Court sides with ranchers over higher bid for state land lease

PHOENIX -- The Arizona Court of Appeals has rejected a constitutional challenge to the legality of procedures used by the state Land Department to determine who gets to lease state land for grazing.

In a unanimous ruling, the judges rejected the contention by WildEarth Guardians that it should have been awarded the new 10-year lease. Instead the state agency opted to give a new lease to the ranchers who had been there before.

Appellate Judge Kent Cattani, writing for the court, rejected arguments by attorney Tim Hogan of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest that the Land Department ignored a constitutional requirement that the leasing of public lands be made to the "highest and best bidder at a public auction.'

In this case, Hogan said, the agency never even opened the bid by WildEarth Guardians, instead determining that the ranchers would be better stewards of the land. But that action, said Hogan, may have cheated the state -- and the public schools that benefit from trust land proceeds.

Hogan said he will seek Supreme Court review.

The case involves a 6,237-acre grazing lease held by Galyn and Roxanne Knight adjacent to property they own near Springerville. That lease was set to expire in November 2006.

Before the end of the lease, WildEarth filed an application to lease the same land, but not to graze animals but instead let it rest. That conflict required the Land Department to ask each applicant to submit information for it to determine which has the highest and best bid.

The agency's director of the natural resource division concluded that the Knights had a superior offer, even outweighing WildEarth's offer of additional rent. But Maria Baier, who was land commissioner at the time, directed the parties to submit sealed bids for additional rent.

Baier, however, subsequently accepted the recommendation of a hearing officer and agreed to let the Knights have the land, at 40 cents per acre per year, without looking at the bids.

Cattani noted that the federal government gave Arizona about 10 million acres of land when it became a state in 1912, with the proceeds used mostly to support public schools. About 9.2 million acres remains.

He acknowledged the requirement for leases to be made to the highest and best bidder, and that leases not made in "substantial conformity' with this requirement are void.

But Cattani said state law allows the land commissioner not to take bids if one bidder's right or equity on the lease outweigh an offer of additional rent. And he said that meets what the Arizona Constitution requires.

Looking specifically at Baier's decision, Cattani said she considered the ability to protect the land.

The Knights, Cattani said, monitor the land daily, with at least 10 people who live either or or within eight miles of the property. By contrast, WildEarth indicated the land would be monitored once every two weeks.

Cattani said the property has sand, gravel and timer, includes "irreplaceable Native American ruins and fossil beds' and has been the target of illegal dumping and looters. The judge said the record shows that the Knights have better ability to monitor and protect the land, which they had leased for 28 years.

But Hogan said the constitutional requirements to take and open bids are mandatory, and all that trumps the statutory authority given to the land commissioner.

"The constitution says 'highest and best bidder,' ' he said. "How do you determine that without a bid?'

Hogan acknowledged that even the constitution does not guarantee a lease goes to the highest bidder. He said the Land Department also is entitled to weigh what is best for the land and the state.

But he said that does not give the agency the right to "ignore the 'highest' part and determine the 'best' part.'

"They're a trustee here,' Hogan said.

"They don't seem to care how much money they could make off this lease,' he continued. "And it's very clear that no amount of money was going to convince them that (higher bid) would overcome what they say are the 'superior equities' of the rancher.'

Cattani said there was some evidence that what WildEarth was offering would have resulted in $79,344 additional rent over the 10-year period. Hogan said, though, there is nothing to show how much more WildEarth was offering since Baier never opened the bids.

"It could have been $10 million,' he said. "Is that enough?'

If nothing else, Hogan said opening the bids would have given the Land Department the opportunity to ask the Knights if they were willing to pay more. That did not happen.

"The rancher gets the lease at the minimum appraised rate,' Hogan said.

"How does that benefit the trust here, the public schools,' he said. "It's the worst of all worlds here.'

Source

Megadrought in U.S. Southwest: A Bad Omen for Forests Globally

by caroline fraser

As brutal fires torch tinder-dry dense forests and neighboring homes in the American West, researchers are examining the relationships between drought, wildfire, and a warming climate, predicting mass forest die-offs and prolonged megadrought for the Southwest. These forces are accelerating, they say, and already transforming the landscape. Unchecked, they may permanently destroy forests in the southwestern U.S. and in some other regions around the world.

