A paradigm shift in the politics of public lands

Congress overwhelmingly passed an omnibus bill Tuesday that strengthened America’s commitment to its public lands — hundreds of millions of acres of open space that carry labels like national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, wilderness and recreation areas.

The support this measure enjoyed among Republicans just might signal an approaching end to the party’s decades-long embrace of a campaign aimed at divesting the U.S. of ownership or control of public lands. 

{mosads}That campaign produced few tangible results. A proposal by the Reagan administration to sell off about 40 million acres went nowhere, and efforts by Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt to yield control of hundreds of millions of acres of public lands to mining companies and ranching enterprises were stymied by Congress or the courts. Since then, the campaign has tried to keep the idea alive by regularly inserting a plank calling for divestiture of public lands in Republican Party platforms, including in 2016.    

While President Trump never embraced the idea of selling off public lands, his administration has revived the Watt approach, working to turn over control of many millions of acres to fossil fuel and other industrial interests, and to gut regulations protecting clean water and endangered species. Indeed, the administration has given industry even more than it asked for, abandoning agreements prior administrations had forged with western governors to protect imperiled species, and drastically downsizing the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, the first large protected area of public lands where Native Americans were given a meaningful management role. Any doubts about this administration’s priorities were erased when, during the recent government shutdown, it kept civil servants processing oil and gas drilling permits while park rangers were furloughed. 

But the passage of this bill out of Congress, along with several other developments, suggest that the administration is fighting an uphill battle. Market forces are killing the coal industry and discouraging petroleum exploration in remote unsullied parts of the public lands. Public opinion polls, including the most recent annual Conservation in the West survey conducted by Colorado College, consistently show that most westerners, like Americans elsewhere, strongly resist divesting the U.S. of ownership or control of public lands. In the campaign leading up to the 2018 mid-terms, most Republican candidates in the west took strong pro-public lands positions. 

If all these things suggest that a bipartisan consensus on the fundamentals of public land policy is beginning to emerge, it would be going back to the future. The movement that first set aside the public lands we enjoy today transcended party lines. Many conservatives embraced the cause, following the teachings of the great 18th-century economist Adam Smith, who strongly favored private ownership of lands except for those held “for the purpose of pleasure and magnificence” which in a “great and civilized” nation, he wrote, ought to be held by the national government. And while the left strongly supported public lands, the Democratic Party never embraced socialism, always preferring instead to give private enterprises an important (but not controlling) role in managing them. 

I hope these recent developments show that the Republican Party is ready to re-embrace its rich history favoring safeguarding public lands in public hands, and I hope that it and the Democratic Party are ready to have meaningful dialogue about how best to engage the private sector moving forward to address the serious issues confronting those lands.  

{mossecondads}Certainly, there are daunting challenges to discuss, including how to handle the effects of a changing climate including drought and wildfire, how to deal with the dramatic increase in recreational use that threatens to love the public lands to death, and how to facilitate market-based, win-win sales of public land grazing permits by willing ranchers to restore wildlife habitat and serve other conservation values.

There was a time within memory when great advances in public land policymaking were possible because Republicans and Democrats agreed to reject privatization on the one hand, and socialism on the other, and instead engage in good-faith bargaining on such vital matters, guided by public opinion and the teachings of science. My fondest hope is that this tradition can be restored. There is much to do.

John Leshy is professor emeritus at U.C. Hastings College of the Law in California. He served in senior positions in the Interior Department in the Carter and Clinton administrations.