Like the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, America's public lands embody a noble idea. They conjure up images of freedom and hope--images of an enduring, priceless patrimony, a public trust, to be preserved for the common good and for the benefit and enjoyment of all people.
--Rachel S. Cox, in the Albuquerque Journal, July 16, 2000
For the past decade and a half, I have been promoting this idea while working for Public Lands Interpretive Association, whose mission is to educate and inspire Americans about our tremendous heritage of the Public Domain.
With PLIA, I have worked on several outreach projects, including a border-to-border trek, entirely on public lands, and more recently, a slideshow on the history of American public lands, funded in part by the New Mexico Humanities Council.
But it's not really working the way we hoped. Somehow, the notion of public lands as a unified concept hasn't caught on like wildfire. So I need your help. Here's why it matters...
A Quick History of Public Lands
Public Domain. That's where you go hunting, or camping, or picking wildflowers, and ain't nobody can tell you what to do. Because that's land that belongs to me, and to you, and to everyone else.
-- Jim Gilleece, cowboy, Utah
Back at the birth of the country, the states reluctanly ceded their claims to trans-Appalachia to the federal government. That land, and all the land acquired after 1781, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean, became the Public Domain, land managed in trust for the people by the federal government. At first, it seemed so boundless that the federal government decided the best purpose was to sell it or to give it away. So they gave it away to soldiers and corporations, and gave it away or sold it to individuals for a pittance under the Homestead Act. By the time the borders of the continental United States appear as they do now, the land rush was on. The native people were pushed aside, warred upon, and driven from their homelands in 9 cases out of ten, in order to effect this land transfer.
The logging, mining, livestock raising, farming, and other extractive activities took their toll on the lands. An individual would care for his 320 acres, but the surrounding area was fair game. Land fraud was rampant in those days, too, with corporations illegaly claiming homesteads, in order to extract as many resources as possible.
Within a lifetime, an area the size of Europe had been deforested, toxic slag heaps leached into mountain streams, and species that had once seemed boundless, like the bison or the passenger pigeon, were all but gone. Around the country, people started clamoring for increased protection of the remaining public domain, and slowly but surely, public opinion shifted from seeing the lands as a boundless goody box to a place in need of protection. Congress agreed to protect Yellowstone, then Yosemite, then Sequoia. When Congress acted to reform homesteading laws, they also passed a rider giving the president authority to reserve forest lands from disposal.
Then along came Theodore Roosevelt, pictured here with his Chief of Forestry, Gifford Pinchot.
A hunter who understood the need for habitat protection, he withdrew millions of acres of forest land, and created dozens of wildlife refuges. He withdrew monuments like Devil's Tower and Montezuma's Castle under the Antiquities Act, and signed new hunting regulations. While Congress revoked the executive power to withdraw timber lands, the system of our public lands- our parks, monuments, forests, and refuges- was in place. Agencies to manage them - the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, were not legislatively far behind.
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was an environmental catastrophe that convinced people of the need for federal regulation of land management. All the remaining land in the Public Domain, some 300 million acres, were consolidated under the aegis of what became the Bureau of Land Management. All the public lands agencies have different directives: the BLM and the Forest Service must manage multiple uses in a sustainable manner, the Park Service must is for preservation and enjoyment, and the Fish & Wildlife Service manages wildlife populations. Other agencies, such as the Bureau of Reclamation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, NOAA, etc., have varying directives, but are constrained by many of the same resource protection laws.
Over the past 80 years, Americans have increased our value and our protection of our public lands, adding categories of extra protection like wilderness and wild rivers, and protecting the resources on the lands, including plants, wildlife, artifacts, sacred sites, and burials. All 50 states boast dozens of their own parks and historic sites, modeled after the federally-managed ones. The process of land management has become more democratic, with required public input legislated in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Federal Land Management Policy Act (FLPMA). Our visionary Secretary of Interior under Clinton, Bruce Babbitt, tried to cast a new net of protection over BLM lands with the National Landscape Conservation System, and the forests, with the Roadless Policy.
