Continuing my drilling down on sticky points with 10 things I’d do if I were running for President, today let’s talk about selling Federal lands.  And again, I don’t advocate anarchy and a free-for-all; don’t let the weeds get in the way of the basic idea.  If states want to pick up some of these properties, that’s just fine.

            Back in my previous life as an investigative news reporter, every time I covered a meeting of the U.S. Forest Service or anything administering parks, the bottom line was that the oversight agency spent thousands—maybe millions?—of hours cranking out environmental impact statements and trying to navigate the tension between rabid environmentalists who wanted nothing to happen—environmentalism by abandonment—and folks who wanted to do something on that land.  “Use” could could range anywhere from dirt bike trails to oil and gas leases to timbering and hunting. 

            As a landowner with hundreds of acres of upland Appalachian hardwoods, I would sit there and watch a bevy of bureaucrats carve off massive pieces for logging in what are known as “below cost” timber sales.  When I sell timber, I bear all the costs.  But on these sales, taxpayers paid for the roads, paid for the bidding process, inventory evaluation, etc.  The result is that my timber is worthless due to these public timber sales. 

            The number of bureaucrats assigned to create plans for a dirt bike trail, camping area, wilderness area, roadless area—the list was endless, wrangling ongoing, and bureaucracy chachinging like a money pit into eternity.  I came away from these meetings convinced that the right way was divestiture. 

            If the Sierra Club wants a hands-off area, let them buy it and enjoy it.  They can open it up to the public or keep it just for their members—maybe they could get more members that way.  But to tie up every agency decision with lawsuit threats and public hearings is an untenable waste of time and money.  

            If the off-road folks want to joy ride through the woods, let them buy a tract and tear it up to their hearts’ content.  If Shell wants to drill, let them buy a tract and drill, or work out arrangements with private landowners, whether it’s the dirt bike group or Sierra Club.  But at least it won’t cost billions of dollars in bureaucratic wrangling and political posturing to end up with something that pleases nobody and displeases everybody.  That’s how these things go—the fights never end. 

            Would some of this land be abused?  Of course.  But at least the Secretary of the Interior wouldn’t, with the stroke of a pen, be able to give private largesse to millions of acres.  The abuse, whether it be condominiums in Yellowstone or eroding dirt trails in the George Washington National Forest, would be spread out in pockets.  While decentralization opens up some areas for abuse or exploitation, it also means many areas would be much better stewarded and used for more productive purposes. 

            Our farm is surrounded by land owned by Virginia (yes, I know, this discussion is about federal lands, but bear with me) as a North Mountain Wildlife Management Area.  It’s basically a 50,000 acre freebie for hunters and loggers.  On our adjacent forested acres, we run pigs through once a year to clean up acorns and stimulate decomposition with light disturbance.  Not only would such use, if expanded to the government land, be an ecological stimulant, it would completely eliminate the need for factory hog houses. 

            Privatizing federal lands in an orderly transition—some tracts could be small for homesteaders; others could be large for other use—would pay down the national debt and at the same time give thousands of imaginative entrepreneurs the chance to try things.  The Shenandoah National Park, which rides the Blue Ridge mountains just east of our farm, confiscated hundreds of smallholdings, taking farmland that had been in private ownership for generations.  Many of those families are still wrestling with alcoholism and the sting of displacement.  That’s a horrendous way to treat people.

            As to Yellowstone, when Teresa and I visited a couple of years ago, I don’t know when I’ve been more disappointed in a piece of land.  I couldn’t escape from that travesty fast enough.  That place needs about 200 chainsaws and chipper crews thinning the trees and reopening legacy bison fields, applying compost and exercising the ecology to prevent future fires.  If the Sierra Club owned it, or a billionaire, I wouldn’t mind the ecological devastation as much.  But the fact that the government owns it and my taxes help pay for the nonsense is inappropriate.  Why should my taxes pay for something I’ll never use and don’t like? 

            I’ve been on many ranches in the west that adjoin Bureau of Land Management properties.  The privately owned land is ALWAYS (if there’s an exception, I haven’t seen it) better cared for and in better ecological shape than the federal lands.  Even conventional farmers do better than the government.  The fenceline pictures shown at every Holistic Resource Management presentation are proof positive that federal lands are the worst stewarded in the country.  What’s everybody’s business is nobody’s business.

            At least under private ownership, the land can be abused only by the owner.  Under federal ownership, it can all be abused.  A 10-year plan to privatize would open millions of acres to imagination rather than bureaucratic calcification and domestic political wars. 

            If you could manage a national forest, what would you do?