Free Republic

The Biden administration has continued the modern Democrat tradition of perverse federal land use policy. It comes as a surprise to most Americans that the federal government owns nearly one-third of the nation’s land mass, in excess of 640 million acres. (It also owns 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), but that is another story.) Most know of the National Park Service in the Department of the Interior and its 80 million acres of parks, preserves, reserves, monuments, memorials, historic sites, battlefields, and recreation areas, in every state. Many Americans may be familiar with the 141 national...

Our freedom to roam is under assault from a plan to close everything off and make us ask permission before we enjoy it.. There is a plan underway to close the great open spaces of the American West to you, me, our children, and our children’s children. The federal government — which owns most of this land — is determined to move from a “use and let use” system of accessing Western public lands to a permission-based system that will mean reservations, permits, and closures. Just last month, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final decision to close 317...

The Gunnison Stockgrowers’ Association filed a 22-page comment with the Colorado Wildlife Commission detailing the group members’ concerns about the Draft Wolf Plan process laid out by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Ken Spann, who has delivered public comment to the CPW Commission on behalf of the group, said the endorsement of the comments lies in every acre of agricultural land in Gunnison County. The basis of their concerns is the survival of the area’s long standing ranching operations as well as the existing big game and other wildlife in the Gunnison Valley. According to Spann, established in 1894, the Gunnison...

Bill Clinton’s land management rules and other liberal policies paved the way for future debilitating wildfires ... Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mid-1990s that drastically reduced logging and road creation on federal lands. ... Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land... created a ticking time bomb ... “If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they...

Acting Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt ordered Thursday that federal land managers consider public access when selling or trading public land. “This order will help ensure that the Bureau of Land Management considers public access to public lands,” Bernhardt said in a statement. “It requires that before the BLM exchanges or disposes of any land, they must first consider what impact the disposal or exchange of land will have on public access. The Trump Administration will continue to prioritize access so that people can hunt, fish, camp, and recreate on our public lands," he said. This order will address...

Dan Love .. led Operation Cerberus ... Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wants to rein in the law enforcement authority of the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service and is crafting legislation he says will either restrict or abolish their authority. Lee said Monday he aims to hem in powers he says were never envisioned under the Federal Land Management Policy Act of 1976. "Our federal land management agencies have drifted far from their intended purposes.. The BLM has expanded its operations far from public lands." ... The senator added federal land agencies exercise police powers on private land...

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

The San Juan County Commission approved a resolution on October 4 regarding the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition proposal to create the Bears Ears National Monument. The county resolution states that the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition is a non-governmental organization that has no jurisdiction over land-use planning activities in San Juan County. ... The resolution states that a number of property rights exist in the proposed monument that do not meet the definition of public lands, including 43 grazing allotments, 661 water-right infrastructure, 151,000 acres of state trust land, 18,000 acres of private property, and hundreds of miles of roads and...

There were two sightings of Western yellow-billed cuckoos this year, both in Delta County, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. The secretive birds are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering designating parts of western Colorado as critical habitat for the migratory bird, including lands along the Colorado River through Mesa County. Sightings — which frequently involve people hearing the cuckoo’s distinctive “klak-klak” sound — have been recorded in Mesa and Delta counties in previous years. ... “We have changed the initial map due to comments from the proposed...

The United States Forest Service severely damaged a forest road and trail in Northwestern Idaho earlier this month, raising serious questions about the agency’s ability to care for federally-managed lands. During the first weekend in June, several members of Northwestern Gold Prospectors Association (NWGPA) planned to attend a gathering to prospect private claims in the Bedrock Gulch and Eagle Creek areas. When the prospectors arrived, Forest Road 152 was blocked with cement barricades and hundreds of felled trees. ... Photographs from that day show large logs laid crosswise and laterally on the trail, covered with hundreds of large pine branches...

A growing number of state organizations seek to remedy what they consider negligent policies and shoddy oversight of public land on the part of federal agencies. Under the umbrella name Transfer of Public Lands, the movement offers a solution to the problem that is simple in concept: transfer ownership and management of public lands administered by federal agencies to equivalent state agencies. These agencies, being accountable to governors, state legislators and citizens, will manage the public lands in a more conscientious, cost-effective way. ... Unlike states east of the Continental Divide, public lands in Western states such as Washington and...

