Western Lands Update • The Newsletter of the Western Lands Project • http://westernlands.org

Western Lands Project P.O. Box 95545

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(206) 325-3503

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Winter 2015Volume 19, No. 2

In This Issue:

Blaeloch in the New York Times

In early November, the Times contacted Janine to write a column for its online forum “Room for Debate” on the subject of solar devel-opment impacts on public land. Debating along with her were a staffer from The Nature Conservancy and an environmental lawyer, both essentially supporting the current policy, with improvements. The full debate can be found at http://tinyurl.com/hvzz6ay

Federal Lands are Being Ruined for Inefficient Solar EnergyJanine Blaeloch, Western Lands Project

The U.S. government is committed to a mistaken and damaging renewable-energy policy that promotes and heavily subsidizes industrial-scale solar and wind development on public lands.

This industrial assault is already under way, and may ultimately cover hundreds of thousands of acres of our public land – much of which consists of intact ecosystems that provide habitat for rare and endangered plants and animals, sequester carbon, and offer the chance for ecosystem adaptation to climate change.

Utility-scale solar and wind generating plants, most with footprints of several thousand acres, are transforming ecologically rich, multiple- use lands to single-use industrial facilities, in effect privatizing vast areas of public land. Those lands cannot be returned to their previous state; conversion is total and permanent, even though most projects will generate power for only 15 to 30 years.

The thousands of miles of new transmission infrastructure neces-sary to carry power from remote generating plants to urban demand

Continued on page 3

2 Protecting the desert in southwestern Utah

4 BLM considering Montana land exchange again

5 Boulder-White Clouds Wilderness bill passes

7 U.S. Army to invade wilder-ness?

2 Western Lands Update Winter 2015 Vol. 19 #2

Plan could give strong protections to desert lands in southwest UtahThe St. George, Utah office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently released an environmental impact state-ment that looks at various alternatives for management of two National Conserva-tion Areas (NCAs) under its purview. The Red Cliffs and Beaver Dam Wash NCAs were established in the 2009 Omnibus Public Lands Act. These lands comprise critical habitat for the desert tortoise and other species, and their protection is particularly important in light of the rapid growth that has occurred in St. George and

surrounding Washington County in the past two decades-plus.

Western Lands Project has been involved in public land matters in St. George since very soon after our founding, when we began to scrutinize the numerous land exchanges the BLM was implement-ing with private landowners inside the Desert Cliff Tortoise Reserve, now NCA.

In 2006, we began watching legis-lation sponsored by U.S. Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) that mandated the sale of almost 25,000 acres of public land in Washington County and directed that the sale proceeds stay within the county. The bill also required construction of a road, the Northern Corridor, that would cut through the Desert Cliffs Reserve. A large coalition of environmental groups opposed the bill, and Bennett was never able to gain passage of his original pro-posal. Thanks to now retired Senator

Western Lands has requested that livestock grazing be eliminated in the Red Cliffs NCA and that motorized vehicles be banned in both NCAs.

The town of St. George has grown rapidly, pushing up against surrounding public land. Photo: Western Lands Project

Western Lands Update Winter 2015 Vol. 19 #2 3

centers drastically inflates the cost of renewable energy, with ratepayers footing the bill for the utilities’ built-in transmis-sion profits.

U.S. taxpayers have provided billions of dollars in subsidies for industrial-scale renewable developments to many of the same corporations that have dominated the Fossil Fuel Era and in fact created the problems renewable energy is designed to rectify.

We must create a better energy future that serves both humans and the environ-ment. Let’s pursue efficiency upgrades and “distributed generation”– point-of-use generation on rooftops, in parking lots and highway medians, brownfields and throughout the built environment. These are cost-effective, efficient, clean and democratic approaches that are faster

to implement; they have far less environ-mental impact than industrial-scale solar or wind power on intact ecosystems; and they make our power grid far less vulnerable to catastrophic failure and sabotage.