Across the West, “megafires” have become the norm. With climbing temperatures, after a century of fire suppression, the total area burned has tripled since the 1970s, and the average annual number of fires over 10,000 acres is seven times what it was then. Fighting and suppressing fires costs more than $3 billion a year, not to mention lives lost. So understanding what, if anything, can be done to reduce intense forest fires has assumed an urgent priority.

Currently suffering the worst drought in the U.S., New Mexico has emerged as a “natural experiment” in megadrought, a laboratory for understanding drought’s deep history in the region — and what might lay in store in an era of rapid, human-caused warming.

With a highly variable climate, the Southwest boasts perhaps the best-studied megadrought history in the world. It’s the home of dendrology, the science of studying tree-rings, first developed at the University of Arizona. The pronounced seasonality of hot summers followed by cold winters produces well-defined rings, while archaeological fascination with Southwestern cultures — Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and other sites where ancient peoples flourished and disappeared — has supported the collection and study of centuries of tree-ring data. Temperate-zone trees lay down wider rings in wet years, which narrow or vanish during drought. What’s more, rings can be precisely dated, with sets matched against each other, revealing burn scars and patterns of climate, precipitation, drought stress, and tree mortality.

Park Williams, a young bioclimatologist and postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has teamed up with other specialists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Arizona to wring new insight from the data set spanning the years 1000 to 2007. Driving recently into the Jemez Mountains near his office, we pass rust-red pines, dead or dying from drought. Later, kneeling next to a freshly cut stump, he points to a ring near the bark. “That thick ring right there is probably 1998,” he says, a wetter El Niño year.

Armed with 13,147 such site-specific cross-sectioned specimens, gathered from more than 300 sites, Williams and his co-authors devised a new “forest drought-stress index,” integrating tree-ring measurements with climatalogical and historical records for a paper published earlier this year in Nature Climate Change. Winter precipitation has long been thought important to tree growth, but another key variable leapt from this fresh examination of the data, related to a warmer, dryer climate: the average vapor pressure deficit during summer and fall, which is driven by temperature. As air grows warmer, its capacity to hold water vapor increases exponentially, which speeds evaporation and sucks more moisture out of trees’ leaves or needles, as well as the soil itself.

If the vapor pressure deficit sucks out enough moisture, it kills trees, and there’s been a lot of that going on. Looking back in time through the tree rings, Williams determined that the current Southwest drought, beginning in 2000, is the fifth most severe since AD 1000, set against similarly devastating megadroughts that have occurred regularly in the region. One struck during the latter 1200s (probably driving people from the region) and another in 1572-1587, a drought that stretched across the continent to Virginia and the Carolinas. Few conifers abundant in the Southwest — including piñon, ponderosa pine, and Douglas fir — survived that latter event, despite lifespans approaching 800 years; those species have since regrown.

The forest drought stress index correlates strongly with these periods, while 20th-century temperature records show a connection between drought and tree mortality associated with huge wildfires and bark-beetle outbreaks, such as the devastating ones of the past two decades. Williams’ study is also supported by satellite fire data from the past few decades, revealing an exponential relationship between drought stress and areas killed by wildfire.

His projections, based on climate forecasts, sparked grim headlines throughout the region: If the climate warms as expected, forests in the Southwest will be suffering regularly from drought stress by 2050 at levels exceeding previous megadroughts. After 2050, he calculates, 80 percent of years will exceed those levels. “The majority of forests in the Southwest probably cannot survive in the temperatures that are projected,” he says.

Making matters worse in the near-term, forests hit by so-called “stand-destroying” wildfires may not recover. During a recent phone interview, Craig Allen, a co-author of the Nature paper and a USGS research ecologist at the Jemez Mountain Field Station near Los Alamos, explains that the catastrophically hot fires seen recently in New Mexico, while a natural result of a century of fire suppression and dense growth during wet periods, create conditions for permanent forest loss through “type conversion.” Basically, high severity fires that burn over a wide area subvert the ability of southwestern conifers to reproduce, a process requiring nearby mother trees to drop their seeds. Ponderosa pines, for example, can’t cast their seed much more than 100 yards, virtually ensuring that large forest gaps will be replaced by shrub and grasslands, with unfortunate consequences for a range of forest services, particularly those provided by delicate watersheds. “These anomalously big patches where every tree is killed create a high risk that they won’t come back as forests,” Allen says.