Despite a long process involving collaboration between local officials the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Western Colorado, the federal land agency is proceeding with the closure of roads that have been traveled for 50 or more years. The road closures comprise a portion of the BLM’s Resource Management Plan (RMP) for Mesa County, of which, 73 percent is controlled by the federal government . ... public roads, used by off-roaders, hunters, farmers, ranchers and, during wildfire season, firefighting crews. ... Jody Green, a member of Public Lands Access Association and long-time activist working to preserve access into federally-managed lands,...

Despite protests from Mesa County leaders, the Bureau of Land Management is rejecting calls to keep hundreds of trails on public lands from being closed off to use. BLM officials in Washington D.C. rejected all protests against the Grand Junction area Resource Management Plan in early August, but Mesa County commissioners said they didn’t receive a notice of refusal from the federal agency until last week. In the rejection letter, federal officials said the county's complaints were without merit, and the B.L.M workers tasked with researching and writing the updated rule book for the public lands usage have done their...

U.S. Forest Service ranger told Montezuma County commissioners this week that local officials continue to overstep their authority in regard to the Dolores-Norwood Road. ... Earlier this year, Montezuma County officials installed a dozen “Share the Road” signs accommodating off-highway vehicle use on county roads, including the Dolores-Norwood Road. To clarify any confusion, Montezuma County attorney John Baxter told commissioners on Monday that people were allowed to operate off-highway vehicles on the roadway. “Not according to our travel management rules,” Padilla interrupted. “Your travel management rule is incorrect,” Baxter replied. Baxter continued, stating that federal officials had yet to provide...

DENVER (AP) - A man who was convicted of vandalism for tearing down a barricade on federal land in Montrose County has been sentenced to one month in prison. The Denver Post reports David Justice, a radio talk show host in Gunnison, was sentenced Tuesday for leading a group in vandalizing the Bureau of Land Management's Cushman Creek Trail on July 21, 2013. The group tore out barricades, signs, posts, fencing and cut back vegetation to protest the agency limiting the trail to two-wheel vehicles, horseback riding and hiking.

Grand Junction, COLO. It's a hot debate that's sparked a lot of controversy in Mesa County. The updating of the Resource Management Plan has been in the works for years. It was announced a few months back, but not everyone's happy about the proposal. The Mesa County Commissioners and the Bureau of Land Management took turns speaking at the town hall meeting. The public listened to what happened in a meeting with representatives from the governor's office, in regards to the Resource Management Plan, and had the chance to share their concerns and suggestions. At last week's meeting with the...

A plan that will close nearly 2,000 miles of public roads that have previously been open for use by the people of Mesa County is creating a public backlash against the Grand Junction field office of the federal Bureau of Land Management. The BLM’s resource management plans (RMP) regulate the access and types of traffic allowed on roads on public lands. Road maintenance and seasonal closures are also detailed in such plans. But the most recent RMP in Mesa County indicates the BLM’s intent to limit access to public roads which have traditionally been open to motorized, horse, and foot...

Garfield County officials said Monday the Bureau of Land Management is considering even-stricter measures to protect greater sage-grouse than previously contemplated, rather than listening to concerns the county and others have raised. As a cooperating agency, the county got an advance look Friday at the revised proposal the agency is now considering. “It is very dramatic in terms of the changes (from a draft BLM proposal) that are being proposed,” Fred Jarman, the county’s community development director, told county commissioners Monday. Jarman and Garfield Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said the proposed measures are the result of directives coming from Washington, D.C....

According to findings from The Tombstone Marshal’s Office (TMO), a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officer was mistaken for a man impersonating an officer.. On January 28th, while traveling east on Charleston Road, a sixteen year old driver reported to the Tombstone Marshal’s Office that she observed a male driver in a white truck look at her as he passed and then turned around and begin travelling eastbound behind her before pulling her over with emergency lights flashing on the dashboard. The female advised that she pulled to the side road and the male exited his vehicle and approached her...

Washington, DC – Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today issued a Secretarial Order calling for a comprehensive science-based strategy to address the more frequent and intense wildfires that are damaging vital sagebrush landscapes and productive rangelands, particularly in the Great Basin region of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and California. The strategy will begin to be implemented during the 2015 fire season. Goals include reducing the size, severity and cost of rangeland fires, addressing the spread of cheatgrass and other invasive species, and positioning wildland fire management resources for more effective rangeland fire response. “Targeted action is urgently needed to...