BY ETHAN AUMACK
Heavily armed, camouflage-wearing militants manning sniper posts and clamoring to bullhorn their anti-government innuendo. Wanton destruction of property. Calls to arms broadcast to militia around the country.
The Bundy clan’s January takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon was a scene I would have expected from another part of the world‒a desperate, violent, and lawless one at that. Not here though. Surely not a refuge for pity’s sake, along the banks of the Donner und Blitzen River I camped next to, fished in, and fell in love with as an eight-year-old boy.
I watched aghast for nearly a month as the Bundys held the refuge hostage. I listened to their rhetoric, overwrought descriptions of an oppressive federal government run amok, and their claims of federal public lands’ constitutional illegitimacy. I heard their demands that the refuge should be transferred to Harney County control and their threats of violence should law enforcement attempt to remove them from the refuge.
Like many others, I was angry—more angry with each day the Bundys held the refuge hostage. Angry at the destruction of place and public property. Angry at the demand that these public lands and others be taken from us and given to a select few (and not, by the way, back to the Northern Paiute, from whom the land had originally been seized). And even angrier that this motley crew of ne'er-do-wells would have the temerity to demand change with AR-15 assault rifles.
We can take some small comfort that many of the takeover's instigators are now in prison. Unfortunately, their extreme actions weren't politically isolated. They are radical manifestations of a movement reminiscent of the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s that has gathered momentum over the past several years‒one based on the assertion that counties and states can claim legitimate control and ownership over federal public lands.
The federal lands takeover movement we are in the midst of is widespread.
Pushed by groups like the American Lands Council, and sometimes funded with millions of taxpayer dollars, congressional representatives, state legislators, county commissioners, and others throughout the West continue to promise an imminent transfer of public lands.
This transfer will never happen. Constitutional and public lands scholars have time and time again reviewed the claims made by takeover advocates, and come to the same simple conclusion: The United States Constitution and the Supreme Court provide clear authority to the federal government to own and manage federal lands, and have done so for more than 200 years. Revolutions notwithstanding, they will do so for the next 200.
Some would argue that, given the apparent fruitlessness of the movement, we should ignore it—let it die its own death. We would do so, however, at our own peril. The movement has given voice and provided a rallying cry to individuals who feel disenfranchised from the federal government, and channeled their anger toward those responsible for stewarding more than 640 million acres of public lands. In the face of such anger, we increasingly see land managers managing from a place of fear—retracting and sometimes wholesale abandoning reasonable conservation policies and practices. Critical efforts to revise archaic grazing management plans have been shelved and hard-won collaborative solutions to contentious public lands challenges dismantled. Protective policies at the state and federal levels have been challenged and weakened piece by piece. This regression and retrenchment present a dire threat.
First, we should remain loyal to the always beautiful, sometimes frustrating, and absolutely critical concept of lands owned by the American people, managed for the American people. Our public lands are a biological sanctuary, a place for physical and spiritual rejuvenation‒open and often wild lands increasingly rare in this congested world. Especially in an era of daunting threats like climate change, the protections set out by laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act offer at least a modicum of restraint in the face of unfettered development. We should and will promote the concept of public lands on the ground, in the courts, and through the media to ensure their continued protection.
To mount an ethically grounded defense of public lands, though, we need to clearly appreciate that many of these public lands claimed as property of the states are in fact the homelands and places of spiritual sustenance for numerous Native American tribes. Across the Colorado Plateau, a long-overdue movement to honor this heritage is underway as tribes work through the Bears Ears and Greater Grand Canyon Heritage national monument campaigns to ensure that tribal values, priorities, and knowledge shape management and decision-making. We applaud and will continue to strongly support these efforts and partner with tribes as they rightfully claim a central place in the ongoing public lands debate.
Balancing a wide range of values and interests is the unenviable task of federal public land managers. For some issues like mining and energy development, finding agreement amongst stakeholders is very difficult. Battles will be fought and decisions will be made, creating winners and losers. Too often, though, in the face of controversy, land managers give up on finding agreement where it actually can be found. They retreat behind the fortified walls of our federal bureaucracies, lobbing over project proposals for stakeholders to feud over and watching as the inevitable scrum ensues.
Land managers can and must do a better job of identifying the issues (and there are many, including restoration, grazing, and recreation) where consensus-based collaboration can succeed. They must do a better job of convening and facilitating collaborations, and implementing the creative solutions that emerge from them. Collaborations can help to build a sense of common appreciation for public lands and neutralize the overheated, divisive rhetoric upon which the federal lands takeover movement thrives.
Disappointingly few policies encourage consensus-based collaboration in the public lands realm. The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act is one policy that does—providing key funding to efforts that demonstrate a broad base of support and a willingness by adversaries to resolve conflicts. The program currently supports nearly 40 forest restoration efforts. Congress should expand this approach, generating solutions where they are needed most and creating an effective antidote to the toxicity of the federal lands takeover campaign.
Finally, we must hold federal land takeover advocates, including public officials, accountable. By caricaturing the federal government and offering remedies cloaked in faux legalese, these leaders foment a misdirected rebellion. At best, this misdirection will increase antipathy towards public lands and their managers. At worst, it will legitimize aggressive and authoritarian attacks on our public lands, like we saw at Malheur.
Federally owned public lands in the United States are a big deal. When managed appropriately, these lands give us the clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat, and carbon storage vital to sustaining life across the West. They inspire us, give us solace and a sense of humility. They also force us to come to terms with what it means to be a citizen.
Wendell Berry writes of the challenge of living well in hard country: “It is no paradisal dream. Its hardship is its opportunity”. We—federal land managers, elected officials, environmental advocates, and the vast community of public lands users—all have a responsibility to embrace the challenge, the hardship, and the opportunity of public lands citizenship. There is no better place to do so than the Colorado Plateau, and no time to waste.
care, will allow our forests and their species to gradually transition into a brave new world. They surely deserve that opportunity.
Ethan Aumack serves as the Grand Canyon Trust's conservation director.
Also in this issue:
Balancing the art and economics of America’s public lands. Read now ›