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Federal control of lands not bad, Interior Secretary Jewell tells Western governors

New U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told the Western Governors Association on Friday there's a need to get away from seeing federally managed lands as bad and state control over resources as good.

Jewell called for a balanced approach to using public lands in the West, pledging the federal government will be a partner in identifying what local communities "want from a grass-roots level," whether that's preserving or developing the land.

Gov. Gary Herbert, the association's outgoing chairman, asked Jewell after her keynote address on the first of three days of meetings to define balance, noting that "like beauty, balance is sometimes in the eye of the beholder."

Herbert noted that nearly 70 percent of Utah is federally controlled at a time when the nation needs the energy resources available on those lands, as well as to protect pristine wilderness.

"I look forward to understanding what balance means to the state of Utah," Jewell said.

Earlier in her speech to the 400 government leaders from the western U.S. and Canada and lobbyists, she spoke of a shift in federal land use in the West, from traditional grazing, mining and forestry to recreational tourism.

Jewell declined to comment to reporters specifically on the Utah Legislature's demand in 2012 that the federal government cede its holdings in the state, but said the decision to give the federal government oversight of those lands was made years ago.

"Just because the federal land may be under the jurisdiction of the federal government doesn't mean the states don't benefit from it," the former Recreational Equipment Inc. CEO said, citing as an example Washington sharing drilling proceeds with states.

"It's not negative necessarily to be federal, and some of the comments suggest that," she said. "In many cases, if you're in the East where I'm now living, people would kill to have federal lands like the beautiful federal lands we have out West."

Rather than turn back land held by the federal government to the states, Jewell said, "there is an appetite in the federal government to work with state government to more thoughtfully manage our land."

A Utah lawmaker behind the push to get the federal government to give up its claims in Utah, Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, said Jewell's comments "ignore the fundamental question."

Ivory said the state is suffering as a result of how federal lands are managed, including losing access to roads and "abundant recourse that creates a tax base and jobs. So the speech sounds nice, but on the ground, it doesn't happen."

Jewell, making her first visit to Utah after being named interior secretary earlier this year, said she plans to hike to Barneys Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains with Bureau of Land Management employees Saturday before leaving the state.

Herbert told reporters that the states' relationship with the federal government "ought to be a partnership, not one that's subservient" and dominated by a dictator. Still, Utah's governor said he believes progress is being made.

"Sometimes it's a matter of getting people's attention and letting them know we're serious," he said, about putting a stop to what he called the federal government's continued overreach.

Herbert said he welcomed Jewell's focus on outdoor recreational use of public lands but added while that may be a big part, it's not all the holdings can provide. Utah, he said, is taking an "all of the above" approach to how federal land should be utilized.

Source

NM Mouse May Get Protections and Habitat

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse for endangered status under the Endangered Species Act, with over 14,500 acres of critical habitat.
     The mouse's unusual eight to nine month hibernation period contributes to the species' vulnerability, the agency said in a press release. With an active period of only three to four months during the summer, there is little time to breed, give birth, raise young, and also eat enough to survive the hibernation period. The species is short-lived, generally living only three years or less, and they have small litters. "If resources are not available in a single season, jumping mice populations would be greatly stressed," the agency said.
     The species has specialized habitat requirements of tall vegetation near flowing water. "Over-grazing destroys the streamside riparian and wet meadow habitat on which the meadow jumping mice depend," the WildEarth Guardians (WEG) noted in a statement. The WEG maintains that the recent listing and critical habitat proposals are in response to a "scientific petition" filed by the group in 2008.
     "The most important thing we can do to protect the jumping mouse and the ecosystem they call home is to reign in grazing on public lands," Bethany Cotton, Wildlife Program Director at WEG was quoted as saying in the group's statement.
     While the USFWS acknowledges that grazing has contributed to the species' habitat fragmentation, it maintains that "water management and use (which causes vegetation loss from mowing and drying of soils), lack of water due to drought (exacerbated by climate change), and wildfires (also exacerbated by climate change)," add to the problem as well as "scouring floods, loss of beaver ponds, highway reconstruction, residential and commercial development, coalbed methane development, and unregulated recreation," according to the listing proposal.
     Data from the 1980s and 1990s compared to more recent data indicate that 70 locations formerly occupied by the jumping mouse have been destroyed, leaving only 29 isolated populations spread over Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, the listing action said, and "none of the 29 populations known to exist since 2005 is of sufficient size to be resilient."
     The USFWS has concluded that the species is "at an elevated risk of extinction now and no data indicate that the situation will improve without significant conservation intervention," according to the listing proposal.
     The agency has proposed 193.1 miles, or 14,560 acres in eight units as critical habitat in twelve counties in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.
     Comments on the two proposals are due Aug. 19, with public hearing requests due by Aug. 5. 

