We all know that right wing conservatives despise having anything owned by the public, even if it's Old Faithful or Crater Lake. The fact that millions of acres of land in America is owned by the public is a complete anathema to these types of conservatives, and they've been itching to privatize them. Like the issue of ANWR, one would assume that the conservative push to privatize our public lands, which include national forests, deserts, high plains and national parks, would be headline news, but it's not. What's even more bizarre is that this attempt at privatization is actually hidden in the House budget bill... you know, the one that everyone is talking about; the one that originally had drilling in ANWR in it, and the one that focuses its cuts on the poor.
The route to privatization conservative House members are taking is through a repeal of a ban on an obscure 1872 mining law, which allowed mining companies to stake out federal land at $2.50 to $5.00 an acre for the sole purpose of making a profit at mining. If a company could not demonstrate this to the feds, the government could challenge the company and retain the land in federal hands. The repeal on the ban has included a sneaky little provision that prohibits the government from challenging mining claims, thus allowing companies to resell the land as real estate.
This puts all public land at stake. In other words, some company could stake out a few hundred acres in the Deschutes National Forest near Bend for "mining" purposes, decide not to mine and resell it for development. Currently up to 11,600 acres in the Siskiyou National Forest alone are at stake for privatization because there are 580 active mining claims waiting for this bill to pass.
Conservative House members claim that the selling of our lands would help raise money to pay the federal debt, and have increased the per acre cost from $2.50 to a paltry $1,000 (BFD!!) It's a massive giveaway, something the right wing cons like to do for their buddies in the corporate world.
There is every reason that this backhanded attempt to privatize our public lands is as frightening as the proposed drilling in ANWR. These lands represent a shared and common heritage for all of us, one that we would like to pass on, in tact, to our children and grandchildren so that they, like us, will get to enjoy activities like hiking, hunting, fishing, backpacking, camping, cross country skiing, etc.
There's not much time on this. Although the budget bill is stalled in the House, it's only a matter of a week or two before the Republicans bully enough votes out of a few members to get the bill passed. Oregon, along with all western states, has a lot of land at stake, so please contact your Congressional representatives today!
I've written about this topic at the Onward Oregon blog.
More media articles on this can be found here, here, here, here, and lots more if you google "public land budget bill"
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