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Townhall...
Government Land
Management: A Waste of Green
By Erika Johnsen
Editor’s note: There is no government shutdown, but the comments here
are still appropriate.
If the federal government shuts down this weekend, many outdoor
enthusiasts will be bereft, as the National Parks Service would cease
operations at midnight on Friday. The shutdown would close the gates at
the countless National Parks, including Yosemite, the Everglades, and
Yellowstone. This potential wilderness-lockout begs the question: why
is the federal government managing these parks in the first place?
Four government agencies manage the majority of federal lands (which
occupy a full one-third of the surface area of the United States, by
the way): the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service,
the Forest Service, and the National Park Service. It’s tempting to
believe that government management of public lands is the best, most
secure method for conservation, but in reality, land stewardship and
federal bureaucracy do not an environmentalist’s dream-team make. The
Bureau of Land Management alone, responsible for over 500 million acres
of public land, estimated a deferred maintenance backlog of between
$13.5 billion and $19.9 billion for fiscal 2010 (and, knowing the GAO’s
penchant for overly-optimistic numbers, I’d bet on the $19.9 billion).
Such a backlog should outrage nature-lovers – deferred maintenance
often results in severe environmental degradation (think overflowing
sewers, overly dense and decaying forests more prone to wildfires, and
crumbling roads and paths, just to name a few).
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), begun in 1964, is the
federal government’s primary land acquisition program. It sets aside
$900 million every year for the government to purchase more land and is
unquestionably lauded by green-spending-happy President Obama:
“To help set aside land for conservation and to promote recreation,
we’re proposing to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, for
only the third time in our history. (Applause.) And we’re intending to
pay for it with existing oil and gas revenues, because our attitude is
if you take something out of the Earth, you have a responsibility to
give a little bit back to the Earth. (Applause.) So these are the right
steps to take for our environment. But they’re also the right steps to
take for our country. They help spur the economy. They create jobs by
putting more Americans back to work in tourism and recreation.”
The LWCF provides politicians with ample opportunity to smile for the
cameras while cutting ribbons in front of brand new parks, but it does
not provide money for the perpetual conservation of the lands it
purchases. It is amazingly irresponsible to buy more public land when
the federal estate is already a poorly-managed,
environmentally-degrading contributor to the exploding national deficit
(which definitely does not help create jobs, no matter what President
Obama might say).
Open public recreational access sounds appealing and is an easy sell
politically, but anyone who actually cares about preserving the
American landscape would be wise in favoring a more privatized system.
For a nominal fee, the country’s most visited national parks could be
operationally self-sufficient, economically viable, and free from
top-down regulatory hindrance. The billions of taxpayer dollars wasted
on public land acquisition and management may seem small in the larger
context of a pending fiscal meltdown, but we can little afford to leave
any budgetary stone unturned.
Read it at Townhall
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