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Quoted from appended Op-Ed from today's Rocky Mountain News.
Some federal lands are so badly mismanaged that if they were in private hands already the owner would be prosecuted, he said. "The environmental quality of the West would be improved drastically if it could be privatized."
Unabashed free-market ideologues invented this message in the late 70s.
Today, modern so-called "free-market environmentalists" claim that by selling public lands to the highest bidder, conservation organizations would be on an equal footing with extractive users and /or developers when bidding for those lands. These arguments were detailed in 1999 by President Bush's land-use advisor Terry Anderson in his report titled, "How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands" .
Sadly, and to my everlasting disappointment, some conservationists have helped precipitate the crisis that's now upon us with Rep. Richard Pombo's pending land sale legislation. Some conservation organizations dabbling in the black arts of free-market environmentalism have actively embraced the parts of this larger privatization agenda that fit their immediate needs. Little by little, those dabblers, wittingly or not, helped advance the objectives of the Land-Disposalists and the Ownership-Society-Feudalists.
If Pombo's land disposal provision fails to become law, I hope the dabblers will repent and never again support the privatization agenda. If Pombo's land disposal law is enacted, the game will be over and the long tradition of public enjoyment of publicly owned and publicly supported lands will be dead. If Pombo's land disposal law is enacted, I'll be most interested to see how much of the American Commons can be "saved" by being purchased and will be even more interested to see if those privatized conservation lands provide American citizens with benefits equal to those now provided by public lands.
For what it's worth, here's a prediction: After the last of our lands and other shared inheritances are sold and the money spent, all but a handful of Americans will be reduced to living as modern serfs and paupers in a Neo-Feudalistic State.
Scott
Concentrated Wealth attributes the prosperity and progress of the United States to what it calls free enterprise. To it free enterprise means freedom to take, keep and control all the resources, services and opportunities it can, and charge for them the last possible cent. -Gifford Pinchot (America's first Chief of the USFS)
Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then you will find that money cannot be eaten. -Cree Indian Prophecy
--- begin quoted ---
November 19, 2005
Blake: Giving environmentalists a chance to put up or . . . not
Something there is about selling off public lands in the West that throws environmental groups into a panic.
They invariably prefer the devil they know, which is the perpetual
mismanagement of millions of acres by federal agencies who always
complain about underfunding.
But instead of resisting private sales, they should be invited to get
in on them. If political influence corresponds to wealth - and it
clearly does - environmentalists individually and collectively could
and would outbid the mining, timber and grazing interests for much of
the acreage. Then they could manage it the way they want. There would
be no more conflicting "multiple use" mandates to worry about.
And they wouldn't have to spend millions on lobbying and related nonproductive activities.
The environmental community's biggest current concern is a proposal by
Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., to lift a decade-old moratorium on the
patenting of claims under the Mining Law of 1872. Designed to revive
the moribund hard-rock mining business, it's buried in the pending
House budget reconciliation bill.
Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee, would raise the price
to $1,000 an acre or fair market value, whichever is higher, compared
to the $2.50 an acre under the 1872 law. At least as important, the
buyer would end up with surface as well as mineral rights. That's good,
because if you're going to carry the land as an asset, you'll have to
manage it well as long as you own it. You can no longer cut and run
after extracting the minerals and leave the mess to the feds.
It's important to keep the mining law alive in some form because it's
the only weapon left to get any of the federal government's 654 million
acres into private hands for better management.
But Pombo's proposal is under attack by critics who claim it would open
up 350 million acres of public land for sale, instead of a modest
360,000 acres. And buyers would still have to mine their land, not
immediately turn it into golf courses or condos, as critics suggest.
Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo recently took time out from his immigration
activities to introduce a bill calling for the sale of 15 percent of
low-use Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management property. He would
use the proceeds for natural disaster or terrorist attack relief.
The federal government is cash-poor but land-rich, he said at the time.
"Not only would a land sale provide a one-time cash infusion for the
Katrina catastrophe, but it would also establish long term property and
sales tax revenue streams." He predicted the sales would net at least
$19 billion, perhaps up to $148 billion.
Of course, the competitive-bid sales would be open to environmental as
well as industry interests. "My bill would give environmentalists an
excellent opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and buy
up federal land for conservation," Tancredo said.
Perhaps Pombo could win support for his mining proposal by twinning it
with something like Tancredo's bill, which would put environmentalists
on an equal footing with other bidders.
R.J. Smith, an advocate of private environmentalism in Washington, says
it's so important to get land out from under federal mismanagement that
he would donate a tract of designated wilderness to, say, the
Wilderness Society or a related group and let it manage the land the
way it wants. It would bear all the costs and keep any income. That
might give the green community a taste of how much better it can manage
land than the federal government. All it can do now is carp about the
latter.
Or Smith would set up a pilot project involving various wildlife
refuges of a similar size. One would be run by the federal agency,
another perhaps by the Audubon Society and a third by Ducks Unlimited.
After a few years their relative effectiveness could be compared. Smith
has little doubt that the private groups would do a better job
protecting the birds.
What would happen if the public lands were put up at competitive sales?
"There's plenty of reason to think that environmentalists will more
often than not find themselves on the winning side of most auctions,"
says a handbook on public lands put out by the Cato Institute of
Washington. "When resource extraction industries have competed with
conservationists in the private marketplace, they have discovered that
the conservationists can usually marshal more dollars for attractive
lands than the industries themselves can."
It's ironic, says Cato, that "resource users and conservationists alike
fear that, were federal resources put up for grabs in the marketplace,
the other side would emerge with more resources than at present. But
both can't be right."
The only way to find out is to hold some sample auctions.
Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute recommends that the
federal government establish many pilot projects to see which method is
most effective in selling off land. How large should the tracts be?
Should they vary in size depending on the nature of the land? Should
some federal land be turned over instead to state or local governments,
which often have a better record of land management than Washington?
He doesn't go so far as to recommend that the national parks, say, be
sold, but much of the Forest Service and BLM land could be and would be
better managed for it.
Some federal lands are so badly mismanaged that if they were in private
hands already the owner would be prosecuted, he said. "The
environmental quality of the West would be improved drastically if it
could be privatized."
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- Privatization 