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Idaho Rancher Gets a $24,651 Bill for 2012 Livestock Trespass!

Western Watersheds Project’s work to help document ongoing trespass livestock has paid off!

WWP staff (Katie Fite and Ken Cole) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) documented a single rancher’s trespass cattle throughout the 2012 season. After receiving three trespass notices for having cattle on several allotments in the Juniper Mountain area of southwestern Owyhee County, an Owyhee County rancher agreed to pay $24,651 in trespass grazing fees and administrative costs.

The trespassing rancher, Jack Payne, is the owner of the C Ranch in Owyhee County and owner of Nevada Livestock Marketing in Fallon, Nevada. The BLM first observed his trespassing livestock on the Trout Springs and Pole Creek allotments on July 20^th, 2012.  Payne did not have a permit to graze cattle on either of these allotments; the Trout Springs allotment had been completely closed to grazing since 2008 after another rancher lost his permit due to repeated willful trespass violations.  Some of Payne’s cattle also remained on the Bull Basin allotment long after the July 15 permit deadline for removal adding to the unauthorized use violations. In total, Payne’s trespass cattle were found on four allotments: Trout Springs, Pole Creek, Cliffs and Bull Basin.

WWP obtained documents about the trespass through a Freedom of Information Act request and there were records of conversations between the BLM and Jack Payne wherein the rancher complained that livestock were difficult to manage on these heavily-forested-with-juniper allotments.  Cattle would often escape detection or quickly disappear into the dense junipers when being rounded up.

This echoes complaints made by Western Watersheds Project. These lands are unsuitable for livestock grazing.  Redband trout streams on the allotments have suffered severe degradation and any recovery made on the Trout Springs allotment was lost with just this one season of trespass.  In addition, there is little livestock forage available after decades of abusive livestock grazing on these landscapes.

Unfortunately, trespass and general lawlessness is a common aspect of livestock grazing in Owyhee County.  Cattle have been observed illegally grazing in the general area for many years by Western Watersheds Project staff but outside political forces have undermined BLM decision-making. We hope that one day livestock grazing will end in this remote, arid and important landscape and be replaced with healthy streams and healthy wildlife habitat.

Ken Cole
Nepa Coordinator

State asks Forest Service to collaborate on land management

While a bill that would call on the state to take over much U.S. Forest Service and BLM lands in New Mexico appears to be floundering in the state Legislature, another measure that would request the Forest Service work collaboratively in land management has been approved without a dissenting vote.
A House Memorial will ask the federal Forest Service to engage with state agencies and local governments in "meaningful" watershed health planning and management.
The House of Representatives message contends the Forest Service has done a poor job, "in light of the history of wildfires on public land in New Mexico and it light of the United States Forest Service's breach of regulatory and fiduciary responsibilities to New Mexico."
The memorial calls on the state engineer, attorney general and state forester to take steps to enforce the obligations of the Forest Service under an 1897 federal act to protect watershed health in New Mexico's forests.
The state agencies will be requested to integrate local, state and tribal watershed plans and management with the efforts of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Bureau of Reclamation.
The memorial was introduced by Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-Alamogordo, who also offered the measure for New Mexico to take over much of the Forest Service and BLM property in the state.
The Organic Act of 1987, Herrell said, established much of the national forests. She noted the act states that, "No national forest shall be established except to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States."
The memorial contends there have been two decades of catastrophic wildfires in New Mexico that have adversely affected private property, commerce and the environment of the public lands in the state.
The New Mexico Environment Department, in commenting on House Memorial 65, attested to the damage that wildfires have caused to New Mexico watersheds.
"Given the experiences seen with the 2012 Little Bear Fire, which affected watersheds for Ruidoso and Alamogordo, and the 2011 Track Fire in Raton, small communities can lose drinking water supplies due to sediment and other water quality impacts after a fire," the department wrote. "The NMED has seen first-hand the consequences of forest fires on drinking water supplies for small communities and support efforts for watershed planning across the state. The watershed planning and associated prescribed burns and thinning that have occurred in the Santa Fe municipal watershed provide an example of the type of activities that can help to avoid the disastrous impacts of these types of fire."
A memorial carries no legal weight and simply asks that its wishes be considered.

