The economic risks of privatizing America's public lands

Revisiting the origins of the public land ownership model in a time of change

A beautiful stretch of public lands, including taxpayer investments in the form of a fence, gate, and sign (John Clayton 2021 photo)

When I started researching Natural Rivals: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Creation of America’s Public Lands in early 2017, it felt like a natural story: two prominent figures in environmental history who had clashing perspectives on how people should relate to nature. But it soon morphed into a public-lands story, when a) I discovered how Muir and Pinchot had collaborated to establish America’s public lands in the 1890s, and b) the newly-elected Trump administration opened the question of the role of public lands today.

By the time the book was published in 2019, the political urgency of (b) had cooled a bit. This year, it feels like it’s back.

I’m speaking not only of the newly elected Trump administration. The state of Utah is suing to gain ownership of U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, a lawsuit backed by four other Western states. And last month the state of Wyoming nearly scuttled a deal to sell to the feds a 640-acre inholding in Grand Teton National Park. Some officials wanted to instead trade the parcel for other federal lands, because their priority was to reduce federal land ownership in the state.

In short, questions about federal lands, and whether they hinder Western states’ economic development or self-perception of independence, are again in the news.

I believe that development makes the story I told in Natural Rivals especially relevant, because if the country wants to debate the future of public lands, we should understand where they came from.

But here, I’d like to expand on an argument I made in the book’s introduction: that when we think about privatizing public lands, we need to think clearly about what that would mean. This too is a natural story, because we often conflate public lands—democracy’s lands—with nature’s lands.

Let’s define our key word here. I’m using public lands in the sense that it’s debated in today’s politics: lands collectively, permanently owned in commons by our democratically elected federal government, managed for multiple uses by agencies including the National Park Service, US Forest Service, BLM, and others. (An antiquated definition of public lands refers only to the not-yet-homesteaded lands of the “public domain,” most of which is now BLM land. And by my definition, public lands might also include lands owned by states, counties, and cities, although the political debate exists almost entirely at the federal level.)

This land makes up a majority of many Western states. Many locals are frustrated that land management priorities are set so far away. So they have repeatedly sought to privatize public lands. In the 1950s, privatization efforts were opposed by Bernard DeVoto, who saw them as a land-grab by powerful ranchers. In the 1980s, similar efforts became known as the Sagebrush Rebellion. In the 2010s, the headline-grabbing action of similar efforts was the takeover of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

People can support these ideas at different levels of intensity.

1. Some people want more economic activity on public lands, such as drilling, mining, or grazing. I’d argue that these never-ending debates about how to use public lands also include questions of increased recreational activity—such as hiking, climbing, and mountain biking—which may conflict with ecological or other land management objectives.

2. Some people want states to take over control of federal lands. The lawsuit mentioned above is a great example.

3. Some people want all federal lands to move into private hands. This is the libertarian approach, with philosophical objections to the very idea of a government owning land.

My argument: debates at the first level are totally legitimate and even desirable. The second level is unworkable in practice. And the third level poses gigantic risks of cultural destabilization.

This argument gets me in trouble with everybody. Many environmentalists disagree with part 1. They’ll cite a proposal to, say, increase drilling as a “threat to public lands.” I’m uncomfortable with that shorthand. I understand that they are saying that such activities would threaten the values they want public lands to enshrine. But given that we also face arguments against the very existence of public lands, it’s important to respect that so long as land continues to be owned publicly, decisions continue to reside in our democratic process. In a time when lots of people are worried about the future of democracy, the fact that public lands are democracy’s lands is valuable and important—worth celebrating even when you disagree with the results of a democratic process. Even Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), no friend of environmentalists, boycotted the 2016 Republican convention over its platform to sell off public lands.

Small-government conservatives disagree with part 2: they believe that state bureaucracies will manage land better than the feds do. I appreciate the point that the best decisions come when you’re closest to the issue, but I don’t see how transfer of ownership would accomplish this goal. There would still be federal laws to follow and lawsuits from national organizations to worry about. Tasks now being performed by federal employees would have to be done by state employees with much smaller budgets. And all this assumes that the states could somehow get the lands from the feds for free, despite centuries of investment from nationwide taxpayers. States don’t have the financial resources to pay market value for these lands, which should render the whole discussion as theoretical.

True believers disagree with part 3: They argue that once resource-based industries are freed from the shackles of federal landlords, the result will be creation of well-paying rural jobs and a return to the thriving rural communities of 30 or 60 or 100 years ago. I see this as a naïve fantasy. In his wonderful article “The Changing Face of Woods Work” (High Country News, October 30, 2017), Hal Herring detailed how the locally-oriented forest labor jobs he productively pursued in his 20s have been outsourced in the community-destroying quest for cheap labor. The book (though not the movie) Nomadland tells a similar tale of formerly well-paying rural jobs now going to rootless, poorly paid, often unhappy outsiders. And that’s from the federal agencies! Private employers would be even more eager to hire cheap out-of-state labor or robots. The result would not be community-sustaining.

And all this assumes that the new owners would use the privatized lands to create jobs. Wouldn’t they be far more likely to lock up the lands to pursue the dreams of the ultra-rich? When I look at the skyrocketing price of rural land in Montana, it’s not related to those lands’ production value in ranching or logging or mining. Indeed, coal-fired power plants and timber mills are closing and mines are laying off employees because of market forces. You won’t magically clear up those market forces by merely removing supply restrictions on public lands.

Meanwhile, ranches are being snapped up by billionaires. It turns out that people have deep-seated desires to own land. Not necessarily to extract resources from it. Just to control it. So if public lands were privatized, the new owners would likely exert their control by limiting public access for hunting, hiking, or other traditional uses. This would be a huge blow to local communities.

The way I understand the economics, Western rural communities have actually benefitted from the presence of nearby public lands. Granted, since an economist measures benefits in the form of growth of population, employment, and personal income, this may be another way of saying, “Lots of rich people have moved to places like Telluride, Colorado,” which may not be what the Telluride of 1990 would have chosen.

But is the choice of privatizing public lands any different? The privatization activists are similarly promising economic growth. They use nostalgic images. But do they want to propose lots of regulations about what the new owners would do with their lands, how many jobs they would create and who would get them and how they would be tied to affordable housing? In other words, do they want to enter into markets to try to pick winners and losers?

Presumably not, but that means the market-dictated outcomes will involve lower-paying jobs, higher-cost housing, increased income disparity, and reductions of community bonds. It strikes me that the privatizers have cultural goals that are poorly suited to market-based approaches. Which means we’re looking at a lot of risk and change without widely shared benefits.

I interpret the election results as signaling that the American population wants change. I don’t know what that change is; I’m not sure anyone else does either. So I favor discussing such potential change—discussing the costs, benefits, cultural implications, and risks that would be associated with privatizing public lands. Indeed I wrote Natural Rivals to contribute to that discussion.

Notes:

• Thanks to subscriber Thomas Pease and others for asking that I tell a natural story about public lands.

• Welcome new subscribers! Every week here I tell a story of people and nature; usually it’s not so political.

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