Letters

From the October 1995 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

The taking of private lands in heavy population centers gains comparatively little at great political risk. On the other hand, there are only 28,000 ranchers in the West with grazing rights on federal lands. There is a comparable number of miners and loggers whose property rights are being taken by the regulatory policy of federal agencies and the environmental groups allied with them. At worst, the political risk in attacking the West involves throwing a quarter-million Westerners to the wolves. The gain in wealth for the central government with those rights extinguished is incalculable.

I agree with Mr. Hess that the current Sagebrush Rebellion misses the point. But not for the same reason Mr. Hess cites. The sagebrush rebels, like Mr. Hess, fail to understand that the Western land problem is far more a product of congressional budget committees and Federal Reserve policy than a conflict among Westerners.
Wayne Hage
Tonopah, NV

I agree with Karl Hess that privatization is the West's best long-term bet; however, ranchers are far from the only beneficiaries of public-lands largess. Of 720 million acres of public lands, over 150 million acres are set aside for environmentalists and recreationalists as National Park Services lands, wilderness areas, wilderness study areas, or National Recreation Areas. The federal government subsidizes public-land recreation industries to the tune of $1.6 billion per year, recouping less than 10 percent in user fees.

Federal agencies also want to maintain the existing system. The departments of Defense and Energy control 22 million acres of public land and intend to keep every acre. So, if ranching's "dead hand" is removed, will recreationalists be willing to see user fees quintuple? Will the Sierra Club give up having 10,000 square miles made wilderness at the stroke of a pen? Will DOD sacrifice its bombing ranges, and DOE cease cramming Yucca Mountain down Nevada's throat? If privatization means that ranchers are no longer privileged beings, then the other parties in the dispute must also accept parity.
Mark A. Bradley
Geologist, Placer Dome U.S. Inc.
Reno, NV

Karl Hess Jr. is wrong about cattle ranchers getting big government subsidies. Grazing rights are no more subsidies than was your great grandfather's homestead purchased from the government.

Mr. Hess paints an entirely false picture of the county government movement and the people involved. It is simply an attempt to use existing federal laws to protect citizens from the government and an effort to get government control out of D and back to local (county) government where it belongs. Western landowners carry guns to protect themselves and their livestock from predators seldom are these the bureaucratic variety.

Mr. Hess is wrong about dams being the primary cause of the demise of salmon. Try: Indian fishing, overfishing in the ocean by both domestic and foreign interestsmuch of it in violation of laws and treaties, and an incredible explosion of seal and sea lion populations due to the Marine Mammals Act.

If a few Western ranchers were involved in stopping the sale of Bureau of Land Management land, they were a misguided minority. The BLM should dispose of all of its land, then go out of business, as was originally intended.
J. Marvin Chastain
Port Angeles, WA

As someone born and raised in Wyoming too damned many years ago, I must admire Mr. Hess for his slick presentation. In 1895, he could have written the article in one sentence simply by de scribing us as "filthy, vicious, heathen savages." His elaborate craftsmanship serves the same pur pose todaycover for a massive land and water grab.

Few of the urbanites Mr. Hess mentions are Westerners. Most are California refugees and escapees from the Northeast who arrived in such numbers and so quickly that they turned our small Rocky Mountain cities into the same gridlocked, smoggy, unlivable mess they had just left.

Mr. Hess won't acknowledge the bare bones and soul of this fight. Cowboys or not, Westerners dearly love their land empty. Empty as in hiking and fishing mountain streams for two weeks with out seeing another person. Empty of RVs, of dirt bikers and federal busybodies, of New Agers and lawyers. Empty of environmentalists literally studying nature to death, and empty of the Prozac nation.

We are doomed, of course, just as were the Indians before us. You will get your land by hook or crook (mostly crook). Then you can build hundreds of ranchette communities complete with septic tanks, a golf course, malls, and landing strip. You will utterly destroy that which you came seeking. Look at Jackson Hole, Aspen, Woodland Park, Taos, West Yellowstone, and Santa Fe.
M.J. Reading
Grants, NM

Karl Hess Jr. notes that the West is now urbanized and the cities out-populate the rural areas. Yet he considers the water provided by federal dams to be subsidies only for the ranchers. Actually the dams provide the water, power, and recreation facilities that have allowed these cities to grow. Any water from federal dams used for grazing must be minimal.

Mr. Hess believes the BLM is concerned only with grazing issues and charges the entire burden of this cost to be a subsidy to ranchers. In fact, the BLM administers many different aspects of public lands including wildlife, the Endangered Species Act, access roads, wilderness areas, mineral leas ing, mineral purchase, mining law, fire control, timber sales, land sales and exchange, and many other activities including recreation.

Mr. Hess makes no mention of the high-handed and overbearing activities of the BLM, acting on order from the Beltway 3,000 miles away. The blatant acts of closing off access to private lands (the problem in Nye County), the aggressive taking without compensation involved in the Wilder ness Act and the Endangered Species Act, the moratorium on patenting land where all proofs have been completed, the attempt to preempt vested water rights, and the closing of roads crossing public lands (RS2477 roads) are a few of the items that come to mind.

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