Republicans increasingly fearful of Land Back, repatriation

After the Soviet Union fell Republicans began their war on the environment in 1991 substituting a new Green Scare for the old Red Scare. 

So today putting the country on the path of protecting at least 30 percent of our land and 30 percent of our ocean areas by 2030 (30x30) is imperative to preserving public lands especially now as the worst megadrought in at least 1200 years is driving desertification in most of the western United States. A supermajority of registered voters in the Mountain West agrees according to bipartisan polling conducted by the Colorado College State of the Rockies project. Urban sprawl, accelerated global warming and drought are reducing productivity on the remaining grasslands of the Great Plains and that some Republicans are angry about conservation means it's the right thing to do. 

The Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre National Grasslands in South Dakota are managed from Nebraska.

New Bridge Strategy, a Republican research and polling firm, surveyed Nebraskans on their feelings about conservation last April. The pollsters found wide support that spanned political parties for a national conservation goal. About 95% of Democrats and Republicans in Nebraska agreed that they supported private landowners’ ability to conserve land through voluntary programs. Yet the state’s governor has spearheaded the opposition to the 30 by 30 goal and has said conservation can lead to government takeover. [Harvest Public Media]

The Grand River National Grassland in northwestern South Dakota is managed from Bismarck, North Dakota.

“I think 30-by-30 is going to require that amount of accountability of what we’ve done in the past with funds,” said Mary Podoll, who has headed the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in North Dakota since 2011. She’s served in the NRCS across several administrations — Republican and Democrats — and said policies primarily are made by Congress, not whatever administration is in power. She acknowledged farm groups are wary of federal agencies, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA’s Waters of the United States — or "WOTUS" — policies, governing navigable waters (and sometimes temporary “prairie potholes”) have swung back and forth between administrations. Trent Loos, a regional rural radio and podcast personality, has been one voice warning of a potential federal “land grab,” and how it could link with conservation programs. Podoll acknowledged that three people coming home from Loos’ presentations had contacted her agency, anxious to cancel their Conservation Stewardship Programs, one of the NRCS’ popular voluntary programs. [AgWeek]

WildEarth Guardians are based in Santa Fe; the Rewilding Institute is based in Albuquerque. Both organizations are driving the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act or NREPA. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies based in Helena, Montana has been kicking the legislation around Congress since 1993. Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning lectured on NREPA in 2002 at the University of Montana. 

In 2014 two national forests based in Montana, one named for the Swiss guy who helped convince President Thomas Jefferson to use an executive order to buy land from a country that didn’t even own it and one named for a war criminal were merged into a single administrative unit. Now, Mary Erickson is the Forest Supervisor for the Custer Gallatin National Forest based in Bozeman and she just signed the record of decision (ROD) for the Custer Gallatin National Forest Land Management Plan. The Sioux Ranger District in northwestern South Dakota is within her purview and part of the roadmap to land repatriation as reconciliation with Indigenous Americans.

Republicans aren't just fearful of government overreach; they're frightened public lands will be remanded to the First Nations.

President Biden's America the Beautiful plan needs a bold, scientifically grounded organizing principle like that provided by the Western Rewilding Network and the three steps proposed for rewilding these federal lands. If implemented alongside fine-scale conservation planning, it would restore critical ecological processes with minimal human interference, protect many endangered and at-risk species, increase resilience to climate change, and sustain an array of ecosystem services. [Rewilding the American West]

So, one solution to making America the Beautiful again and solving national forest and grasslands management woes is moving the US Forest Service from the US Department of Agriculture into Interior where tribal nations could more easily assume additional responsibilities for stewardship on public land, returning the resources to apply cultural fire to their own holdings and rewilding the West.

 

Why not give tribes the land back? @WKamauBell heads to the Black Hills of South Dakota where a battle over land between Indigenous leaders and the US government is heating up. #UnitedShades of America Sunday at 10p ET/PT on @CNN pic.twitter.com/3CeOv8cEGi

— NDN Collective (@ndncollective) August 12, 2022