The Environmental Protection Agen-cy’s “Re-Powering America’s Lands” program has identified 15 million acres of degraded or contaminated land potentially suitable for renewable energy develop-ment, and works to facilitate remediation and development of the sites. This is a superb example of where our national policy should be focused.

The current, very damaging approach to renewable energy is based upon false storylines: that in order to confront the climate crisis, we must deploy huge infra-structure on public lands; that those who oppose these developments are either climate-deniers or coal-industry sym-pathizers; and that the sacrifice of desert ecosystems is a necessary tradeoff in the pursuit of renewable energy. None of these stories are true.

Blaeloch in The Times…

From page 1

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), then chair of the Senate’s public lands committee, Bennett’s bill was gutted before it was folded into the 2009 Omnibus. The land sale mandate was removed, and the road project was replaced by a study for the road project.

The BLM’s current planning effort will lead to a decision as to how much protec-tion the NCAs will receive. The agency’s Alternative C is gaining a lot of support from environmentalists, because it affords the highest level of protection of any of the options, including a prohibition on rights of way for the Northern Corridor and for ant transmission-line or renewable-energy developments. That alternative also sus-pends livestock grazing in the Beaver Dam

Wash NCA. Western Lands submitted comments in support of Alternative C, but we have requested that livestock grazing also be eliminated in the Red Cliffs NCA and that motorized vehicles be banned in both NCAs.

Like us on Facebook! We regularly post timely news on public lands and related topics. Facebook.com/WesternLandsProject

4 Western Lands Update Winter 2015 Vol. 19 #2

BLM looking again at exchange with Montana’s largest private landowners

Texas brothers Dan and Farris Wilks have been on a buying spree in Montana the past few years after

selling Frac Tech Services for more than $3.2 billion in 2011. They are now the largest private landowners in the state, with more than 340,000 acres, mostly ranchland. (For an interesting look at the brothers and their politics, see http://preview.tinyurl.com/jjz694q).

The Wilks purchased a 60,000 acre ranch near the Snowy Mountains of central Montana in 2011. The ranch completely surrounds 12 parcels of public lands total-ing about 4,900 acres, known as the Durfee Hills, some of the best elk habitat in the state. Although there is no road access to the Durfee Hills, sportsmen hire airplane and helicopter pilots to fly them onto the land to hunt in fall.

In the spring of 2014 the Wilks pro-posed a land trade to acquire the Durfee Hills. They offered 4,000 acres of another ranch they owned, adjacent to the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument. The 4000 acres were to provide access to more than 50,000 acres of land in the Upper Missouri Breaks that were closed off to the public in 2006 when the former owners of the ranch claimed that the portion of a road across the ranch was private (a court upheld that claim in 2009).

The public overwhelmingly opposed the Wilks’ proposal because it would close the Durfee Hills to hunting. The BLM rejected the offer before it was even formally evaluated. Distrust of the Wilks was reinforced when the grassroots group Enhancing Montana’s Wildlife & Habitat (EMWH) visited the Durfee Hills in the fall of 2014 and documented that the Wilks had placed illegal fence on the portion of their ranch that bordered the Durfee Hills, effectively encircling the public land. EMWH also found that the Wilks fence encroached on the public lands in trespass and that several BLM survey markers had

The Wilks brothers have fenced and damaged public land in the Durfee Hills. Photo: EMWH

Western Lands Update Winter 2015 Vol. 19 #2 5

Boulder-White Clouds wilderness bill passes, minus awful provisions

In 2003 we first got wind of a legisla-tive proposal from Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) called the Central Idaho Eco-

nomic Development and Recreation Act (CIEDRA), a bill that would turn out to be a notable and very egregious example of what we call “quid pro quo Wilder-ness.” Part of an emerging trend in public lands legislation, CIEDRA commingled proposed Wilderness designations in the Boulder and White Clouds mountains with giveaways of public lands and other bad provisions intended to appease wilder-ness haters. Wilderness protection would essentially be paid for with the outright gifting of federal lands to several towns and two counties in central Idaho, as well as a huge area of public land that would be dedicated to off-road vehicle access.

