PUBLIC LANDS: No one can access millions of federal acres in 6 Western states -- report
Scott Streater, E&E reporter
Published: Monday, November 25, 2013
Blocks of federal lands equivalent in size to the state of New Jersey are inaccessible to the public, in large part because they are surrounded by private lands and the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service have not established public entry points, according to a new report.
The Denver-based Center for Western Priorities today released a 15-page report, titled "Landlocked: Measuring Public Land Access in the West," that used geographic information systems mapping software to study the accessibility to public lands in six Western states. They found more than 4 million acres of so-called landlocked areas in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming that, in many cases, cannot be legally accessed by the public.
"These shuttered public lands dramatically reduce opportunities for outdoor recreation, such as hiking, hunting, fishing and horseback riding, and stymie the United States' burgeoning $646 billion outdoor recreation economy," the report said.
Montana has by far the most inaccessible public lands in the six-state study area, with an estimated 1.9 million acres, according to the report.
It also highlights examples including the Sabinoso Wilderness and the Cowboy Springs Wilderness Study Area in New Mexico and the Fortification Creek Wilderness Study Area in northeast Wyoming.
Residents in the six states spend nearly $50 billion a year on outdoor activities like hunting and fishing, including $13 billion in Colorado and $12 billion in Utah, according to the Outdoor Industry Association. "But sportsmen increasingly identify a lack of access to public lands as a major hindrance to hunting," the report said.
"We have extraordinary public lands that the public can't even set foot on, let alone use for hunting, fishing or camping, the activities that are synonymous with our beloved public lands," said Trevor Kincaid, the Center for Western Priorities' deputy executive director. "Keeping people locked out of the land they own is like letting a '57 Corvette rust in your backyard. Just a waste."
Part of the problem in states like Wyoming, with an estimated 758,000 acres of inaccessible lands, is the patchwork quilt of federal, state, local, Native American and privately owned lands that make it "difficult for the public to access public lands without trespassing through private lands," according to the report.
In some instances, public lands are surrounded by private property without right-of-way access to the public land; in others, a public road runs through the private property but has been closed off, according to the report.
But there are possible solutions already available to the federal government, the center said.
They include the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which each year takes millions of dollars in offshore oil and gas drilling revenue and uses the money to acquire new federal lands, set up conservation easements on private lands and provide grants for states to promote urban recreation, among other things, the report said.
The fund, which is authorized at $900 million annually but has been fully funded only once since it was established in 1965, is set to expire in 2015 and needs to be renewed, according to the report.
Another solution could be to reauthorize the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act, which allows the federal government to sell selected public lands and keep the proceeds to purchase high-priority lands from willing sellers. It expired in 2011, and efforts to reauthorize the act have failed to date, but it could resolve the problem of landlocked public areas, the report said.
"This is not an insurmountable access obstacle," said Greg Zimmerman, the center's policy director. "There are viable, common-sense solutions available at our fingertips that will open the gates to 4 million acres of treasured public space."
Congressional action
Perhaps the best solution is legislation filed in late September by New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich (D).
Heinrich's S. 1554, titled the "Hunt Unrestricted on National Treasures Act" and referred to by proponents as the HUNT Act, would require BLM and other federal agencies to identify and inventory lands larger than 640 acres that allow hunting, fishing and other outdoor recreational activities but lack public access routes in the form of roads, trails or even boat ramps (E&E Daily, Sept. 27).
Once the sites were identified, the agencies would be required to develop plans to provide access routes to those lands, according to the bill, which would direct that 1.5 percent of the annual funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund be used by the federal agencies each year to purchase road and trail easements, boat landings, and rights of way from willing sellers who own private land adjacent to the inaccessible public lands.
At current funding levels, 1.5 percent of the LWCF equates to just under $5 million.
In introducing the legislation two months ago, Heinrich pointed to the Sabinoso Wilderness in San Miguel County in northeast New Mexico, which is managed by BLM, as "a prime example of public lands, a really spectacular set of public lands, where there is literally no legal access for hunting, for fishing, even for camping."
The issue has been the focus of recent bipartisan attention.
Heinrich filed his bill about two months after Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) filed S. 1335, which is designed to promote hunting and fishing opportunities on federal lands. Murkowski's bill includes a bipartisan measure to require BLM and the Forest Service to facilitate hunting, fishing and target shooting on hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands (Greenwire, Aug. 9).
Zimmerman said it's time to address the issue. He noted the two-week federal government shutdown in October that forced BLM and other agencies to close national wildlife refuges and other lands, resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue when the public no longer had access to them.
"People are clamoring for outdoor playgrounds to explore and enjoy, the government shutdown showed us that," he said, "so we would be smart to heed that call and expand the places the public can enjoy."
