DuBois column: Are you a target of Biden's 30by30?

 

  

Are you a target of Biden’s 30x30?

Recall that Biden issued Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad”, and that Section 216 of that order tasked federal agencies to protect 30 percent of our nation’s land and water areas by 2030.  This will be quite a task as their figures indicate only 12 percent of our lands are currently protected.

It has started, and it appears the 2024 elections are playing a major part in this.

Secretary of Interior Haaland recently announced the expansion of four National Wildlife Refuges for a total of 1.13 million acres:

Roanoke River National Wildlife Refuge (NC) may now conserve up to 287,000

Aransas and Big Boggy National Wildlife Refuges (TX) 150,000 acres

Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge (NM and TX) 700,000 acres.

Interior assures us that each of the four Land Protection Plans “were developed through public processes and informed by input from local landowners, Tribal leaders, state wildlife agencies, and other stakeholders. The Plans outline land protection priorities for these refuges that will inform the Service’s interest in acquiring parcels from landowners who are willing to sell property (fee-title) or property rights (conservation easements or cooperative agreements) through purchase or donation.” 

Then we have the Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. The Biden administration has just finalized their so-called “conservation” rule or to be more technically correct The Conservation and Landscape Health Rule. BLM says the rule is needed to put conservation on an equal footing with mining, timber and grazing, while critics say it moves away from multiple-use by giving priority to conservation.

“By putting its thumb on the scales to strongly favor conservation over other uses, this rule will obstruct responsible domestic mining projects and compound permitting challenges, further deepening our already grave foreign mineral import reliance,” says the National Mining Association.

The NCBA says the final rule runs counter to the agency’s multiple use mandate under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA). The rule, says the NCBA, “rearranges agency priorities” and places “an outsized focus on the use of restrictive Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) designations that have compromised land and water health across the West.” The result is “a framework that gives the BLM more restrictive land management” which will produce “increased conflict on the landscape.”   

You know times are getting bad when cowboys start talking about “landscapes.”

The types of conservation addressed in this rule are protection and restoration. On the restore side of things, there were differences of opinion on whether livestock grazing can be one of the methods used for restoration purposes.

I’ll just let the BLM explain this for you:

“Some commenters argued that managed grazing can in fact achieve land health standards and that specific practices, such as targeted grazing, have been used to create fire breaks, manage invasive species, and promote land health. Other commenters argued that livestock grazing is incompatible with restoration and that grazing should be eliminated in areas undergoing restoration.”

“This rule is not establishing or revising regulations governing the BLM’s grazing program and does not contemplate using or not using grazing as a land health management tool. As previously discussed, conservation takes many forms on public lands, including in the ways grazing and many other uses are carried out. This rule focuses on conservation as a land use within the multiple use framework and develops the toolbox for conservation use that enables some of the many conservation strategies the agency employs to steward the public lands for multiple use and sustained yield. Grazing as a management tool may fit within these strategies.”

Now isn’t that perfectly clear to you? Do you now have a better understanding of how this rule may affect your allotment?

It really doesn’t matter what you or I think. What counts is the opinion of the powers that be. John Podesta, the White House climate change hit man says, “Today’s final rule from the Department of the Interior is a huge win for ensuring balance on our public lands, helping them withstand the challenges of climate change and environmental threats like invasive species, and making sure they continue to provide services to the American people for decades to come.”

The other thing you need to watch out for is “resilience.” The BLM claims that they cannot manage an area for multiple use and sustained yield unless it is resilient. Ride or drive around your place and see if it is resilient. Don’t know what that means? You best be finding out.

Then we have the national monuments.

Nine months ago Biden traveled to Arizona to designate the 917,000 acre Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument, the fifth one of his Presidency. And now we learn a coalition of enviros has presented an 800,000 signature petition to Biden and Secretary Haaland urging them, before this year’s election, to use their authority in the Antiquities Act to designate additional areas in seven states: California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Illinois and Maryland.

