Zinke seeks more state wildlife management on federal lands

Interior Department land managers have been ordered to review hunting and fishing regulations on department lands to determine how they conflict with state regulations. In a memo Monday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ordered the review with an eye toward deferring to state management unless it conflicts with federal law. “The Department recognizes States as the first-line authorities for fish and wildlife management and hereby expresses its commitment to defer to the States in this regard except as otherwise required by Federal law,” Zinke wrote in the memo to heads of bureaus and offices. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Obama administration in 2016 adopted a blanket policy to ban predator control on federal wildlife reserves in Alaska. That blanket rule was overturned in the early months of the Trump administration, meaning state proposals for predator control returned to a case-by-case review. Zinke in his memo cited a 1983 codified policy stating that state authority for fish and game management remains the “comprehensive backdrop” applicable in the absence of overriding federal law...MORE

In a previous column on an investigation of BLM law enforcement I called for:

An explanation and analysis of why BLM refuses to comply with state law on trespass the way other landowners do, so that the confiscation and disposal of trespassing livestock is accomplished by state officials, based on state law and procedures.

If the Dept. of Interior should defer to state law on the management of wildlife why shouldn't it also defer to state law on trespassing livestock?