Living in the West, hearing from landowners being forced off their own property by federal regulations, U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, BLM, EPA, Department of the Interior, Department of Energy
Reining in federal land ownership--a drop in the bucket
When the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was designated under President Clinton's purview in 1996, it created real hardship for regional ranchers. New management rules locked up more than one and a half million acres, discontinuing grazing leases that were imperative to sustain cattle growers who'd been using the land responsibly for more than a century.
Part of the impetus for closing off natural resource development at the time was to halt access to one of the best sources of low sulfur coal, including from tribal populations, putting a stranglehold on arid land limited economies. Instituting the monument spelled financial disaster to Four Corners ranch industry as well as the Navajo that has tried to expand their coal industry. One of the reasons Clinton closed off the coal was a backroom deal made to bump up the price of the commodity being mined in Indonesia. It removed U.S. competition at the expense of Native America that, on the other hand, has been tagged to protest pro-growth projects like Dakota Access Pipeline and, now, truncating Bears Ears National Monument.
The swell of federal land usurpation must be rolled back at the furious rate that it was instituted over the last 20 years. The West has been swallowed up by land trusts that sell to the government at a profit (Nature Conservancy being the main culprit) and the creation of national monuments, conservation easements, natural landscape registries, wildlife preserves, free-roaming protected species, fencing off wilderness to raise revenue, and the list goes on.
President Trump, don't stop here. Strip down the U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, BLM, EPA, Department of the Interior, Department of Energy and any number of other overreaching federal bureaucracies. Put the land back in local hands that know best how to conserve it and its productivity.
Living in the West, hearing from landowners being forced off their own property by federal regulations, it has been a pet project to get the government out of the business of restricting private and public land use. Dismantling national monuments, which have appropriated productive land to purposely shut out food producers as well as limit recreational use under the guise of protecting it, is only the beginning salvo.
The real question is, from whom are the out-of-control administrative agencies protecting the land? Evidently, they're conserving it for posterity that won't be allowed to use it either.
BTW, Land Barons and Gold Baron are fact-filled novels that address these issues in depth. Upcoming researched tale, Unknown Predator, due to be released February 1, 2018, goes deep into the role land trusts and government-protected species play in impeding private property use.
Former newspaper publisher, A. Dru Kristenev, grew up in the publishing industry working every angle of a paper, from ad composition and sales, to personnel management, copy writing, and overseeing all editorial content. During her tenure as a news professional, Kristenev traveled internationally as a representative of the paper and, on separate occasions, non-profit organizations. Since 2007, Kristenev has authored five fact-filled political suspense novels, the Baron Series, and two non-fiction books, all available on Amazon. Carrying an M.S. degree and having taught at premier northwest universities, she is the trustee of Scribes’ College of Journalism, which mission is to train a new generation of journalists in biblical standards of reporting. More information about the college and how to support it can be obtained by contacting Kristenev at cw.o@earthlink.net.
ChangingWind (changingwind.org) is a solutions-centered Christian ministry.