Wild horses on the Onaqui Mountain Herd Management Area in Utah. Photo by Meg Frederick.
By Celeste Carlisle, RTF biologist
The State of Utah, along with its cleverly worded “Stand for our Land” campaign insisting that Utah is for Utahans, has sued the federal government for the transfer of federal public lands back to the state. Utah argues that a majority of its lands are tied up in federal management, and that it has a right to directly manage the land within its borders.
States do not have the resources that the federal government has for comprehensive management of wildlife, nor the protections afforded wild horses and burros by the 1971 Wild and Free-roaming Horses and Burros Act.
The history of Public Lands in America is controversial and complex. Beginning in the late 1700s, the United States federal government acquired land through the cessation of lands by Native Peoples; negotiation as a part of Statehood; through conquest; and by treaty settlements. Beginning in 1781, colonies surrendered unsettled lands to the federal government and still more land was purchased from other countries. By 1867, the federal government held 1.8 billion acres in public domain lands.
Over time, some federal lands were transferred to individuals, corporations, and states, and some were transferred to other federal agencies, including the National Forest System, the National Parks System, National Wildlife Refuges, the Department of Defense, and Native American Reservations.
Today, the Bureau of Land Management, the largest lands manager in the United States, administers 245 million acres of public lands. In total, 640 million acres of public lands are administered in the United States today.
In the 1960’s, through a series of hundreds of public hearings, the American public demonstrated enormous support for retaining public lands “for multiple use.” In 1976, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) was passed, the BLM’s “organic act,” which mandated that BLM public lands be retained by the federal government and managed for multiple use.
There’s a pragmatic and a philosophical view of our public lands, both of which are important.
Pragmatically, FLPMA clearly stated that multiple interests and multiple extractive uses of our public lands be managed together in a balanced fashion. Oil and gas extraction, livestock grazing, wildlife habitat and forage considerations, recreation, mining, and wild horses and burros are all to be managed thoughtfully and together, with a prioritization of sustained yield — NOT taking or using so much that you damage or, worse, eliminate the resource.
Philosophically, America’s public lands are quite literally for the people. These are lands that we consider as a nation, and that we consider together. We can be part of public processes to determine the appropriateness of a use, and we can argue and challenge uses that do not seem right for a place or for a people. It isn’t a perfect system, but it is a system that, in theory, listens to the perspectives of multiple interests. There is strength in that, because different areas of expertise can and should discuss, with each other, what we should or should not be doing with our federal public lands. These will change over time, with new scientific information, especially due to climate change.
Return to Freedom is disheartened and alarmed at the State of Utah’s push, right up to the highest court in the land, to argue that Federal lands be handed over to the State of Utah.
The whims of a state, or special interests of or related to that state, are short-term gains. The safety we get with federal bureaucracies, even if frustrating or annoying, is checks and balances, and careful thought. There is strength in numbers, and in our republic and the common good. We absolutely lose that if States assume control of precious, unique, incredible public lands.
Public lands are not one of our mistakes, but an admirable success – a triumph of collectiveness. A place to be in the center. Our public lands are special. Essential. Wonderful. Very few nations have public lands.
What we need to protect our land and water – OUR land and water – are allies. We must link arms hard around these great resources so that we do not further divvy them up, into parcels and pieces only useful to one interest – whichever State-driven interest that is, which will be guided by the moment, and not by careful and national thought, argument and analysis.
Wild horses and burros will not receive federal considerations, and could be managed in whatever way the state thought to be appropriate in that moment. Without the resources of the federal government, the idea that horses be managed humanely and non-lethally would likely be set aside.