When news of Simpson’s bill began circulating, local authorities had already been busily cherry-picking pieces of public land they wished to have conveyed to their jurisdictions for housing development and other uses, while the public was left in the dark. Starting in 2004, CIEDRA was intro-

duced numerous times with placeholder text that referred to land conveyances but provided no acreages or locations. The bill language was so continuously under revision that at one point, Simpson sub-mitted to the House Clerk a version in which he had forgotten to include the land giveaways to one of the counties. Oops. Nevertheless, as time passed, it was appar-ent that some 5,000 to 7,000 acres of public land would be handed over.

Dozens of grassroots environmental groups from around the West and even across the country coalesced in opposition to CIEDRA, fearing that its passage would cement a precedent of using public land as a cash cow for economically-challenged rural areas all over the West. One piece of federal land poised for privatization was a 162-acre parcel in the beloved Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA) target-ed for residential and commercial develop-ment, inspiring a group of Forest Service retirees to join in opposition to the bill.

The fight over CIEDRA was one of the first of many that would highlight

been bulldozed. The BLM is still investi-gating the trespass.

Later that fall BLM announced that it was considering building a different access road for the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument. At a public meeting to discuss the access road, a commenter suggested reconsidering the land exchange with the Wilks.

Apparently, the suggestion was entry enough for the Wilks to alter their pro-posal and bring it to the BLM again. The revised offer includes a permanent access easement to Lewis & Clark Nation-

al Forest lands and a managed hunting opportunity on a portion of their ranch. Despite an earlier statement from BLM saying it didn’t want to spend taxpayer money potentially litigating a trade that the public vehemently opposed, the agency has again engaged the Wilks and is in the process of deciding whether to formally consider the offer through the Nation-al Environmental Policy Act process. Western Lands will continue to work with EMWH to monitor the proposal.

6 Western Lands Update Winter 2015 Vol. 19 #2

a growing schism between grassroots public land advocates and larger, often D.C.-based, environmental organizations. Rep. Simpson’s supporters on the deal included the Idaho Conservation League, Wilderness Society, and the Campaign for America’s Wilderness – an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts. These groups were so deeply invested in getting wilderness designations at any cost that they easily acceded to the public land giveaways and lobbied hard and expensively for the bill’s passage.

Despite their efforts, the bill could not cross the finish line. CIEDRA was intro-

duced in every two-year congressional session from 2003 to 2014; it was heard in committee once, in 2006, and passed the House on a voice vote, only to languish in the Senate. In the meantime, even lacking the resources of the proponents – lots of money, and offices located steps from the Capital – grassroots opponents had made the case that CIEDRA’s land giveaways would establish a chilling precedent and potentially open the door to wholesale public-land privatization. That is some-thing that Americans of every political quirk deeply dislike.

With Republicans controlling both chambers between 2003 and 2007, CIEDRA had seemed unstoppable and the environmental groups supporting the bill were justifiably smug. Yet even after passage in the House, it could not clear the hurdle of the Senate because of a member of Simpson’s own delegation, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), who opposed any new wil-

derness designation. Then, alas, the Senate went Democratic from 2007 to 2014 and the chair of the Senate committee oversee-ing public lands was assumed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, who offered this denunciation of quid pro quo wilder-ness legislation:

“…I fear that if we follow the prac-tice of some recent and proposed wilder-ness bills, we will essentially be undoing decades of Federal land policy and instead put in place a new policy encouraging the disposal of public lands, only this time on a county-by-county basis …”

Bingaman retired in 2013 and of course Congress went to a Republican major-ity in 2015, but by that time, Simpson’s CIEDRA had become moribund. When rumors began to circulate in 2014 about the possibility that President Obama would declare a National Monument designation for the Boulder-White Clouds, Simpson asked the Administration to give him six months to come up with legislation that could pass.

After numerous false endings – includ-ing an attempt by some Republicans to attach language to Simpson’s bill that would forbid the President to designate any national monuments in Idaho without Idaho’s permission – Simpson’s Boul-der-White Clouds wilderness bill passed into law in August 2015. Now called the Sawtooth National Recreation Area and Jerry Peak Wilderness Additions Act, the legislation had been stripped of the land giveaways and other harmful provisions, ending a 12-year battle by grassroots groups to keep that precedent at bay.

