selling off federal lands: part 2

[Rand Man]

This past Sunday, Sen Wyden responded to a constituent's concern about loss of federal lands going forward. Wyden said he had previously met with Interior pick Rep Zinke, and came away feeling fairly certain that federal lands would be held onto.

However ...

"Last March, Zinke voted for the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreation Enhancement Act. It would allow public land agencies to build temporary roads, construct dams and log in wilderness areas. "

" ... [Zinke's] vote in 2015 for Self-Sufficient Community Lands Act deserves some credit for pragmatism. That act would transfer management of millions of acres of federal land to states under a management board appointed by state governors. "

http://www.perc.org/articles/litmus-test-trumps-public-land-policies

[Rand Man]

Wyden:
tel (202) 224-5244
tel (503) 326-7525

Merkley:
Phone: (202) 224-3753
Phone: (503) 326-3386

[Rand Man]

more on Self Sufficient Community Lands Act

http://wilderness.org/blog/latest-public-land-takeover-scheme-advances-washington-dc

[Rand Man]

"H.R. 2316 attempts to address this quandary by allowing states and localities by having a greater hand in revenue-producing activities on forests in their borders."

"An advisory Committee appointed by the Governor shall select land"

"The Forest Service is still responsible for fire suppression"

http://naturalresources.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Markup_Memo_--_H.R._2316_06.14.16__06.15.16.pdf

[Rand Man]

House Natural Resources Committee roll call vote on HR2316:

http://naturalresources.house.gov/UploadedFiles/RC_3_On_Favorably_Reporting_HR_2316.pdf

[Rand Man]

"6/16 update on Sportsmen's Bills:
Congress has introduced a number of bad sportsmen’s bills that would harm Wilderness, and unfortunately the bills keep getting worse. In the House, HR 528 (Benishek, R-MI), the Recreational Fishing and Hunting Heritage Act,
would effectively repeal the 1964 Wilderness Act. This bill would allow unlimited habitat manipulation and development, including temporary road construction, for actions to purportedly facilitate hunting, fishing, recreational shooting, or wildlife conservation. The bill would amend the Wilderness Act to place such projects and activities on par with preserving wilderness character, as the purpose of the Wilderness Act. The bill would also exempt all such projects in Wilderness from environmental review.

HR 2406 (Wittman, R-VA), the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act (SHARE), contains the bad wilderness language of HR 528, but would also for the first time
open all Wildernesses across the nation to commercial filming by such commercial enterprises as TV, cable, and internet hunting and fishing shows. HR 2406 passed the House Natural Resources Committee last October. View our letter opposing HR-2406.

In the Senate, the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act (Murkowski, R-AK) passed the full Senate on April 20 as part of S. 2012, the Energy Policy Modernization Act. The wilderness-damaging portion includes language that would open up all Wildernesses to commercial filming for the first time, though the language has been modified somewhat from the original language. On May 25, the House adopted a substitute for S. 2012 under the same bill number that passed the full House that day. This House version of S. 2012 contains wilderness-damaging provisions that would essentially
gut the Wilderness Act and allow unlimited habitat manipulations if done for any reason even remotely connected with hunting, fishing, shooting, or wildlife management. Other bad provisions include a legislative de-listing of the gray wolf in Wyoming and the Great Lakes states from the protections of the Endangered Species Act, and a legislative blocking of agency attempts to limit predator killing and unethical hunting practices on National Wildlife Refuges and National Preserves in Alaska. A conference committee will now work out differences between the Senate and House versions."

https://wildernesswatch.org/congress

https://www.google.com/#q=hr+2406+wilderness

[Aimless]

As a general observation, our new participant Rand Man seems resistant to posting anything that might give us a clue as to what he thinks he is doing by posting here. This does not work well in a setting like this. Moreover, every post he has made to OregonHikers so far has political content, but not one post I've seen has included any evidence that he hikes on trails in Oregon or Washington.

Rand Man, either reveal your motives for being here, or stop posting here, please. Until you do one or the other, I intend to ignore you.

[Eric Peterson]

It is outdoor related but I'm also still trying to figure out what the deal is. Just too busy to follow all those non clickable links to 'learn' more.

[miah66]

I don't get it either. I posted about a rail to trail that was in danger of being lost to private landowners b/c of Eastern Washington backroom deals, and he posted in defense of that transfer.

Other posts highlighted his opposition to protections from logging interests in Coast Range forests, because it could affect the continuity of the Oregon Coast Trail.

Now this highlighting of Federal Lands transfers, seemingly to bring awareness to this issue. I am extremely worried about this issue and want to bring awareness to it as well, but he's all over the place.

I welcome discussion on this issue from other user groups as well, as we will all need to fight to keep the places we love. Many equestrians, anglers, hunters tend to live in conservative districts where they could make a difference w/ representatives like Greg Walden in Oregon. Wyden & Merkley have a pretty good track record of protecting public lands, though Walden is terrible.

[Koda]

I welcome discussion on this issue from other user groups as well, as we will all need to fight to keep the places we love. Many equestrians, anglers, hunters tend to live in conservative districts where they could make a difference w/ representatives like Greg Walden in Oregon.

yes, absolutely...

Hunters and Anglers are also on board with this, I first learned about the threat of public land transfers ~2 yrs ago from the Backcountry Hunters and anglers organization and have been supporting them since. That was well before the whole Bundy occupation “give the land back to the people” bullshit.

The issue affects everyone and will be interesting to see how all outdoor user groups work together to fight this. That includes motorized user groups as well. There is a huge MX/ATV trail network in the coast range widely encompassing the entire area around the Wilson River trail system. Hunters, anglers, MX, Horse, hikers… are all affected negatively, and this doesn’t even bring up how damaging it will be for wildlife conservation if the land is managed privately, like by logging companies most likely to be able to afford to buy it.