By Harold Johns, Butte
The recent efforts to change the status of WSA’s has little to do with 4 wheeling, mountain bikes, hiking, fishing, logging etc. This is all about privatizing public land. This is all about getting those WSA’s out where the wealthy can start carving them up. Rest assured that once public land becomes private there will be no free 4 wheeling, snowmobiling, biking, hiking, hunting, logging etc. Us peons will have to pay to use those lands just like in other states where there is no public land.
Public land is said to bring over seven billion dollars into the Montana economy annually. The greedy in our country want those dollars for themselves but they also want the really big money that will come with the development of Montana, the last best place.
A recent article in the “Guardian,” by Elliot D Woods, discussed the possible effect public land transfer would have on agriculture. Jim Hagenbarth, a long time Dillon rancher, and Vicki Olsen, a member of a ranching family in Philips County, both expressed concern about what might happen to ranchers who lease public land. Land leased from the Forest Service, BLM, and Montana State has long been very important to the ranching industry. If Forest Service, BLM, and State Land were sold, few Montanans could compete financially with big money from out of state and wealthy purchasers would not lease grass at current rates paid by lessees.
So who is driving the effort to privatize public land? Due to the increasing tribalization of political parties, many politicians won’t do anything unless they have received their orders from Washington. To be safe they will ultimately follow the party platform. Regrettably party platforms often are special interest driven and do not benefit us peons. Such is the situation with transfer of public lands.
The Republican National Committee platform and the Montana Republican platform have similar statements concerning transfer of public land. The Montana Republican platform states: “The Montana Republican Party supports the U.S. Congress and U.S. President, other public officials and citizens of Montana and the United States to fully exert their efforts and powers to support returning federally managed public lands to the states in order to secure statehood equality and provide for better management of public lands.”
What that statement means is, we want to get our hands on public land so we can develop it. A friend told me recently: “I am not from Montana. I came here from California. Where there used to be orange groves, there are now nothing but houses. I got out of that s…hole.” Do we want Montana to be degraded by development as have numerous other states? Matt Rosendale has repeatedly called for sale of our public lands.
The transfer of public lands issue is just more RP&RP (Rape the Public and Reap the Profits). If voters elect politicians who have a history of land development you can be assured that they will continue to try to become even richer at our expense.