Of cows and climate

One needs only to look at the coffee-table book Welfare Ranching’s full page pictures of muddy streams and packed dirt ground to know that cattle grazing can have a negative impact on rangelands. While its specific effects are harder to pinpoint, climate change, too, affects hydrology, native plants and wildlife. Add climate change and cows together, says a recent study, and you've got the potential for a very stressed landscape. In at least one part of the U.S., the Bureau of Land Management has already begun to incorporate those findings into grazing permits.

On Jan. 28, the BLM’s Owyhee Field Office in southwestern Idaho took the opportunity offered by the renewal of four grazing permits to lower the number of cows allowed on those permits. Specifically, the revised permits cut livestock numbers by one third to one half and limit the amount of time the cattle can be on the BLM land. The grazing cutbacks didn't come about just because the BLM was integrating new science, though. Rather, they are the culmination of an epic legal battle begun by the nonprofit Western Watersheds Project, whose pressure has forced the cutbacks. The group, known for its unwillingness to compromise and staunch opposition to public lands grazing, sued the BLM in 1997 for issuing nearly 70 permits without a thorough consideration of rangeland health. In 2002, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in WWP’s favor.

Because of that ruling, the agency is just now re-evaluating the health of the area, and an environmental analysis of the first four permits found that all of the allotments violated at least two, and sometimes four, of the BLM’s rangeland health standards, including water quality, endangered species habitat and native plant health. More importantly, the analysis determined that livestock were “significant causal factors” in the allotments’ failure to meet standards -- in other words, the cows are to blame. A small paragraph in document also notes that cattle are a stressor that adds to impacts already being wrought by climate change, and cites a paper published in January in Environmental Management that details the relationship between cattle and climate. When deciding how to revise the grazing permits to respond to the environmental assessment's findings, Loretta Chandler, the field manager of the Owyhee Field Office, appeared to consider these findings, although a spokesman for the Idaho state office said the agency still needs more research on how grazing levels react with climate change.


The authors of the study, “Adapting to Climate Change on Western Public Lands:
Addressing the Ecological Effects of Domestic, Wild,and Feral Ungulates,” argue that reducing cattle numbers or eliminating them entirely will lead to the recovery and resilience of the arid sagebrush steppe ecosystem, important in a region stressed by drought, higher temperatures, more fires and insect outbreaks. Over 70 percent of Forest Service and BLM lands have livestock grazing, but despite this, there are fewer efforts to mitigate cattle’s deleterious effect on the landscape than other stressors, they say.
“They invariably talk about fire, forestry, roads, and they never talk about grazing,” says Robert Beschta, an emeritus professor in Oregon State University’s department of forest ecosystems and society and co-author of the study. “That’s the biggest land use on public lands, (and) it’s basically ignored when they talk about resiliency.” Why? Beschta points to internal politics. “Is there an internal agenda by agencies to downplay grazing impacts? I would say yes.”

The BLM’s new Owyhee grazing permits may be a step towards a more holistic consideration of the impact of grazing when combined with climate change. Chandler notes that the revised permits are an opportunity to prioritize ecosystem resilience and resistance to the impacts of climate change through careful livestock management. The grazing alternative she chose, to limit grazing to the summer time and reduce the number of cattle, will mean that “native plant communities…will be better armed to survive such (climatic) changes,” the permit reads.

The consideration of climate seems progressive, and counter to some recent agency history. The BLM certainly does not always acknowledge that cattle, or climate, are stressors. In a 2010 grazing management strategy for Juniper Mountain in eastern Oregon, the agency received a comment asking the BLM to consider how impacts of cattle grazing exacerbate climate-induced stress on the ecosystem. The agency responded by denying that climate change was a “new stress” on ecosystems, and wrote that “climate variability has occurred since the beginning of time and most healthy native ecosystems adapt.”

