Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How many here would eliminate the National Park Service? (Or USFS)

I've lived in the west (CA, AZ & CO) all of my life and have entusiastically enjoyed our natural resources for all of that time. I don't know how things work in the east but in the west, things have been working pretty well until recently. The National Park Service and the US Forest Service have been doing a pretty good job of balancing the priorities of competing interest groups. But I see that changing.

Natural resource management has been ocurring and evolving in this country since the early eighteen hundreds and there has always been different philosophies competing. At first it was conservation vs uncontrolled exploitation of public lands and by the middle of the twentieth century, conservation had won the battle. After WWII preservation began to compete with conservation for the hearts and minds of natural resource managers.

The National Park Service is charged with preserving the ecosystems within the boundaries of the parks. "Preservation" means to prevent all use (exploitation) of natural resources and maintain the ecosystem in its' natural state without the interference of man. That's a fine vision for the National Parks and for wilderness areas within the National Forests. There are places that should be preserved without the interference of man.

The US Forest Service (and the BLM) is charged with the responsibility of conserving the resources within the boundaries of the National Forests. Conservation means to manage natural resources to facilitate use (exploitation) of resources while achieving a sustained yield of those resources. That's a very different philosophy from preservation.

I have camped, hiked, backpacked, climbed, enjoyed nature, and hunted in the National Forests for most of my adult life and seen that for the most part the system has been working pretty well, until recently. Things are changing because the preservationists philosophy is winning the hearts and minds of natural resource managers. Natural resource managers working for the Forest Service are getting thier mission confused with that of the National Park Service. That's because in college those natural resource managers (mostly biologists) are being indoctrinated in the philosophy of preservation to the exclusion of the philosophy of conservation. Those young biologists are applying management methods that will eventually morph the national forests into national parks and in the process exclude many sustainable uses.

One example of preservation winning over conservation is current Forest Service rules that have designated millions of acres of National Forest land, that are not within wilderness areas, as roadless areas. This has effectively made them wilderness areas and applied the preservation philosophy instead conservation philosophy. These roadless area rules are currently being challenged in court. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.

There is another tier of natural resource managers that is also involved. Those are the state game wardens. In Colorado they work for the Division of Wildife. I have seen a very different philosophy exhibited between veteran wardens and rookies. The veterans are practicing wildlife conservation and they view hunters as partners in the process of wildlife management. They are usually helpful and reasonable. The rookies, recently graduated from college, are practicing wildlife preservation and they seem to view hunters as the enemy and are just iching to nail someone for any infraction that they can.

We need to reverse the evolution of the culture within the National Forest Service and state wildlife agencies. The mission of those agencies is to conserve natural resources and to facilitate use of those resources in such a manner that a sustained yield is achieved. That effort to change the culture has to be applied in the colleges where young biologists and resource managers are being educated.

KC

Same here. I'd get positively claustrophobic being stuck hunting on a few hundred or thousand acres of private land. Not to mention bored silly from looking at the same old ground all the time. I need room to roam.

Why not eliminate these agencies & kick the land management responsibilities back to state & local gov'ts?

That would seem to me to make a lot of sense on quite a few different levels... which, I suppose, is exactly why it won't happen...

And yeah, I know the nearest USFS land... as a matter of fact leaving to hunt a beautiful piece about this time tomorrow evening!

This is reason enough.

You fellas seemed to have missed the point I was trying to make earlier. I don't have conceptual objections to parks or management of resources. Public lands are a plus, no question about it. OTOH, it is my opinion that Federal ownership of state lands/resources is an overreach of authority and contrary to the public interest. Case in point, some years back the DOI leased mineral rights to a Canadian mining company for pennies on the dollar in projected value. In other words, they gave it away.

Every time there is a transfer of land from federal to state authority there comes with it an amendment which codifies how the land is to be managed or used. Most if not all of this code is found in USC Title 16 Chapter 1. An example is found below in the link with following excerpts for easy reference.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/16/460tt

The link below covers all such land transfers in the US and it is very, very long. It contains the excerpt above.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2010-title16/pdf/USCODE-2010-title16-chap1.pdf

From the excerpt, this section related to transfer of the Cross Florida Barge Canal to state authority:







My point is that the federal government may demand continuity of land use thru these rules and does so. For what possible reason would anyone think federal ownership and control of these lands is a)necessary, b)cost effective and c)beneficial to the public health, safety and welfare? What is the Constitutional basis for a federal presence in this context?

Amen to that. I have a friend that moved out west from Minnesota that wont go back because he now has a taste for hunting on millions of acres of federal land. Back home, he had a 40 acre woodlot to hunt on and any little scrap of public land was overrun with all the hunters that don't have private land or leases.

Privatizing the federal land in the west would be the end of big game hunting for the average guy. It would become pay to play in a hurry.

Just look at the prices to hunt on the CWMU lands in Utah or ranching for wildlife lands in Colorado.

Chet

I live in Colorado and Colorado does a poor job of managing its' state lands.

