As in Oregon, returning the land to “the rightful owners” does not in Bishop’s view mean transferring it to the only entities other than the federal government that have ever claimed it, American Indians. That’s proved by the bill Bishop and yet another Utah Republican, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, introduced Wednesday. Called the Public Lands Initiative, it would affect 18 million acres in eastern Utah.
Preparing for the bill included meeting with a variety of affected groups, including Indian tribes and the oil and gas industry. But that didn’t make the final bill better. Here’s Jenny Rowland’s assessment:
[O]ver the past several months there have been many significant changes made to the bill, turning it from a gesture of compromise to a divisive bill that includes Bundy-style public land giveaways, pseudo-wilderness protections, accelerated oil and gas development, and the marginalization of several original stakeholder groups. [...]
Though the Bishop bill would designate nearly 2.2 million new acres as wilderness, these lands would be exempted from key protections in the Wilderness Act. The bill mandates, for example, that grazing of livestock continue in all areas where it is currently permitted, without any flexibility to adapt to changing range conditions or environmental degradation. Wilderness lands in the bill would also be prohibited from being designated as a “Class I airshed” — meaning that these lands, and the wildlife, vegetation and recreationists within them will not be protected from air pollution from the oil and gas drilling that will be allowed up to the edge of the wilderness areas.
In other words, the land wouldn’t meet the definitions of Wilderness included in the federal act that established the program 52 years ago. “Effectively, less wilderness would be protected in Utah if this bill passed than what is currently managed for the public,” said Scott Groene of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. That organization states on its website: “It is lipstick on a pig and a Trojan Horse that will take conservation backwards. It is a fossil fuel development bill and a giveaway of public resources.”
Among the losers would be a coalition of tribes that had proposed protecting several cultural areas and co-management of 1.9 million acres of new national monument. The tribes finally gave up talking to the Utah delegation because they weren’t being listened to, a long-standing problem for Indians on a whole range of issues since three shiploads of businesspeople arrived to establish Jamestown 409 years ago.
The Center for Western Priorities also opposes the Bishop bill, calling it an “extreme and deceptive attack” on public lands nationwide and “another ideological vehicle for Congressman Bishop to express his disdain for national public lands, rather than a true attempt at addressing diverse stakeholder needs”:
Rep. Bishop stated recently that “people will win and people will lose” in his bill. There’s no doubt that the winners Bishop picked are big oil and gas companies and Utah’s misguided public lands policy, while the losers include hikers, campers, sportsmen and women, Native American tribes, and the American people.
Interior Secretary Watt proposed in 1981 that by the year 2000, 80 million more acres of public land would be opened up to mining and drilling. He sought to end congressionally authorized national parks. He opposed the government’s accepting of land bought for that purpose by the Land and Water Conservation Fund. He sought to open up wilderness to oil and gas development. He boasted, "We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber." And, indeed, in his short time in office, he increased coal leases on public land fivefold.
Rob Bishop is his political soulmate.
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