In November 2012, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) reported that the agency had directed scientists to exclude livestock as a possible factor in changing landscapes. According to the PEER report (which filed a scientific integrity complaint against the agency):

“Launched in 2010 with more than $40 million in stimulus funds, BLM sought to analyze ecological conditions across six “eco-regions” covering the Sagebrush West. There was only one catch: when scientists were assembled BLM managers informed them that there was one “change agent” that would not be studied – the impacts of commercial livestock grazing. BLM managers told stunned scientists the reason for this puzzling exclusion was due to “stakeholders” opposition and fear of litigation, according to documents appended to the PEER complaint.”

To get PEER’s take on the Owyhee permits, I contacted Jeff Ruch, the group’s executive director, and asked him if he’d seen mention of the relationship between climate and cattle in grazing permits before. He admitted he was not familiar enough with permit restrictions to answer that question, but noted climate (and how its effects are, in turn, affected by cattle grazing) wasn’t the deciding factor in reducing livestock numbers. “In both the EA and the permit decision, climate change appeared to be cited as a plus factor, sort of a cherry on top of the regulatory sundae, adding a further justification for pursuing reductions in grazing levels,” he wrote.

As for Beschta, the author of the study cited in the EA, for the BLM to begin to think about this problem at all is a big deal.

To move towards a solution, he says “first of all you need to know you have a problem.”

Emily Guerin is the editorial fellow at High Country News.

Village backs federal land transfer legislation

Citing the disproportionate amount of federally-owned land in Western states, including New Mexico, Ruidoso village councilors Tuesday approved a resolution supporting legislation to create a mechanism for the transfer of public land from the federal government to the state.
Councilor Joseph Eby, who asked for the item to be placed on the council's meeting agenda, said House Bill 292 was presented Monday to the state legislature and was headed to committee reviews. The law is modeled after similar legislation passed in Utah, but would not affect national monuments or wilderness areas.
"New Mexico is 70 percent U.S. government land," he said. "When New Mexico became a state, the federal government promised to extinguish title to public lands within a reasonable amount of time. We've been a state more than 100 years and are still waiting for that promise to be fulfilled."
With the transfer of public lands, the state would benefit economically from any sales of that land and for access to minerals and other natural resources, he said. In any case, the state, counties and communities would have more of a say in management decisions.
He cited a U.S. Forest Service forest fuels reduction and watershed improvement project around Bonito Lake that was delayed because of a protest by an environmental group, and in June, that habitat was destroyed in the Little Bear Fire.
"I'm not saying it wouldn't have happened, but it could have prevented the spread of the fire,"Eby said.

He showed councilors a map illustrating the amount of federal land still held in Western states, 50 percent, versus 5 percent for Eastern states. "There's a disparity," he pointed out. "The U.S. government still holds over 50 percent (of Western lands)," but have given back most of the land in the East.
Councilor James Stoddard asked Village Attorney Dan Bryant if there was any reason the council should not support the legislation or if there were legal issues the resolution might raise.
"If the council passes the resolution (in support of the legislation), it will be sent to Santa Fe, our legislative delegation and other legislators asking them to vote affirmatively on the bill," Bryant said. The resolution also calls for the creation of a Public Lands Transfer Task Force.
"This battle over federal land management has been raging in the West my entire life," the attorney said.
Over the years, the viewpoint has shifted, he said. The BLM, the U.S. Forest Service and other management agencies were populated by the sons and daughters of farmers and ranchers and land users, "but today those agencies are no longer populated by those sons and daughters and local communities in the red part of this map have lost our voice."
"It all boils down to the bureaucracy and the jobs they have to lose if it happened," Stoddard said. "The bureaucracies that maintain those positions will lobby like crazy to keep this from happening."
Bryant, who also is attorney for the Otero County Commission, said 88 percent of that neighboring county is federal land, "so we run the society just south of here on 12 percent of the land mass. The numbers in Lincoln County are close, 78 percent to 85 percent, he said.
Mayor Ray Alborn asked about any restrictions if the bill passes. Bryant said as drafted, the bill, "would not undo national parks or monuments or any of those kinds of places, but there are tens of thousands of acres that could be turned over to the state that could be turned into productive ground that are sitting fallow and unused," he said.
The state and counties receive money from the annual Congressionally-authorized Payment in Lieu of Taxes program as some compensation for not being able to levy property taxes against the acreage, Bryant explained. Otero County runs on a $30 million budget and receives $1.4 million for 88 percent of the county's real estate, he said.
"Who then bears the cost of services (counties and cities provide), our taxpayers on that 12 percent of the real estate, because we are unable to get benefit from the balance of that real estate," Bryant said.
BLM probably manages double the number of acres contained in the Lincoln National Forest, he added.
"What it's really about is getting a voice into the local communities about the decisions that are going to be made on neighboring federal land," Bryant said. "In the last generation, we've had almost no voice. We have a great local forester. I'm not talking about personnel, but it's a larger question." 