Then came 2000. I am sure, even if I didn't spell it out, you could guess what follows. Within days, Bush repealed the Roadless Policy, ignoring millions of public comments in support of protecting our forests. Oil and gas leases have gone through the roof, carving up BLM lands, including those that support threatened species and unique cultural resources, like ancient ruins, petroglyphs, and relics from the homestead area. The Healthy Forests Act, which fast tracks logging projects, got a lot of press, less so the rewrite of the Forest Service's directive that scientific evidence regarding the effects of management decisions needs to be considered, but does not have to be given priority. Even less discussed is how the Federal Government has backed down from fighting lawsuits brought by extractive companies, or the judges appointed who review those environmental lawsuits brought by Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, et al..
On every front, our public lands are being assaulted, even as they are one of the few remaining government operations that get great marks from people across the political spectrum.
Why Does It Matter To Me?
What good is a Bill of Rights that does not include the right to play, to wander, to explore, the right to stillness and solitude, to discovery and physical freedom?
--Edward Abbey
Our parks, historic sites, monuments, refuges, forests, and open BLM lands offer a playground, a classroom, a historical archive, and a refuge to all of us. Most of the public lands in the US are in the west or Alaska, though everyone lives within a two hour drive of some area. Even those who never visit public lands benefit from the forests filtering our air and water. Groundbreaking scientific research is done on public lands every day. Several of our parks are valued by the entire world as UN World Heritage Sites, including Yellowstone, Chaco Canyon, and Independence Hall.
But people who return to public lands regularly (again, mostly Westerners and Alaskans), do so for the spiritual benefit. Speaking from personal experience, being a small person in the vastness of nature, feeling the crush of the universe on a starry night, lying on a mountaintop and feeling the earth spin below (maybe that was the altitude, I'm no good over 10,000 ft)... that's when I feel the pulse of the cosmos, the dissolving of boundaries between the self and the other.
But without strong public support, a century's worth of hard-won protections could be eroded away in the blink of an eye. Pajama Pete may be retiring, but you can be sure that someone equally deranged will pick up his banner to sell "surplus federal lands." Let me make it clear to, oh legislator who would privatize my lands: there is NO surplus, in fact I wouldn't mind a little more.
Public land belongs to all of us, and the responsibility for its care falls to all of us. Thanks to NEPA and FLPMA, we are invited to participate in management decisions, and we can participate on a more visceral level by volunteering at the public lands near us.
Perhaps a greater responsibility for parents is to get their kids out to public lands, even the nearest state park. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, has been raising a lot of consciousness about the broken link between children and nature. It's all very scary, but one aspect that frightens me the most is that with all the climate change alarm bells ringing, children are learning that nature is threatening and sick and sad. In some ways it is, but even a single trip to public lands can teach a child that he or she is part of nature, that nature is beautiful and miraculous, and that even little humans can help improve our relationship to the natural world around us.
Does this Diary Have a Point?
For clerks and students, factory workers and mechanics, the outdoors is freedom, just surely as it is for the folkloric and mythic figures. They don't have to own the outdoors, or get permission , or cut fences, in order to use it. It is public land, partly theirs, and that space is a continuing influence on their minds and senses.
--Wallace Stegner, Variations on a Theme from Crevecoeur
Public lands, as a concept, is not very vivid in the minds of most people, much less public lands as living spaces. Most Americans know about national parks, and tend to conflate all other public lands with national parks. Yet public lands are an answer to so much of what ails our post industrial society.
When I was wrapping up the American Frontiers project in 2003, I went camping with a retiring director at the BLM. He told me that never before have public lands been so threatened by privatization. He warned that as American debt soars, the government will want to turn to the last giant source of public revenue, our lands. Only by making sure that all Americans-- including recent immigrants, Easterners, and city dwellers-- value public lands can we prevent this from happening. I asked what to do and he laughed. "I'm retiring in a month," he said. "It's up to you."
Because I have so much faith in and respect for this community, and because this community is interested in the environment, but no so much as say, electoral politics, I'm turning here. Would people here be interested in a series on public lands? What aspect? History? Current policies? Travel writing? I am so enthusiastic about public lands that it is difficult for me to figure out what would grab people's attention and get them enthused. Dear reader, do you care about public lands? Can you tell me why? Could you tell me what kind of educational project you would want to see? I can do it-- blogs, lesson plans, games, outdoor classroom programs, scouting programs, etc., but I don't really know what people want, what people need, and what would help people value their public lands more.
Disclaimer: This diary reflects only my views, neither the views of the Public Lands Interpretive Association nor the New Mexico Humanities Council, nor any other organization.