Notice that New Mexico is not mentioned and that I have previously written of the enviro effort to establish a 245,000 acre Mimbres Peaks National Monument in the Deming area. Let’s combine that with an action just taken by Secretary Haaland. On April 18 she used her authority to withdraw 4200 acres near Placitas. According to an Interior press release, this Public Land Order 7940, “protects, preserves, and promotes the scenic integrity, cultural importance, recreational values and wildlife habitat connectivity of the lands and surrounding area.” This leads me to ask about the Mimbres proposal, “Why has no President or Secretary of Interior of either political party, in all these years felt this area needed this amount of protection?” They didn’t care enough about it to even do a simple withdrawal like Haaland did for Placitas?

I will close by reiterating my astonishment that enviros and other supposed proponents of democracy continue to support the Antiquities Act. There is no requirement for public input prior to a monument being designated. Whether or not the public has a chance to comment is completely at the discretion of the President. There is also no requirement to weigh the environmental consequences of such designation. NEPA doesn’t kick in until after the monument is designated.

One person, the President, can designate however many acres he wants without limitation, without public input and without considering the environmental impact of his action.

Giving one person that kind of control over 640 million acres does not sound like democracy to me.

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 May editions of the NM Stockman and the Livestock Market Digest.

DuBois column: BLM's Culture Change on the Range

 

BLM’s culture change on the range

E&E news recently had an article addressing the BLM’s rule change on conservation and their new emphasis on designating Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs).

Released last March, BLM says the rule emphasizes conservation and makes it as important as livestock grazing and energy development.

BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning says, “The impacts of a changing climate and increased use [of public lands] are here today. And if the BLM intends to fulfill its promise to the American people and to future generations, we need the tools to respond.”

The enviros are right with her. Danielle Murray, with the Conservation Lands Foundation, says, “For nearly 40 years, the agency has largely focused on resource extraction and other multiple uses but neglected conservation, recreation, wildlife, fragile watersheds and cultural resource protection in partnership with tribes who have stewarded these lands for centuries. This rulemaking gives the BLM an opportunity to rebalance its priorities and develop an inclusive conservation approach.”

The proposed rule also sets up a new conservation leasing system which would allow nonprofit groups to acquire leases on BLM lands for up to 10 years.

The article says they expect this rule to be finalized in April.

So what does this new rule and placing a priority on ACECs mean?

Bret Birdsong, a law professor at the University of Nevada is quoted as saying the BLM is “undergoing culture change.” The professor, who worked at Interior during the Obama administration, says the proposed rule, “is designed and will have the effect of helping to push that culture change away from industrial uses and towards more conservation-minded management of the public lands.”

The BLM says that designating ACECs is “a principal tool for protecting important natural, cultural and scenic resources on the public lands the BLM manages.”

With the new emphasis on them, you better get ready for those new ACECs. In the last year alone BLM has identified 85 parcels comprising 2.2 million acres as ACECs.

Go to the Land Use Planning section of FLPMA (202), and under (d) you will find that the Secretary shall “give priority the designation and protection of areas of critical environmental concern.”                                                                                                                                                                                

Go to the Definitions section of FLPMA (103) and the very first term defined is ACEC:

 The term “areas of critical environmental concern” means areas within the public lands where special management attention is required (when such areas are developed or used or where no development is required) to protect and prevent irreparable damage to important historic, cultural, or scenic values, fish and wildlife resources or other natural systems or processes, or to protect life and safety from natural hazards.

Now you know what they are and that the agency must give priority to them.

If you really want to get involved and wish to protect yourself and your family, go to the BLM website (blm.gov) and in the search tab enter ACEC. There you will find the most recent instructions to the field “Clarification and Interim Guidance for Consideration of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern Designations in Resource Management Plans and Amendments.” There you will also find BLM Manual 1613-Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, which provides 22 pages of direction on how to identify and designate these areas.

I’m sure you will find the whole thing a joyful experience.

Finally, one thing Professor Birdsong said intrigued me. When discussing BLM and ACECs, Birdsong said these designations were “squarely within their authority.” I had been wondering why “lands with wilderness characteristics” was never mentioned. That fact, combined with the Birdsong quote, led me to thinking BLM was concerned these “lands with wilderness characteristics” designations were on shaky legal ground, and that would be a positive development. The more I thought about it, though, I don’t believe that was the case.  The “lands with wilderness characteristics” designation has certain mandatory criteria that a parcel must meet. The BLM found this to be to be too confining and would prevent them from reaching their desired amount of acreage to be removed from multiple use. So they chose the more broadly defined ACEC.

