parcels was one adjoining ranch property held by Utah lawmaker Mike Noel, a vocal leader in the campaign to reduce and block national monuments. Noel, who handled real estate transactions for the BLM during his 22-year tenure with the agency, said he never asked the BLM to make that acreage available and that he is not interested in buying more property in Johnson Canyon, east of Kanab, where he holds extensive land and water rights.... While serving as an influential rural voice in the Utah Legislature, Noel has been the state’s leading critic of federal land management and an advocate for shrinking the 1.9 million-acre Staircase monument, designated in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton. The lawmaker had direct access to Zinke during the secretary’s May 2017 tour of Utah.
Notice Noel is "influential" and had "direct access" to Zinke. You can see where they are trying to take the reader.
After four paragraphs of environmentalists decrying the proposal, they do allow Noel to say:
Noel said he suspects the BLM had sound reasons for proposing a possible sale of the parcels, especially if they were isolated and difficult to manage.“Just because they identify it for sale doesn’t mean it will sell,” Noel said. “If the land is not accessible and blocked off by private property or up against a cliff, then what’s the point of BLM owning it? Isn’t the whole idea to have land that is accessible to the public?”
“The secretary did not see the proposal before it went out and was not happy about it,” a senior Interior Department official said Friday afternoon.
... Interior’s Bernhardt, Zinke’s second in command, says the BLM proposal to privatize these lands was “inconsistent” with department policy and would be changed. “The failure to capture this inconsistency stops with me,” Bernhardt wrote in the memo, obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune. Bernhardt's memo says no public lands will be sold. “As the secretary has made clear throughout his tenure," Bernhardt said, “the Department of the Interior is opposed to the wholesale sale or transfer of public lands to states or private interests.”
The article says there are 16 parcels totaling just over 1,600 acres. That's an average of 100 acres per parcel. 1600 acres is 0.084 percent of the original monument, and 0.17 percent of the 900.000 acres returned to multiple use management. That is hardly the "wholesale" disposal of federal land.
Does the Secretary disagree that the parcels are small? or isolated? or difficult to manage? Or is it his ideological opposition to disposal in any form?
If we combine Zinke's opposition to disposal and transfer with his all out push to permanently fund land acquisition, what do we get? A larger federal estate. An increase in the size and influence of the feds. And this growth is to be permanently funded.
That is not what you would expect from the Trump administration, which in other areas has been attempting to limit funding and to pare back, deregulate, and decrease the size and scope of the feds.
2 comments:
The Presidential Proclamation modifying the boundaries of GSENM states:
"At 9:00 a.m., eastern standard time, on the date that is 60 days after the date of this proclamation, subject to valid existing rights, the provisions of existing withdrawals, and the requirements of applicable law, the public lands excluded from the monument reservation shall be open to:
(1) entry, location, selection, sale or other disposition under the public land laws;"
That's a good point, and one I should have made. Not only does FLPMA allow it, but so does the proclamation signed by Trump.
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