Dozens of grassroots environmental groups from around the West and even across the country coalesced in opposition to CIEDRA.

Western Lands Update Winter 2015 Vol. 19 #2 7

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Joint Base Lewis-McChord plans invasion of WildernessThe U.S. Army has just begun a Nation-al Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process for a proposal to land training heli-copters on state and federal public lands in Washington State. The Army states that it is challenged by the limited number of “High Altitude Mountainous Environ-ment Training” helicopter sites available to BLM personnel, with the closest being in Colorado.

While the maps provided in the initial documents do not identify them as such, some sites are located in the Alpine Lakes, Glacier Peak, Henry M. Jackson, and Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness Areas, and one site is very close to the Pacific Crest Trail. In the Army’s summary of the pro-posal, the required list of laws and policies pertinent to the project does not include the Wilderness Act, a stunning omission. Landings in Wilderness are illegal, and special legislation would have to be passed to allow circumvention of the current law.

Under the Army’s preferred plan, training helicopters would have access to the sites 24 hours per day and 365 days

per year (minus federal holidays, oddly). Operations may include up to 75 landings per month, in sessions comprised of 10 to 20 landings with seven helicopters over a period of four hours. These operations would surely have a profoundly disrup-tive impact on wildlife in proximity to the flight paths and landing areas. People living in nearby communities and anyone trying to enjoy the solitude of Wilder-ness or the beauty of the nearby National Forest would also be extremely negatively affected. Overall, the unique qualities of Wilderness and the multiple-use charac-ter of the other public lands close to the training operations would essentially be obliterated.

Western Lands Project submitted scoping comments on the project, request-ing a full accounting of the impacts to public lands, Wilderness, and wildlife. Ultimately, however, we do not want the project to go forward and will oppose this unnecessary militarization of public lands just as we oppose their privatization.

The Army proposes intensive helicopter training in Wilderness. Photo: Seattle Back-packers Magazine

8 Western Lands Update Winter 2015 Vol. 19 #2

A Message from Board President Erica RosenbergI’ve had the privilege of serving as Board President for the Western Lands Project over seven years, and the satisfaction of following its work for nearly twenty. Here’s why Western Lands is my hands-down favorite NGO:

No mission creep: While other groups chase dollars to create short-lived pro-grams on the latest trendy topic, Western Lands stays laser-focused on its singular mission of keeping public lands in public hands by watchdogging land deals and other privatization efforts.

Lean and mean: With its sharp focus, Western Lands operates on a modest budget, which for years has supported a staff of three—an Executive Director, a lawyer, and a fundraiser. No gigantic budgets or huge salaries, just an outsize impact. And no doubt about it: every dollar is used wisely.

Savvy: Western Lands just knows how to get things done. With media coverage of its issues from National Public Radio to the Idaho Mountain Express to the New York Times, it gets the word out. Its publications help and inspire citizens to participate in public lands protection.

When it spots a threat like industrial solar development or quid pro quo wilderness (a term Janine coined, btw), it builds strategic coalitions to tackle the problem.

Effective: Western Lands has accom-plished more in almost 20 years in terms of on-the-ground land protection, public consciousness-raising, and policy change than many well-funded groups with dozens or even hundreds of employees. In fact, in large part due to its single-handed efforts, trends are positive: even under Republican control, Congress introduc-es and passes fewer and fewer egregious land deals, and land management agencies have markedly improved their processes, routinely proposing deals that now pass muster more often than not.

Principled: Western Lands uncompro-misingly sticks to its principles. It simply advocates for public lands and for taxpay-ers. It has integrity. It doesn’t need hyped or alarmist messaging to make its case--it just sticks to the facts. Its track record speaks for itself.

I hope you’ll join me in supporting Western Lands Project.

9 Western Lands Update Winter 2015 Vol. 19 #2

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