Federal Lands or Royal Lands

A thumbnail, and therefore understandable, sketch of this ownership is very hard for average citizens to obtain. It is avoided at meetings and in reports and in speeches as we are shunted from one emergency ("save" this "critter" or that "landmark" or that "ecosystem", etc.) to another. The reason it is so studiously avoided is that you may not feel the urgency or start sweating until your politician or friendly bureaucrat explains that more money and more private land placed in the Refuge, Park or Forest System is your only hope if you realize how much land is already "owned" by Uncle Sam. So sit down and ladies no swooning, as I try to display the "Federal Lands" ownership.

• US Refuges 96 Million Acres
• US Parks 83 Million Acres
• US Forests 193 Million Acres
• US Bureau of Land Management* (Many Million of Acres)*
• US Dept. of Defense 27,824,282 Acres

Total Federal Land Ownership 563,128,072 Acres (From General Services Administration) (Over 25% of the Nation)

*These totals are hard, even for an old bureaucrat like me to find. I never did find the BLM totals so it was a question of growing older looking for some hidden numbers or write something. I opted for the latter.

Now Forest Service employees hardly ever transfer to the Park Service. US Fish and Wildlife managers are likely inserted employees (by politicians) totally unfamiliar with the Refuges much less the Forests or Parks. BLM employees lose any hope for career advancement if the transfer to another agency. The Forest Service is in the Department of Agriculture and the Fish and Wildlife and Park Services are in the Department of the Interior under a different Assistant Secretary of the Interior than the Bureau of Land Management. They all have more contact and work with UN bureaucrats than with the Department of Defense. They each have their own government Solicitors (lawyers) working as much as any bureaucrat to advance their narrow responsibilities. They each compete fiercely for Federal dollars. They each secretly draft legislation for "friendly" Congressional staffers that then clip coupons from their boss (Congressman Snodgrass or Senator Belch) who "introduces" it and get accolades (money and votes) from the rest of us. Each agency has it's own fervid "supporters' ("Associations", "Friends", "Societies", etc.) who whine when they aren't fed "more" and lobby when anyone even suggests "less" or something "different".

I submit that they are exactly like Royal Lands and Lords under bygone Kings and modern dictators like Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

"Our" Federal lands are under the "administration" of the President and "funded" by the Congress for special interests just like an English King "gives" Lord Norfolk those lands and Woolsey those lands over there and Lord Cumberland the lands over there. These lands are rewards to supporters, and the ownerships and rights of others living there are secondary to the King's wishes and the desires of his favored Lords. So unless there is treason or a new supporter to reward, each Lord keeps what HE has, fiercely defends HIS "rights", and constantly seeks to add to "HIS" estate. These Lords would no more donate their holdings or parts of their holdings to the King or some other Lord (without some scheme to wind up with more eventually) than they would surrender their own fortunes or families unless there was an extreme emergency that threatened THEM. It is the same with these Federal agencies.

They each have their own "Mission" and "regulations" and "authorizing legislation" and "operations". They each differ such that any thought of them having anything in common never crosses anyone's mind. They are however being blended by radicals implementing things like "Critical Habitat" and "Wilderness" and "Roadless" and "Native Ecosystem" and "Invasive Species" and "Entrance Fee" and other such legislation meant to close the areas to human uses and resource management as originally envisioned for setting them aside. This "blending goes unmentioned though as everything fro imaginary plant and animal communities and benign predators are touted as "necessary".

So, in 2007, the US Army wants to condemn and acquire a half million acres of private property in SE Colorado for training under circumstances similar to the Middle East and central Asia. When I attended Utah State University years ago (they no longer claim me since I am a global warming and Federal power doubter) I was told we had more Iranian students than any other University because Utah was the closest state to Iranian weather, soils, and agricultural practices in the US. It is therefore reasonable for the US Army to train somewhere in the West if they want to duplicate the Middle East. But, they already OWN 40-45% of the Western states (over 80% in one)!

How foolish of me though. Those aren't DEFENSE lands, those lands BELONG to Lord Parks and Lord Forests and Lord Refuges and Lord BLM. I apologize my Lords for suggesting that YOUR? Lands be made available for training necessary to defend the Nation. "'WE' (all the refuge, park, forest supporters) didn't get' these (refuges, parks, forests) for artillery ranges" (as though the ranchers of Colorado ranched for generations to hold the land until the DoD "needed it"?)

Think carefully about how absurd this Federal estate has become. I know the hunters are thinking they could "lose" all the marshes (before the radicals shift them all to "native" uplands) and the historians are all swooning about their "viewsheds" and "roads that must be closed" and the 'foresters?" (are there any "foresters" left?) are all atwitter about loggers "denuding the forests and causing extinctions while ranchers graze the land down to nothing and erosion completes the job of desertification and global warming to destroy our 'ecosystem'". We can't manage any National; Park for any wildlife use or sustainable resource use. We are closing more and more of the Forests and Refuges to access and use and management. We can't touch the energy resources under any of these lands. We are squeezing out ranchers and loggers and strangling rural communities with deadly and harmful predators in areas that we then propose buying up for a song to close down more areas. But I digress.

The Federal government could find and use at least 20 appropriate Army training grounds in the Federal or Royal Estate that would be as good or better than seizing any more private property in Colorado or elsewhere. If the President (or King) is loathe to tell HIS Secretaries (or Lords) or the Secretaries (or Lords) are afraid to anger "THEIR" specific SUPPORTERS then we need a new King and American Lords that understand that THOSE ARE NOT THEIR LANDS BUT OURS! When "WE the People" "need" a place to train our Army and they can't come up with locations while owning a half Billion Acres or 25 % of the US and half of the West then we are being served by dumber (like a fox) bureaucrats and politicians than even an old bureaucrat like me sees.

We have come a long way from the Constitutional authorization (and by limiting it, admonition) for the Congress to have limited authority to establish "Post Offices and post Roads"; "a Navy" and "make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces"; and "exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings". And the thing is you really don't have to be a Supreme Court Justice or Ivy League lawyer to see just how far we have come.

Jim Beers
2 May 2007

- Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak. Contact:
jimbeers7@verizon.net

- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.

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