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A View From The Overlook: Land Access

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Will Valles Caldera National Preserve ever be added to the National Park System? Photo by Tom Ribe.

“The land, like the sun, like the air we breathe, belongs to everyone----and to no one.”

I saw that quote inscribed on an interpretive plaque in Mount Rainier National Park. The quote was incorrectly attributed to the sometime park ranger and full time environmental gadfly, Edward Abbey.

The actual speaker was the Mexican Revolutionary leader, Emiliano Zapata.

Can’t say I blame the NPS for getting them confused. Had Abbey and Zapata lived in the same time and place, they would have been the best of friends; both were familiar with the ideas of the Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin. All three of them had rather relaxed views on what constituted private property.

However, the quote, when you think about it, is rather dangerous one; it could also be used by a West Virginia coal company to justify mountain top removal. “That cheap potential electrical energy belongs to us all, so we must all share the burden of polluted air, water, and destroyed landscape; we are all guilty, we are all innocent; it’s nobody’s fault.”

It is, of course, somebody’s fault or at least somebody’s responsibility. Now that Humankind has become an actual geological and geographical force like wind, water, and ice, capable of changing whole landscapes, we do have to take responsibility for the outcome.

Who Owns The Public Lands?

Understandably, in a free society, there is some debate about which best manages the national patrimony, the land: Is it the public sector or the private sector?

To Congressman Steve Pearce, (R-NM), the question is a total no-brainer; private ownership winning hands down.

Congressman Pearce has a knack for telling his constituents what they want to hear; mainly that the federal government has too much power and way too much land. Rep. Pearce would like to change that. Depending on how the election goes, he may have that opportunity.

In the interim, the congressman has played “double dare you,” egging on local county officials in his district to arrest or otherwise harass U.S. Forest Service officers doing their duty, taunting the feds by bulldozing destructive roads on federal property and so on. So far, nobody’s been killed or injured by the congressman’s antics, but as the IRA would say, it’s only a matter of time.

Now does all this yelling and hollering result from a shortage of private land in New Mexico?

Not particularly.

Due to its heritage as an active Spanish colonial possession, much of what is now New Mexico was divided up into land grants divvied up by the king for past or future services.

So, unlike say Montana, Utah, or Wyoming, much of New Mexico was actually owned by folks of European descent when we Yanks took over in the 1840s (Whiney Native Americans who said, “Now just a darned minute!” had long since been shouldered aside).

These Spanish land grants were largely honored by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, resulting in the preservation of huge, baronial ranches, many of which exist to this day.

This is all to the good, as large tracts of semi-desert rangeland are easier to manage than fragmented parcels.

How Does "Bandelier National Park and Preserve" Sound?

One of these was the Baca Grant in Northwestern New Mexico, a 95,000-acre ranch that contains the spectacular Valles Grande Caldera, one of the largest volcanic calderas in North America if not the world. It is rich in forests, grass, and wildlife.

Many said that the Valles Caldera would be a natural addition to the adjoining Bandelier National Monument, creating Bandelier National Park & Preserve (The “Preserve” bit to Allow the continuance of world-class elk hunting; the NPS already has some 13 such “preserves).

The Baca Ranch was owned by the Texas oilman and environmentalist Pat Dunnigan (No, “oilman and environmentalist” is not an oxymoron; such creatures do exist and Dunnigan was one of them.) He had no particular qualms about selling his ranch to the National Park Service, though, understandably, he did not want to take a bath. Negotiations dragged on.

Dunnigan passed away but his heirs and the government finally agreed on a price, $97 million, from the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the year 2000.

A win-win situation? A new "national park?" Not quite, neighbors.

Enter the mischievous Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM). To say that Senator Domenici has some reservations about environmental preservation is to understate the case. Indeed, “The Green Elephants,” Republicans for Environmental Responsibility, (Yes, there are such Republicans) voted Mr. Domenici the most environmentally destructive senator in Congress; quite an achievement, considering the competition.

Senator Domenici was faced with the dire threat of that Leading Purveyor of State Socialism, the National Park Service, establishing a new and enlarged national park in his state. What to do?

