Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance chairman Darrell Knuffke corrects the record in response to Rob Bishop’s recent “land grab” Op-Ed. First, Rep. Bishop writes:
Article IV of the Constitution allows all states to join the original states as legal and political equals. As with other Western states, when Utah’s enabling act (the law that established Utah’s statehood status) was approved by Congress in 1894, it stated that land was ceded until such time as the federal government “shall” dispose of the land. Western states, including Utah, were promised 5 percent of the proceeds from land disposal to fund public education and infrastructure.The plain language of these enabling acts proclaims that the public lands “shall be sold by the United States.” There was no “may” or “might” about it; the land was to be disposed of by the national government. The United States honored the language until the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, wherein Congress, with a majority of votes coming from the East, declared that the policy of the United States was to retain public lands in federal ownership and management.
The federal government’s disposal philosophy was abandoned and the importance of the Constitution’s equal footing concept was ignored.
To which, Knuffke responds:
In 1964, the Congress chartered the Public Land Law Review Commission to comprehensively review land laws and federal agencies’ policies and practices. It was scarcely an Eastern cabal. Colorado Rep. Wayne Aspinall, quintessential Westerner, was its chairman. When the commission issued its report in 1970, of 12 congressional representatives, all six senators and three of six House members were Westerners. (Interestingly, one was Rep. Laurance J. Burton, like Bishop a Republican representing Utah’s First Congressional District.)
The PLLRC recommended “retaining in Federal ownership those [lands] whose values must be preserved so that they may be used and enjoyed by all Americans.” The commission also recommended that “No additional grants should be made to any of the 50 states.”
The PLLRC likely led directly to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 which also directed that “the public lands be retained in Federal ownership.”
None of this fazes Rep. Bishop. He relies for most of his argument on the Constitution’s Article IV and, as he interprets it, the mandate that “public lands shall be sold by the United States.” A fairer reading of that language, and in context, suggests that “shall” is meant to condition a possibility rather than dictate an action: “if you sell them,” not “sell them now.”
Bishop understandably doesn’t bother to mention the plain language of Utah’s statehood act, reiterated in the state Constitution, by which the state renounced “all claim to unappropriated federal lands within its boundaries.”
Even bizarre constitutional theories often land in the federal courts. Bishop’s has and has repeatedly failed.
All this seems persuasive enough to settle the matter. It won’t, of course. That, ultimately, is the mystery: that sentient people would oppose the very existence of public lands, open to and managed for all of us. Those lands are the great glory of the American West, something to be valued, not vilified. They are what keep native-born Westerners here, or bring us back, and lure countless others to share them.
Knuffke sums up with a reminder that though we’re discussing wilderness, the issue is really about public lands, and in protecting them, we protect them for all Americans. As a life long and frequent partaker of Utah’s wilderness and outdoor activities, this point of view makes the most sense to me. Protecting the lands ensures they are still here for future generations to enjoy.
And if we accept Knuffle’s conclusions, and wipe Bishop’s constitutional fear-mongering out of the way, Bishop’s argument can be stripped down to one solitary example. The Congressman writes: Four Western states (including Utah) have more than 60 percent of the land within their borders controlled by the federal government. By comparison, the District of Columbia, established by the Constitution as the federal city, has only 24.7 percent of its total acreage owned by the federal government.
Really Rob? You want to compare the wilderness of Utah to the streets of Washington DC?
