Commentaries
Posted June 4, 2012
Building the 1828 Resolve
by Utah Rep. Ken Ivory
American Lands Council
Liberating Our Lands, Issue No. 1
The western states simply had had enough. They banded together and sent petition after petition, resolution after resolution, and delegation after delegation to Congress. They complained:
1. The federal government was not disposing of the federal lands as promised;
2. The states could not tax the federal lands to adequately fund education;
3. They could not grow their economies;
4. Because the federal government was hoarding their abundant minerals and natural resources
This was in 1828! ...
When it comes to today's western states, the federal government has refused to honor the same promise made and kept with all other states east of Colorado. With more than 50% untaxable federal land, today's western states still struggle to adequately fund education (see this), to grow their economies, to generate well-paying jobs so people don't flee their states, and to responsibly access the trillions of dollars in abundant resources locked up in their states by federal control. ...
Read more at the American Lands Council website: [here]
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Posted May 22, 2012
BLM Protest Sample Letter
by Dr. Thom Seal
This is a sample Letter of Protest regarding road closures for emailing to the BLM. By emailing it to the BLM you may gain standing in the process that is likely to follow. It may also be used as a guide to preparing a Letter of Protest for other Federal agencies.
Read, copy, and paste the entire Letter of Protest by clicking here: [BLM Protest Notification Sample Letter]
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Posted May 22, 2012
Some Truths About Spotted Owls
Testimony of Mike Dubrasich for the House Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee on National Parks, Forestsand Public Lands oversight field hearing on "Failed Federal Forest Policies: Endangering Jobs, Forests and Species" - May 21, 2012.
Section Headings:
I – Firebombing Spotted Owl Stands
II – Destroying Oregon’s Environment, Economy, and Society
III – Bogus Biology
IV – The Barred Owl Lie
V – Avian Malaria
VI – Give Us Our Land Back
Read the entire report here: [here]
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Posted May 16, 2012
We Certainly Can Do Better
by Rob DeHarpport
Failed Federal policies implemented by unelected agencies such as the United States Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) policies over the last 30 to 40 years reminds me of a quote from renown economist the late Milton Friedman (1912-2006) who said, "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."
More specifically, the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) enacted by President Clinton in 1994 may have had good intentions, but it has failed catastrophically.
According to USFS records documented by USFS Historian Gerald W. Williams in his book entitled The U.S. Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest – A History, the volume of timber harvested, measured in thousands of board feet (mbf) on USFS lands has declined from a peak harvest in 1973 of 5,791,353 mbf to 1,126,867 mbf in 1994 to 419,381 mbf in 2007. Harvest levels dropped by two-thirds in 1994 and are merely 7 percent today of the peak harvest level of 1973.
Pacific Northwest forests in the Spotted Owl zone grow anywhere from 500 to 1,000 board feet per acre per year. The NWFP encompasses an area of 23 million acres. Growth on those acres has been at least 16,000,000 mbf per year. Over the last 18 years annual harvest has been only 3 percent of growth.
The build-up of biomass in Northwest forests has led to catastrophic fires burning millions of acres. Spotted Owl population numbers have crashed by 60 percent or more. The NWFP has failed to save owls, and instead has caused the incineration of their habitat. ...
Read the entire article here: [We Certainly Can Do Better]
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