Rather than a national park or even a national forest, the senator insisted on a new experiment; a sort of hybrid “Preserve” that would be run for a profit or at least self-sufficiency. It would be managed by a board of directors drawn from both the private and public sectors and if it was not self sufficient by the year 2017, it would become part of Santa Fe National Forest.

Now that sounded like an interesting experiment. There were those who suggested that this model of successful “private enterprise” could be used as a template to privatize most public land.

Doesn’t seem to be happening this way. The increasingly questioning public is being denied access to their $97 million purchase except under restrictive and rather expensive permits. The “Preserve’s” board of directors have come up with some colorful ideas to raise money for the Preserve, including (my favorite) selling the Boy Scouts the exclusive right to collect and sell elk antlers shed on the Preserve. (A similar agreement is in place at the National Elk Refuge near Jackson, Wyoming)

All to no avail. It doesn’t look like the Valles Caldera National Preserve is going to become fiscally solvent anytime soon.

Ranching Is Not For The Meek Or Poor

Why not? Well that’s just the way Capitalism works neighbors. You see, owning a ranch is the most romantic way of going broke in America. Almost all ranches require some sort of subsidy, as gentleman rancher Theodore Roosevelt found out.

America’s largest contiguous ranch, New Mexico’s 590,000-acre Vermejo Park Ranch, is subsidized in bad years by its owner, TV mogul Ted Turner, who must charge you $12,000 to hunt elk on his property. (To be fair, that includes five days of board and room and a guide. Ted’s immediate neighbor, telecommunications taipan, John C. Malone, owns the 200,000-acre Bell Ranch. Mr. Malone, America’s largest landowner, has instructed his ranch manager that the goal is to break even, with the realization that that is not going to happen very often.

You will recall that the previous owner of the Baca Ranch was a Texas oilman. Down in the boot heel of southwestern New Mexico, we have the huge 502-square-mile Diamond A Ranch (Formerly the Gray Ranch) owned by the cowboy poet, Drummond Hadley. As there is a limited market for cowboy poetry, it helps that Mr. Hadley is one of the heirs to the Anheuser-Busch fortune. As long as you continue to drink Budweiser, the Diamond A ranch will flourish.

As far as access to these private lands, well, that can be a bit dicey. Ted Turner needs to charge you $500 a day to go birding or hiking on his property. I called up Jennifer who handles public affairs for the Diamond A and asked if I could hike the Continental Divide Trail on their property. According to Jennifer, they’d love to have my company, but their lawyer advises against accommodating hikers due to liability.

John C. Malone, who owns land in Maine as well as New Mexico, has a solution for this problem. It seems that Maine has a law that completely absolves the property owner of any liability if a hunter, hiker, or other visitor is injured on their land. According to Malone, if New Mexico and other western states were to adopt an innocent right of passage law similar to Maine’s, it would make everyone happy by providing lawyer free access to private land.

So what is to become of Valles Caldera National Preserve? Well, now that Senator Domenici is retired, it looks like the public is going to eventually get public access to the land that they purchased fair and square.

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Comments

I would hazard an educated guess that it's obvious Rep. Pearce is trying to embody and revive the Sagebrush Rebellion of the the 1970s and 1980s. And, if you don't like the word "belligerent," even a casual scan of a dictionary shows "antagonistic" to be a frequent synonym that would fit in the case of the congressman and the Forest Service.

But it would seem that perhaps a bigger picture is being missed (yes, the forest can't be seen for the trees).

Part of the Forest Service's struggles with both managing forests and fighting fires is a lack of funding and cuts in personnel. And with climate change, fire season is starting earlier, and lasting longer, which makes those budget and personnel cuts even more dire. Anyone who's paid passing attention to the past two fire seasons know the fire-fighting air force is badly depleted and technologically strained.

Can the states do a better job? Do they have the budgets and the manpower to manage these large expanses of forest? According to a CBS news story from September, "California budgeted $93 million for wildfires this year but has already gone through $114 million. Montana, Washington and Utah have also burned through their firefighting budgets."

