DuBois column: Fly over permits, grazing allotments and wildfire damage

Fly over permits, grazing allotments and wildfire damage

Federal management

Some argue for federal control of resources because of the economies of scale. The big boys would rather deal with the feds than fifty different states, and the enviros have always favored a centrally planned, top-down approach, where they only have to lobby in D.C.

A recent court decision highlights a great example of federal management of air and land resources. In a D.C. Court of Appeals decision, we learn that Congress passed the Air Tours Management Act of 2000 which requires vendors who wish to conduct commercial air tours over certain national parks and tribal lands to first obtain a permit from the FAA. The act specifies that the FAA, “in cooperation with” the National Park Service, “shall establish an air tour management plan . . . whenever a person applies for authority to conduct a commercial air tour operation.” Congress wanted this to be done in a timely fashion, as it instructed a decision be made “not later than 24 months” after an application is received.

Well guess what? After twelve years not one single management plan had been completed. Twelve years! What did Congress do? They amended the act to make it easier by exempting smaller parks and allowing the agencies to enter into the “more flexible and easier to implement” voluntary agreements. The result? The agencies continued to argue among themselves and the court found that due primarily to interagency conflict, the agencies “have failed to comply with their statutory mandate for the past nineteen years.”

Nineteen years and they can’t get it done. What would happen to you or I if we failed to comply with a federal statute for nineteen years? Actually, we would have already been in jail for eighteen years and six months.

Hammonds & Bundy

Rancher Steve Hammond and his father Dwight, you will recall, were pardoned by President Trump, and the Interior Dept. restored their grazing permits. Enviros filed suit challenging the awarding of the grazing permits, and a federal judge vacated the permits. The Hammonds then filed suit, but recently announced they were dropping their challenge and would compete for the allotments. Earlier this year the BLM announced they would prepare an analysis of the qualified candidates which includes the Hammonds and three neighboring ranches. At stake are four allotments, comprising about forty-one square miles. A BLM spokesman said they haven’t set a specific time-frame to reach their decision. The Hammonds, in their application, said if the permits were awarded to another rancher they would require “immediate compensation” for their water rights, intermingled private lands and range improvements. The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association is “fully supportive” of the Hammond family and would have preferred that other cattlemen not compete for the grazing allotments, said the group’s executive director, Jerome Rosa.

Ryan Bundy is back in the news, with the BLM saying they are investigating whether Bundy constructed illegal irrigation ditches across land within the Gold Butte National Monument. Apparently, hikers visiting the area have filed a four-page complaint with the BLM. Bundy told E&E news he was unaware the BLM was looking into his irrigation activities.

Smokey damages property

An interesting case is developing in Montana, where two ranchers are claiming they should be compensated nearly $9 million because the federal government burned their rangeland while attempting to control a wildfire. In their lawsuit, the ranchers allege the U.S. Forest Service intentionally ignited their property for “burnout and backfiring” operations while fighting the Alice Creek fire.  The lawsuit claims, “the ranches would have suffered no material or substantial damage as a result of the naturally ignited Alice Creek Fire,” except for the actions of the agency. The ranchers also allege the Forest Service had “safe and effective alternatives” to suppress the fire, but instead chose “to manage the Alice Creek Fire with land management goals primarily in mind rather than fire suppression.”

This case will be watched by many in the West.

Coronavirus & Climate Change

The enviros are doing their best to use the so-called pandemic to promote their policy goals. The most recent examples involve climate change. At a town hall called "Saving our Planet from the Existential Threat of Climate Change”, Washington Governor Jay Inslee said, "We should not be intimidated by people who say you should not use this COVID crisis to peddle a solution to climate change". Well, peddle away Governor. Of course Al Gore has jumped into the picture, telling MSNBC, “This climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are linked in some ways…The preconditions that raise the death rate from COVID-19, a great many of them, are accentuated, made worse by the fossil fuel pollution.”  Al Gore can out peddle Jay Inslee any day of the week, and he has made millions of dollars doing it. You can always count on Gore to see the dark at the end of the tunnel, and I have to wonder what his next Uncle Sam Scam will be.

Until next time, be a nuisance to the devil and don’t forget to check that cinch.

Frank DuBois was the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003, is the author of a blog: The Westerner (www.thewesterner.blogspot.com) and is the founder of The DuBois Rodeo Scholarship and The DuBois Western Heritage Foundation

This column originally appeared in the June issues of The New Mexico Stockman and The Livestock Market Digest.