During a holiday week when the step could be expected to draw little attention, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Dec. 23 announced his agency would review about 220 million acres of land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management to see if it should be designated under a new class of \u201cpublic lands protection\u201d called \u201cwild lands.\u201d <\/p>\n
In essence, the move allows Mr. Salazar\u2019s bureaucrats to fence off from productive human use millions of additional undeveloped acres in the West, sidestepping the legal requirements that actual new \u201cwilderness\u201d designations be OK\u2019d by Congress. <\/p>\n
The move was welcomed by the environmental extreme, but drew a strong rebuke from Northern Nevada Congressman Dean Heller, who said \u201cThis action is a blatant attempt by this administration to circumvent Congress and create de facto wilderness. If a portion of land is truly deserving of a wilderness designation, this administration should not be afraid to engage Congress.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Obama Administration just left a giant Christmas present under the tree of the radical environmentalists who got him elected, and Western states like Montana are going to get stuck paying for it,\u201d added U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont.
\nThe Congressional Western Caucus, which includes Rep. Rehberg, called the policy an \u201cend around\u201d the requirement for congressional approval of wilderness areas. <\/p>\n
Secretarial Order 3310 reverses a past policy of the Bureau of Land Management known as \u201cNo New Wilderness,\u201d which had been in place since 2003, following an out-of-court settlement between the state of Utah and then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton, appointed by President George W. Bush. <\/p>\n
Wonder how they\u2019d fare if any party OTHER than the federal government decided to tear up an out-of-court settlement a mere seven years after entering into it? <\/p>\n
The BLM is supposed to manage land for energy and mineral production, livestock grazing, recreation, and — yes — wilderness and national monuments. Secretary Salazar said the new \u201cwild lands\u201d designation would \u201crestore balance\u201d between energy development and protecting wilderness on public land. <\/p>\n
This move should not be viewed in isolation. When the public went to the polls Nov. 2, they effectively chose to rein in much of the Obama administration\u2019s radical agenda, instead electing a more conservative House with a mandate to slash government spending and regulation in order to loosen the bonds on America\u2019s hog-tied entrepreneurial economy. <\/p>\n
But the current regime appears reluctant to accept that outcome. Instead, while \u201cCap-and-Trade\u201d may be dead as new legislation, President Obama says \u201cThere\u2019s more than one way to skin a cat\u201d and orders the EPA to issue regulations aimed at creating the same result — higher energy costs, less prosperity — by bureaucratic fiat. <\/p>\n
\u201cNet neutrality\u201d is another outcome the administration may seek through FCC edict rather than a congressional vote. And now de facto expansion of the millions of acres already off limits to productive human use in the West. <\/p>\n
Further limiting grazing, mining, and other economically productive uses of the vast lands controlled by the federal government are supposed to help economic recovery in the Western states? This \u201crestores balance\u201d? Sure, if the \u201cbalance\u201d you eventually want to reach is one where there\u2019s no role for mankind on the land, at all. <\/p>\n
This is, at heart, a First Amendment issue. The people of European extraction who settled this continent brought with them a religious belief and tradition that they should tame and steward the land, as a place for their descendants to be fruitful and multiply. The persistence of that tradition east of the Rockies stands largely unchallenged. <\/p>\n
In the West, however, a new religious faith sees an opportunity to put into effect its new doctrine, that our species is a form of pestilence which must be roped off the land if the land is to remain pure and good. <\/p>\n
Americans are free to hold to either belief. But the federal government is barred by the First Amendment by taking any active role in \u201cestablishing\u201d either belief as official government policy, by force of law. <\/p>\n
In the short run, the best answer is for Western delegates to band together in Washington and enact the Eastern Seaboard Wetlands Restoration Act, requiring that for every 100 acres of additional lands set off limits to productive human use in the West, 100 acres of land within 100 miles of the Atlantic seaboard or the Great Lakes shall be cleared of human habitation and restored to its natural splendor as pristine wetland habitat for ducks, mosquitoes and water moccasins. <\/p>\n
Surely the duck hunters, bass fishermen, and cranberry pickers of New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Illinois will quickly climb on board. <\/p>\n
When East Coast constituents face real ramifications from the \u201ccreation of additional federal wild lands,\u201d we\u2019ll see how enthusiastic their representatives remain about this clever end run around Congress. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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