Is the answer turning national forest lands over to the states to log, mine, and develop? Is that in the best interests of the country as a whole?

These issues need to be explored in depth and with cooperation and input from all stakeholders, not with rash judgments or soundbites intended to incite.


Kurt, the problems with fire danger were not caused by lack of funds, they were caused by the FS misguided "smokey the bear" put out every fire attitude. This prevented natural small fires from reducing the larger fire risk.

Do states have the resources - yes - if the feds don't take them away. After all the money is coming from the same people but the people locally are much more aware of the issues. If fire is a risk in Colorado, then Colorado people should address it. If floods are a problem in NJ - then NJ people should address it. It is insanity that we are taking public funds to provide federal flood insurance (because no sane private company would do so) for people to rebuild homes in the exact spot that is sure to flood again.

Is the answer turning national forest lands over to the states to log, mine, and develop?

Are those really the only 3 options? Are there not huge amounts of land dedicated to state, county and city parks or dedicated open space or land trusts? Obviously there needs to be a balance. I haven't seen any evidence the feds address that balance any better and I have seen plenty of evidence they have done it less efficiently and often less effectively (i.e. fire policy).


These issues need to be explored in depth and with cooperation and input from all stakeholders, not with rash judgments or soundbites intended to incite.

I wonder if Lee read that. Rash judgements and soundbites (as well as dismissive statements and name calling) are his standard weapons.


Rick and Justin - just because you don't agree with his stance on public land management doesn't make it "belligerence". That is one of the problems with you libs. There can't be a legitimate disagreement and discussion without you pulling out the name calling and hyperbolic accusations.

Take another look at the comments I posted. You're dramatically mischaracterizing what I actually wrote. (If you look at what I did write, you might recognize some irony in your comment.)


Unfortunately, Rep. Pearce isn't the only one out there. Here in the west, there are a flock of Pearces who inhabit (I was going to write "infest," but figured that might insult the feelings of some folks) both our state and national legislatures. Most of them are supported by enormous amounts of outside money coming from anonymous sources. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has managed to purchase the services of many of them.

In Utah, we have such luminaries as Rep. Rob Bishop and State Rep. Mike Noel of Kanab who is infamous for his attempts to grab attention by calling a river a road and then leading a bunch of ATV bandits up it in a cloud of water and mud. When they finally gain state control, the idea is to sell it all off to private bidders. The money gained will, they promise, solve every problem of every citizen of Utah including funding our schools (which now rank last in the nation in per-pupil spending) all the way up to the governor's hemorrhoids.

They have obviously adopted ALEC's battle cry: "Socialize the expenses and privatize the profits."

Happily, there are at least a few of us out here they haven't managed to fool. But for some, the illusion of money is enough to outweigh any common sense.

PJ, please keep up the good work. It's very important. Your work may catch the attention of some people who haven't yet heard of what's happening west of the 100th Meridian, and they may help us to take a stand against this nonsense.


Do states have the resources - yes - if the feds don't take them away.

Well, since we're talking about New Mexico, it ranks #3 in the amount of money it receives from the federal government relative to the amount of money it sends to Washington. For example, 2007-2009 Federal taxes paid, avg.: $8.80 billion; 2007-2009 Federal funding received, avg.: $24.57 billion. So, without the feds, NM would have a lot less money. Of course, there can be some legitimate disagreement about how we value and/or understand the role of the federal government versus the states in the pooling of resources. But that's a different and more nuanced discussion than the feds just taking away state resources.


But that's a different and more nuanced discussion than the feds just taking away state resources.

You mean the $16 billion they took from other states? You think that is right? Taking $16 billion from other states to give to New Mexico?


I live in CT, and we send a lot more to the fed gov't than we receive. I think it's fine. Mostly because I see myself first as an American and second as a citizen of CT. Whether the money goes to another part of CT or another part of the Unites States isn't an issue for me. And there are certainly other areas of the country--as there are other areas of CT--that at times are simply unable to generate enough local wealth to protect its citizens and resources.


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