Protecting western lands: a legacy opportunity for President Obama

“To be honest, Obama is traveling to Denver this week because he needs to win Colorado in 2012. His support for Western wilderness could reveal him, not only as a consummate politician strategizing for regional votes, but as a president who follows Stegner’s words by consecrating for all Americans, and for our global visitors, ‘a geography of hope.’

Perhaps a grand vista seen through the clear air from a mountain peak or a meditative moment in a serene, slick-rock canyon could awaken in the president a knowing sense that preserving Western landscapes is as essential to the national interest as the security of jobs and a sound economy. It can also be important to the electing of presidents and building their legacy.”  Op-ed – The Aspen Times

A parade of untrustworthiness by Utah elected officials

“Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Rob Bishop begin this recent parade of untrustworthiness by protesting the use of the Antiquities Act to protect public lands. They cynically and disingenuously bristle about Utahns being more than capable “of managing our own lands,” and they rail against ‘unelected bureaucrats’ who do so in our stead.

Do they really think that the state of Utah will do a better job managing 33 million acres of federal lands when we can’t keep our 95,000 acres (and a million acres of surface water) in Utah state parks solvent?

Hatch, a United States senator for the past 34 years, and Bishop, chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, know perfectly well that public lands do not belong to Utahns alone. And they disrespect the decent ‘unelected bureaucrats’ who work for the federal land management agencies, devoting their lives to our natural heritage.”  Op-ed – The Salt Lake Tribune

Great news for wilderness! Forest roadless rule upheld

“Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance attorney Heidi McIntosh said the ruling makes clear that federal land managers can preserve some lands under their multiple-use mandates.

‘It’s a pretty definitive statement,’ she said.”  Read more – The Salt Lake Tribune

Posted by admin

A hearing on tax relief programs in counties with abundant federal land turned into yet another soap-box rap session for anti-wilderness representatives today.

Rep. Rob Bishop played host to Southern Utah University professor Ryan Yonk, who gave testimony to the Public Lands Subcommittee about his recently issued (though un-peer-reviewed) paper asserting wilderness and protective designations for federal lands have a “non positive” or even “negative” impact on local communities.

What that has to do with the Payments in Lieu of Taxes program, through which the federal government gives subsidies to counties with federal land to make up for a lack of property taxes–and the intended subject of the hearing–was unclear.

Nevertheless, Yonk was there to testify that conservation hurts rural communities. That’s an assertion that contradicts those made recently by Headwaters Economics, which studied 17 national monument designations made post-1982 and found that in no case did the local economies suffer as a result.

Yet, even though he was there as the anti-wilderness poster child, Yonk’s case fell short in the indictment of protecting federal lands. For example:

–Yonk said protections for lands “increase costs to communities.” But he hedged when addressing whether undoing said protections would equal a golden goose. “Establishing what would happen gets to be very difficult and it involves examining what resources are actually available on which public lands.” In other words, sweeping generalizations about these things are tricky.

–A recent  Headwaters Economics report found in Kane and Garfield Counties, the two counties with access to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, all indicators of economic growth improved following monument designation. Yonk testified the problem he saw with that was Headwaters used government growth data without taking into account what kind of growth the area may have had anyway, in a vacuum, regardless of the monument, or what kind of growth other non-monument counties similar in nature experienced. Because Headwaters’ purpose was to investigate what the relationship between monuments and growth actually is, the critique is silly. The fact, like it or not, is that no correlation between monuments and negative growth existed.

–Finally, Yonk testified that he takes into account the “opportunity costs” of conservation designations, like whether industry could have developed the land were it not under conservation-oriented management. But Yonk said even so, his study didn’t take into account the much-lamented-by-Bishop lost opportunity cost of the Andalex Coal Mine that once was proposed for the remote Kaiparowits Plateau. Why?

“We have serious doubts about whether it would have been open today,” Yonk said, citing what he perceives as a “regulatory burden.”

So instead of a theoretical coal Shangri-La that wouldn’t be active anyway, 15 years ago we protected a spectacular piece of the American West for all future generations to enjoy–an act an overwhelming majority of Economist readers just agreed has innate value. Sounds like that “opportunity cost” was actually a bargain.

Posted by Jen Beasley

The shameless onslaught of the Great Outdoors Giveaway continued this morning in the House of Representatives when six bills all designed to undermine the Antiquities Act received testimony before the Public Lands Subcommittee.

One of them, Rep. Rob Bishop’s so-called “Utah Lands Sovereignty Act,” would prevent any future president from designating national monuments in the state, eliminating one of the finest scientific and conservation legacies President Teddy Roosevelt left us: the ability to protect from pothunters, vandals, exploitative industry and indiscriminate off-road vehicle users the rich cultural inheritance left to us by the Ancestral Puebloans and the early pioneers; the ability to engage in scientific discovery on our public lands; and the ability to pass that heritage to our children.

But there’s one more benefit to national monuments that frequently gets overlooked by Rep. Bishop and his cohorts: they are a boon to the communities that surround them. Indeed, far from the “unnecessary hardships” Bishop claimed resulted from the 1996 designation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the economies of nearby communities are actually thriving in the years since.

According to the non-profit, non-partisan testimony of Ray Rasker of Headwaters Economics, from 1996-2008 in Garfield and Kane Counties, the two counties with direct access to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument:

• Population grew by 8 percent
• Jobs grew by 38 percent
• Real personal income grew by 40 percent
• Per capita income grew by 30 percent

Rasker said areas with protected lands attract businesses, workers and retirees because of their quality of life, and tourism follows as well. While he could not state a direct cause and effect between monument designation and economic growth, there was one thing that was definite.

”In no case did we find that the creation of a national monument led to an economic downturn,” Rasker said, after reviewing 17 national monuments, all greater than 10,000 acres, all designated after 1982.

The Antiquities Act has been used time and again since 1906—128 times by 15 presidents of both parties—to preserve treasures unique to the American story. Arches, Bryce and Zion were all national monuments before they became national parks. The Grand Staircase-Escalante and Dinosaur National Monuments each propelled scientific discovery in paleontology, yielding countless new species of dinosaurs and integral clues to the past. All of these provide untold scenic and recreational values to visitors, who flock from all over the country and the world to see them.

Indeed, on its own tourism website, Kane County touts the fact it offers “access to more national monuments and parks than any other place,” and says the “Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a dramatic, multi-hued landscape that is rich in natural and human history.”

Fortunately, our own recent history has included the vision to protect those places with the Antiquities Act, and an attempt to defund the Act this spring was swatted down by a bipartisan force in the House of Representatives that included 213 Democrats and 34 Republicans. We hope this sensible protection of one of our nation’s best tools will continue, so please contact your representatives to ask them to stop the attack on national monuments.

As Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona put it in the hearing, those who would do so “are on the wrong side of history.” And, as it turns out, the wrong side of economics.

Posted by Jen Beasley