Most likely ACECs became the weapon of choice for both reasons. They are more legally defensible and they provide the more expansive and flexible platform to make these changes.

Only one thing tops this and that is the President’s authority to designate national monuments. More on that next month.

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 April editions of the NM Stockman and the Livestock Market Digest.

well, i made it through yesterday

 

Had a pacemaker put in my heart.

it was a little different because they couldn't give me the full anesthesia treatment, so i was awake during the entire procedure.

some pain last night, but the hardest thing is i have to keep my left arm tight against my side. being lifted in and out of a wheelchair with no left arm/hand to guide you is rough. same for trying to position yourself in bed. and as i'm sure you noticed, it takes two hands to capitalize letters on this laptop.

next challenge is march 1, when i find out what they are going to do with this cancer below my right eye.

DuBois column 'Pendley on Biden'

 

In the recently published column The Uses and Abuses of Federal Land, Perry Pendley writes:

...It comes as a surprise to most Americans that the federal government owns nearly one-third of the nation’s land mass, in excess of 640 million acres. (It also owns 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), but that is another story.) Most know of the National Park Service in the 9Department of the Interior and its 80 million acres of parks, preserves, reserves, monuments, memorials, historic sites, battlefields, and recreation areas, in every state. Many Americans may be familiar with the 141 national forests, managed by the U.S. Forest Service from the Department of Agriculture, spread across 43 states and 193 million acres. Less known is the Fish & Wildlife Service, also in Interior, and the 89 million acres of its National Wildlife Refuge System in all fifty states. Few Americans outside the West, however, are aware of the Bureau of Land Management, the original “BLM,” another Interior agency, which manages 245 million acres, mostly in the eleven western states and Alaska. 

Those agencies manage 95 percent of federal land. Most of the rest is held by the Department of Defense: 11 million acres by its departments and 12 million acres by the Army Corps of Engineers, dating to 1775, for the 456 lakes it manages for water control and recreation in 43 states. Numerous other federal agencies manage the residual federal land holdings.

Pendley then does his usual superb job in describing the current distribution of those lands, the legislative language on  "multiple use" and "sustained yield", followed by succinct observations on how the Reagan, Clinton, Obama, and Trump administrations managed those lands and proclaims the Biden administration is managing these lands by ignoring the law and the courts. 

Concerning Biden, he concludes by saying:

To date, no one can stop him. Not Congress, which is deadlocked. Not the federal courts, which .he ignores. Not even, given his response to its rulings, the Supreme Court itself. 

Pendley and I were colleagues at the Dept. of Interior and you can see his breadth of knowledge and that he pulls no punches when it comes to federal lands policy. He also mentions some land designations and that gives me the opportunity to comment on something that has been bugging me for quite awhile.

Pendley writes that, "Congress recognized that other federal lands were special and should be set aside", then mentioning Wilderness, Wild & Scenic Rivers, and the Endangered Species Act.

However, I caution you to beware the politician, public official or environmental lobbyist who claims these designations are necessary to protect your access to these lands.

Why? Because it is just the opposite.

Each one those statutes mentioned is an Act of EXCLUSION.

Their primary purpose of these statutes is to exclude humans from some areas and to exclude certain human activities in the remainder.

Some definitions of exclude:

Oxford - deny (someone) access to or bar (someone) from a place, group, or privilege.

Cambridge - to prevent someone or something from entering a place or taking part in an activity.

Merriman-Webster 

: to prevent or restrict the entrance of

: to bar from participation, consideration, or inclusion

: to expel or bar especially from a place or position previously occupied

A good example would be 1964 Wilderness Act.

That act defines Wilderness:

A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain...

Of special interest here is Section 4 which lists all the prohibited items. Here is an edited for brevity version:

PROHIBITION OF CERTAIN USES

(c) …there shall be no commercial enterprise and no permanent road within any wilderness area designated by this Act and…there shall be no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure or installation within any such area.

That is quite a list. All of those either exclude your presence or place severe limitations on what you can do while there.

Your access will be less than what is was before.

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 1987-2003, has a blog THE WESTERNER (ts https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/) and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship and the DuBois Western Heritage Foundation.

This column originally appeared in the January editions of the NM Stockman and the Livestock Market Digest.

Pendley's most recent book is Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan's Battle with Environmental Extremists