Ruidoso News

NM legislation to take federal lands

Legislation that would move the ownership and management of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands in New Mexico to the state has been introduced at the Roundhouse.
The Transfer of Public Lands Act is sponsored by Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-Alamogordo, and Sen. Richard C. Martinez, D-Espanola.
In a prepared statement, Herrell said New Mexico has a rich history of farming, ranching, hunting, fishing and oil drilling.
"In our past we have also had a thriving timber industry that is unfortunately near nonexistent," Herrell said. "We have been fortunate to have vast expanses of land that can be utilized by New Mexicans to help feed their families and enrich their communities. However, we are currently not getting the full use of the land that could be available. Instead, we are paying a management fee to the federal government in order to allow them to make the rules on how our land is used."
The legislation, introduced on Monday, would exclude national parks, national historic parks, national monuments, wilderness areas, and tribal lands. The bill calls on the U.S. Government to extinguish title to the public lands and transfer title to the state on or before Dec. 31, 2015.
"In my home of Otero County, we would greatly benefit from this act as it has the potential to allow for a renewal of the timber industry," Herrell said. "A healthy timber industry, managed responsibly by New Mexicans, would not only help our economy by creating a large number of jobs, but it would also help to protect our watersheds and keep our forests as livable habitat for all wildlife. Additionally, by responsibly thinning our overgrown forests, we can help decrease the devastation of wildfires. As it is currently, the federal government has logging restrictions that keep our forests overgrown, creating a hazardous environment. When a fire starts, the overgrowth serves as kindling, creating a massive forest fire that threatens the safety of our homes and communities."
Herrell said it is time to put an end to the wildland fire danger.
The legislation is similar to the Transfer of Public Lands Act enacted last year in Utah. But an analysis by the Utah Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel cautioned lawmakers and the governor that the act would interfere with Congress' power to dispose of public lands. The review noted that any attempt by Utah to enforce the requirement would have a high probability of being declared unconstitutional.
Staff in the New Mexico Attorney General's Office normally reviews proposed legislation.
"This bill does not show up on our public records site yet," Phil Sisneros, director of communications for the AG's office said Thursday. "That means either it is still being reviewed or it has not come to us for analysis."
The New Mexico Transfer of Public Lands measure would establish a public lands transfer task force to facilitate the transfer of the federal lands to the state. The task force would also establish a prioritized list of management actions to in part preserve and promote the state's interest in protecting public health and safety, preventing catastrophic wildfire and forest insect infestation, preserving watersheds, preserving and enhancing energy and the production of minerals, preserving and improving range conditions, and increasing plant diversity and reducing invasive weeds.
Herrell said the transfer of national forest and BLM lands to the state would also provide revenues to New Mexico's coffers instead of the feds.
"If we follow suit with other states that have done exactly what I am proposing, we can bring in 100 percent of revenues from oil, gas, timber and other industries from this land instead of the less than 50 percent that we currently keep. Doing so will allow us to put more money into our education system to ensure that the children of New Mexico get the education that they deserve."
Herrell pointed to a study done for the Otero County Commission by the Southwest Center for Resource Analysis. She said the report indicated lands currently managed by the BLM and U.S. Forest Service generates more than $500 million in annual revenues for the federal government.
A Fiscal Impact Report for House Bill 292 had not been completed. Legislative Finance Committee staff analyst Mary McCoy said the report would likely be finalized on the day the bill is scheduled to be heard by its first committee, the Agriculture and Water Resources Committee. Rep. Zach Cook, R-Ruidoso, is a member of the committee. A date for a hearing had not been scheduled as of Thursday.
Herrell said five other Western states are looking at similar legislation.
"I am happy to blaze this trail along with other states in the west," Herrell said. "New Mexicans deserve better than the land management we are currently getting from the federal government."



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