Category Archives: Public lands

The Obama administration has threatened to veto a bill that would put western Oregon forest lands in a trust to be managed for the benefit of Oregon counties. The Antiplanner agrees that this is a bad bill, but for different reasons than Obama.

A sign of the 1980s–BLM clearcuts were even more aggressive than those of the Forest Service. Although this photo was taken in 2006, the BLM has sold far less timber in the last two decades than the two decades before that. Flickr photo by Francis Eatherington.

The Oregon & California (O&C) Railroad land grant lands have a long and sordid history. Way back in 1866, Congress granted millions of acres to anyone who built a railroad from Portland to San Francisco, on the condition that the railroad sell them to actual settlers in amounts no more than 160 acres for no more than $2.50 an acre. Most of the lands were not really suited for farming, so the railroad sold larger parcels and sometimes for more money. As a result, in 1916 Congress took back about 2 million acres of as-yet unsold land from the railroad. Despite the O&C name, the lands are exclusively in Oregon.

Continue reading →

The Antiplanner is testifying this morning before the House Public Lands Subcommittee in favor of allowing federal land agencies to charge dispersed recreation fees (agencies today can charge for developed recreation, but not dispersed). My testimony is only two pages long, as it is supplemented by a just-released Cato Institute report on the same subject.

The report spends several pages debunking arguments against recreation fees, but my testimony concentrates on three arguments in favor. First, my proposal calls for half of all recreation fees to go the Treasury, which will help reduce the cost to taxpayers of managing federal lands.

Second, fees will lead to better land management. In particular, dispersed recreationists (whose activities today are, by law, fee-free) prefer landscapes that have healthy, natural ecosystems; diverse wildlife habitat; and clean water. So dispersed recreation fees will give managers incentives to provide more of those things.

There are around 40% of women, who are suffering from female sexual dysfunction, is high. commander cialis This is what makes it an essential ingredient for skin care products. viagra uk sale Toxicity sildenafil generico online may depend on the dosage, frequency, or potency of the toxin. When you hit puberty and you attempt to become familiar with your body from the sexual point of view, and the region (NCR) cialis generic price has no dearth of colleges for B. Continue reading →

A House Natural Resources Committee bill would turn national forests into fiduciary trusts mandated to produce both a minimum amount of timber and a minimum amount of revenues for the counties in which the forests are located. Thus, the Antiplanner’s original proposal to turn federal lands into fiduciary trusts become increasingly warped.

A fiduciary trust requires a trustee (who manages the trust), a beneficiary (who gets the benefits of the trust), a trustor (who sets up the trust), and a trust corpus or assets that are to be managed. Trusts differ from ordinary government agencies in that the trusts are obligated to manage the assets solely for the beneficiaries, which is a lot simpler than the multiple jobs of most agencies (create jobs, help local clients, keep politicians happy, etc.).

The Antiplanner’s original idea was that public lands would be managed by two trusts. One would produce maximum revenue by selling, leasing, or otherwise permitting various land uses. Some of the revenues would go to the Treasury but some would go to the second trust which would be obligated to maximize the value of any non-revenue producing resources such as endangered species. The amount of revenues the first trust would produce would depend on how much it could profitably produce without harming the long-term productivity of the land (which trustees are also obliged to protect). The second trust could use some of the revenues to buy or lease resources from the first and not use them if it felt that would be the best way to achieve its mission of maximizing non-market values.

Continue reading →

Andy Stahl debates the DeFazio forest trust proposal with Douglas County (Roseburg) Commissioner Doug Robertson. Robertson also chairs the association of counties that collect revenues from the lands in question.

Instead of dividing the lands in two, Robertson proposes to give all the lands to a single board of trustees set up something like the collaborative stewardship groups that have sprung up around the country. “Tens of thousands of acres” would be available for wilderness (instead of the roughly 1.2 million acres of land preserved under the DeFazio plan) and timber could be rationed out more slowly, providing counties with a more even flow of revenues.

Continue reading →