State report looks at federal lands transfer

The debate over states rights and federal lands is as old as the republic. In the modern West, the issue rose up again with the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s. The focus was on management of Bureau of Land Management lands, with lawmakers in the Southwest arguing that federal lands were only being held in trust until they could be handed over to the states.

Nearly a third of Montana is federal land, and the debate in Montana is mostly over forest lands. States rights supporters point out that Forest Service revenues are declining, fire hazards are increasing, and uncertain revenue-sharing plans substitute for state and local taxes.

Two Sagebrush Rebellion-related bills were debated in the Montana Legislature in 1981 but died in committees. A quarter century later, a slew of states rights bills sprang up in the legislature — one passed, two died in committee, and one was vetoed.

To address these concerns, the Montana Legislature authorized an interim study to evaluate management of federal lands. Senate Joint Resolution 15 passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both houses.

The job was handed over to an interim committee of the Montana Environmental Quality Council composed of equal numbers of Democratic and Republican legislators and four members of the public.

The working group surveyed county commissioners in counties where 15 percent or more of the land is federally managed. Twenty questions addressed threats from wildfire, optimizing watersheds, adequate supply of recreational roads, impacts from noxious weeds or insects, loss of tax revenue, loss of natural resource jobs, and the influence of “special interests” — that is, environmentalists.

Based on their responses, the counties overwhelmingly concluded that the federal government was mismanaging federal lands in Montana.

“More and more access is being denied because of the policies for threatened and endangered species,” Flathead County responded to one question. “Tourists come here to see healthy forests, not blackened trees and ground.”

A forester’s view

Rep. Ed Lieser, D-Whitefish, a retired forester, said he voted for SJ-15 because he thought members of the Environmental Quality Council needed to hear the Forest Service’s side of the issue.

Armed with a bachelor’s in silviculture from the University of Minnesota, Lieser retired from the Forest Service in 2008 after 30 years. A member of a national Type 1 Incident Management Team since 1996, Lieser recently returned from a major fire in Oregon.

Lieser said Sen. Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, drafted the questions sent to the county commissioners with a few edits from the working group.

“I didn’t like the questions,” Lieser said. “I think many of the questions were valid, but the survey was narrowly focused and elicited negative responses. I think it did identify some problems in some counties, but it also gave those with a preconceived or ill-informed notion about national forest management an opportunity to vent.”

Lieser said he agreed with some of the findings the working group came up with based on the county surveys “but not for the reasons of others on the committee.”

“I believe the Forest Service is in a very difficult management position because they recognize the need for fire as an ecological process, but because of endangered species and people living in the wildland urban interface, they must suppress fire,” he said.

As a result, the Forest Service finds itself doing “far more fire suppression and not enough active vegetative management,” he said.

Findings

Among the working group’s findings is “an urgent need to correct the way federal public lands are managed.” Lieser attributed that finding to a “basic disagreement with the multiple-use and ecosystem approach to land management and the Forest Service’s failure to meet their expectations.”

“If the Forest Service received a budget that is anywhere close to what is necessary to meet its mission, I don’t believe there would be as much concern,” he said.

The working group’s No. 1 recommendation was to establish a Federal Lands Committee to help federal, state, local and private land managers resolve problems and expedite project planning. Lieser said he proposed forming that committee.

“My idea was to collaborate and coordinate with federal land managers on management issues,” he said. “But while this idea was gestating, the Republicans added transferring federal lands to their platform, and most of the Republican candidates pledged to pursue the idea. If enacted, it became clear that the Federal Lands Committee would become a forum for pursuing the transfer of federal lands.”

Lieser said the working group’s 11 recommendations were feasible and mostly reasonable — unless they needed funding. The most important recommendation, he said, was the last — advising the legislature not to pursue transfer of federal lands to the state.

In addition to the legal costs of taking on the federal government, the state is not capable of managing so much land, Lieser said. But he sees a bigger concern — “the newly acquired state lands could be sold to private parties.”

“Many communities around the state have worked very hard to maintain open space and access to open lands,” he said.

The working group’s draft report is available online at www.leg.mt.gov/eqc by clicking on “Comment on draft reports and proposed legislation.” Comments can be submitted until Aug. 16.