The Use of the National Forests - WHY NATIONAL FORESTS WERE FIRST MADE.
GIFFORD PINCHOT,
Forester
Issued June 14, 1907
U.S DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Forest Service
States Can Manage Public Lands - Part 4 of 5
This is the fourth in five-part series about federal lands by Trent England of the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs - www.OCPAThink.org.
Legislation adopted in Utah calls on the federal government to transfer certain of these lands to the state. It set a deadline of December 31, 2014.
A division cuts across the continental United States. In the 11 western states, the federal government owns nearly half the land (47.3%). In the 37 states to their east, just 4% of the land is federal. In five states, including New York, the federal government owns less than 1% of the land.
Given these numbers, Utah’s insistence that the federal government turn over resource lands in that state is hardly radical. All Utah wants is to be treated like every other state east of Colorado.
This East-West division is the result of a history of federal foot-dragging and eventual reneging on a policy of treating states as equals by giving them control over their own lands (other than those retained by the federal government for a constitutionally enumerated purpose; more on the history is in parts two and three of this series).
The Neo-Colonialism of Federal Planners and Urban Elites - Part 3 of 5
This is the third in a five-part series about federal lands by Trent England of the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs - www.OCPAThink.org.
Legislation adopted in Utah calls on the federal government to transfer certain of these lands to the state. It set a deadline of December 31, 2014.
Colonialism is “control by one power over a dependent area or people.” This definition applies to many western communities surrounded by federal land.
Most federal lands were originally open to use by local people and industries. Yet in classic colonial fashion, distant politicians and bureaucrats now routinely dictate restrictive policies that degrade or destroy local communities. Just one example, the Northwest Forest Plan devised in 1994 reduced logging by 80% for lands originally set aside for that very purpose. Based on bad science about the spotted owl, the plan devastated communities (as the USFS’s own report shows, corresponding with what this writer has seen in these same communities) and increased the intensity of wildfires.
Even some liberal politicians in the West have cried foul as outside interests have worked to shut down the use of lands for the very purposes they were originally preserved.
The Romance And Reality Of Federal Lands - Part 2 of 5
This is the second in a five-part series about federal lands by Trent England of the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs - www.OCPAThink.org.
Legislation adopted in Utah calls on the federal government to transfer certain of these lands to the state. It set a deadline of December 31, 2014.
Before Horace Greeley and Lewis and Clark there was George Washington. As a teenager employed as a surveyor by Virginia’s powerful Fairfax family, Washington spent three years exploring the colony’s western lands. His very first investment, when he was 18 years old, was to purchase 453 acres of this land at this western fringe. While he lived in what is today an eastern state, Washington was a westerner at heart.
Like Washington, many patriots saw America’s future in the West. One of the causes of the American Revolution was Britain’s insistence on stifling westward expansion. Following ratification of the Constitution by the original 13 states, three new states entered the union during the Washington and Adams administrations. Ohio became a state in 1803, the same year Thomas Jefferson’s administration doubled the nation’s land area with the Louisiana Purchase. By 1850, the union consisted of 31 states.
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