Colorado state parks are small, over-regulated, and over priced. The state parks system is so poorly managed that it loses money and it has recently been combined with the division of wildlife. As a result, many hunters think that money which should be used for wildlife managent will be diverted to fund the failing park system.

In every state, every section numbered 16 and 36 is owned by the state and is used to fund public education. These are commonly referred to as school house sections. In Colorado the school house sections are leased to generate revenue and the public cannot access those lands without permission of the lessee. This effectively eliminates public access to hundreds of thousands of acres of public land.

If Colorado's current land management success/failure is an indication of what would happen, I want to discourage turning over Federal land to the states.

KC

Absolutely. Privatization is a bad idea.


Or take a look at hunting in Texas. Public hunting opportunities are very few a those are overcrowded and drawing a tag is very hard. Hunters who can afford it participate in a hunting lease or pay high prices to hunt on high fence ranches.

That's not for me. I don't want that for my state.

KC

How many states would have the budget to manage these lands? As mentioned in the Utah thread, the fire suppression alone would break most states in some years. While nobody will ever be 100% happy how things are done no matter who is running them, I really don't think I want my state running them. You don't have to look any farther than NM to see how things could get really bad. Starting this year, NR's are not allowed to apply for hunts on NM owned wildlife areas. People don't like NR fees now, I think it would only get worse if the states owned the land.

All Federal lands not needed for constitutional mandates needs to be turned over to the states for management and ownership.

Montana generally does a better job manging state lands and makes a buck to boot.

I have spoken!

So noted!

Excellent topic so far..

Couple of things I want to note:

My interactions as a sportsman with the U. S. Forest Circus has been 100% negative, and I'm not the only one who deduces that as a USDA entity, public and recreational service is not even close to being a priority.

My interactions as a sportsman with the (generally hated) BLM has been universally positive. I'm not the only one who sees the Dept of Int. as being more user friendly than the USDA.

I'm a Californian. Born and raised. I won't go around telling people to do things how we did them to be better. But I will tell people about The California Coastal Commission, and how California mismanages their state lands and historical sites, and guts their management and maintenance with every fiscal crisis. If people don't think that same thing can happen in their states, don't say I didn't warn you.

Carry on...

And as for my interaction as noted above, I'm sure they are different with the ranchers and drillers/miners.

I'm speaking as a sportsman, as this is a hunting forum, and I grew up as a surfer, diver and fisherman on a beach in southern california, and making a living in ranching and mining couldn't be more of a foreign concept to me.

I'd like to hear their opinions.

According to my dad the BLM/CMR are pretty easy to get along with but grazing is highly regulated which is of course a good thing.

GeauxLSU,

I would not eliminate the services. I would put a natural born conservitive administrater who is a logger in charge. He would have authority to clean house on liberals at every level in the organiztions. He would be expected to turn a profit on the lands he was in charge of.

edited to add:


After posting I went back throug a few of the post. This fellow caused me to modify slightly. My man would put one guy in charge of each state with the expectation of the state making a profit. We have enough feds already.

Took sometime earlier today and pulled up the USFS Natl. forests that I'm familiar with on the Westside of the Cascades in both Or. & Wa. looking at the timber sales and bid price breakdowns.

It sure isn't like it was 30 years ago regarding the number of sales and the bids accepted are very high versus market price available.

For those that aren't aware, I know that you are Ringman, that Fed. timber can't be exported, unless things have changed in the last number of years, it can be manufactured into a finished product and then exported.

The higher market is for export logs. I noticed that on some sales, no bids were submitted or accepted, I figure probably due to cost of logging versus return at the mill, along with the USFS wanting a higher bid.

I can really see how this loss of timber sales revenue has really hurt some timber dependant counties in WA. state that I'm familiar with, this from slow Fed. timber sales.

I could go with this, but the problem is that the next Obama puts an anti-hunting tree hugger in charge and the pendulum swings right back the other way.

Over the weekend, I heard the perfect example of what I have been talking about. Down here we don't have big federal lands to hunt on, but we do a LOT of fishing. Federal waters start 3 miles offshore. The Feds have just released a study saying that they anticipate that by 2020, they will be limiting offshore fishing to catch and release only in federal waters. If you haven't done it before, offshore fishing is an extremely expensive and time consuming activity, and the species caught are some of the greatest on the table as well. No one is going to do it if they don't get to keep any fish. Recreational offshore fishing will be ended in the Gulf of Mexico if they pass that rule, and all of the guides and charter services will be looking for another line of work. Lots of big boats will be for sale. Meanwhile, the fishing seems to be getting better every year with more and more of every species as we near the end.

What privileges the feds grant to us peons in their benevolence can easily be taken away...

Only if it's allowed. The Fed and the public ultimately need to be reminded just who controls who and the reckoning is past due.

I have worked with the BLM and get along with them pretty well. I operate Historic Trails West Wagon Trains on Blm, State and Private lands. I have spoke with the USFS and they are the party of NO. No do not submit a request for permit, NO we are not accepting requests at this time. No we can't do anything as we have studies to be done. They are god in their Natl Forests and by God don't you forget it. A waste of resources and our money.