Public Land and Pronghorn
History, they say, repeats itself. The conservation world is no exception these last months. The ideas known in the 70s and 80s known as the Sagebrush Rebellion came to call again recently, with the amendment offered by Representatives Celeste Maloy and Mark Amodei to President Trump’s budget bill and most recently, with Senator Mike Lee’s budget proposal. These would bypass the established process to dispose of public land and force the sale of federal lands to private buyers or the states.
Why are we, a pronghorn conservation organization, writing about this now? There are organizations dedicated to the protection of our ownership of, and access to, public lands.
The conservation of pronghorn cannot occur without conservation of the habitat they live on. While this is done in many ways on private lands, with and through private landowners, most pronghorn habitat, and our access to them, is ensured by public lands. The North American Pronghorn Foundation is not, opposed to every transfer of public land. There are many examples, particularly in developed areas, where land transfer simply makes good sense. The transfer of DoD property around the former El Toro Air Station for example, turned an abandoned and decaying property into a municipal park, golf course, and schools that gets tens of thousands of people outside. It isn’t always in a fully developed area that this makes sense. In Alaska, the biggest transfer of federal land ever undertaken has been occurring quietly and with little fanfare. In the last five years, the various federal agencies have transferred more than 5.3 million acres to the State of Alaska, tribal nations, and native individuals for their sustenance and to uphold treaty obligations.
What is more important than specific examples for either side is the process we use to decide when and how to dispose of those lands. The Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, or FLPMA, was designed to do just that. Without trying to make anyone an expert, a legal pathway exists for identifying, asking for public comment on, and finally, selling at fair market value, lands to be transferred out of federal ownership. After sale, the Federal Land Transfer Facilitation Act (FLTFA), specifies the use of the proceeds for improvement of existing public lands. The Malloy/Amodei Amendment and Senator Lee’s initiatives would bypass both processes, forcing the non-reviewed sale of identified land and directing the proceeds into the federal general fund.
Public lands are one of the things that makes us unique in the United States. They are one of our most democratic expressions. We all have equal right to use those lands within the law. When someone thinks those lands can serve us better under the stewardship of a state, local government, or a private landowner, we all must have a part in making that decision. This is why the North American Pronghorn Foundation finds pronghorn conservation aligned with access to and conservation of public land. We cannot allow land to be sold without the comment and consent of the people. Evading the legal process to do that, denies us our voice. Access to a resource is control and ownership of it. If we allow public land transfer without our voice being heard, we lose access to the land and the resources on it, including pronghorn. That’s what these measures are about. Privatizing public resources.
Public land not only sustains the people of this country who recreate on and enjoy them, they enable pronghorn to live as they have for millennia. We cannot speak for pronghorn without speaking for those lands. The NAPF will always stand for public land managed openly and transparently, and we will always stand to give voice and stewardship to land that sustains pronghorn. This is how we future-proof pronghorn, and that, simply said, is our mission.
-Erik Dippold