Representative Rob Bishop, courtesy Civil Services.

Today, Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) issued the following statement in reaction to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) methane rule delay:

“The previous rule was outside the limits of BLM’s authority. It was one of the Obama administration’s half-baked schemes to force responsible energy development off federal lands. Reigning in bad policies to expand American energy strength, grow jobs and increase revenues is more welcome news from Trump administration.”

Washington, D.C. – Today, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands held a legislative hearing on four bills. Among those bills considered at the hearing, H.R. 1349, introduced by Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (R-CA), would restore the original intent of the Wilderness Act and improve land access to disabled veterans, families and the elderly by clarifying that bicycles, strollers and wheelchairs are permitted in wilderness areas.

Congress enacted the Wilderness Act in 1964 to create a National Wilderness Preservation System that would “secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.” Generally, the law prohibits commercial activities and motorized uses in wilderness areas.

Non-motorized bicycles were allowed in wilderness areas from the inception of the Act, until 1977, when the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) reinterpreted the law to ban them.

“Congress meant to exclude roads, permanent infrastructure and motors, not human-powered visitors who leave no permanent trace,” Ted Stroll, President of the Sustainable Trails Coalition, said. “Thus, H.R. 1349 does not materially amend the Wilderness Act of 1964. Rather, it restores the Act to its original meaning.”

Rep. McClintock pressed the panel on how the bicycle ban was originally implemented: “So the ban was strictly imposed by an unelected bureaucrat, is that correct?,” McClintock asked. “Yes,” Stroll responded.

Conservationists like Stroll and key legislative backers of the original law, including Senator Frank F. Church (D-ID), have criticized restrictive interpretations as contrary to the law’s intent.  “If Congress had intended that wilderness be administered in so stringent a manner, we would never have written the law as we did,” Church stated, following USFS’s 1977 interpretation.

At the time he signed the Wilderness Act, President Lyndon B. Johnson noted, “[For cyclists and others] we must have trails as well as highways.”

Nevertheless, under the prevailing interpretation, “bicycles, strollers, and any human-powered wheeled conveyance are banned in an area larger than all of California, for no environmental reason,” Stroll stated.

“[The predictable opposition to H.R. 1349] will come from the Wilderness industry, an enterprise comprising people with strong ideological opposition to human activity in public lands, commercial pack outfitters, and organizations that raise money by scaring people that Congress will abolish Wilderness or dilute it of all recognition,” Stroll added. “The latter are almost certain to tell the gullible that H.R. 1349 is part of that ultimate goal.”

Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 9:30 AM in 1334 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill:

  • H.R. 4558 (Rep. Chris Stewart), To provide greater conservation, recreation, economic development and local management of Federal lands in Garfield and Kane Counties, Utah. “Grand Staircase Escalante Enhancement Act”
WHAT: Subcommittee on Federal Lands legislative hearing on H.R. 4558
WHEN: Thursday, December 14
9:30 AM
WHERE: 1334 Longworth House Office Building

 

Visit the Committee Calendar for additional information once it is made available. The meeting is open to the public and a video feed will stream live at House Committee on Natural Resources.

Panel: Improving Management of Nation’s Resources Requires Overhaul of DOI’s Organization Structure

Congressman Don Young, House of Representatives, (Ak).  Northern Gas Pipelines photo by Dave Harbour.

Washington, D.C. – Today, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held an initial oversight hearing on policies and concepts for reorganizing the Department of the Interior (DOI) to improve resource management and better serve the American people.

“The Department has lost touch with the concerns of Americans,” Subcommittee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) stated.

In March, President Trump issued an Executive Order directing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to propose a plan for reorganizing governmental functions to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of federal agencies.

In complying with this EO, DOI must submit a restructuring plan to OMB.  The panel discussed potential policy changes and desired outcomes for consideration in any final DOI plan, including the need for increased decision-making authority to local land managers based in the communities most impacted by the DOI management decisions.

“Government reorganization is not a new concept,” Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) stated. “Fortunately there is now an Administration that recognizes there is a problem. We need to restore the trust between people, the Administration and the DOI by giving more authority and flexibility to the field level.”

DOI oversees more than 400 million acres of federally-owned land, with a large percentage concentrated in the West. In recent years, there has been a decline in the agency’s ability to provide efficient, effective and transparent service to the American people, including a deterioration in federal land management and a failure to tackle more than $12 billion in maintenance backlogs.

Nicolas Loris, Herbert & Joyce Morgan Research Fellow for the Heritage Foundation, attributes the “sheer size and diversity of the federal estate and its resources” to the decline at DOI, and emphasized the need for a paradigm shift in the nation’s approach to federal land management.

“[The] government’s ill-suited management of federal lands fails to fully take into account competing local interests through cumbersome federal and congressional channels,” Loris stated.

Shawn Regan, Research Fellow for the Property and Environment Research Center, discussed how DOI’s centralized organizational structure is a vestige of the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century.

“During that time, the nation’s natural resources were believed to be best managed not by locals but by experts, primarily located in Washington,” Regan said. “This view, however, has since been widely rejected. Nonetheless, our federal land institutions—many of which were created during that earlier time—still largely reflect the Progressive-Era belief in centralized control.”

The panel stressed the importance of relocating additional agencies away from Washington, D.C. to be closer to the people, lands and economies they oversee and regulate, and devolving authority to these offices, including the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages 245 million acres in the West.

“Because of the large footprint of federal lands in the West, BLM decisions disproportionately affect westerners,” President of the Western Energy Alliance Kathleen Sgamma stated. “Decisions that are usually made at the local level, such as those regarding municipal water supplies, county roads, hiking trails… [are] better made jointly with a BLM that is locally integrated with communities, rather than Washington, D.C.”

Chairman Bishop, Chairman Emeritus Don Young (R-AK) and all five Subcommittee Chairmen sent a letter to the President supporting the Administration’s efforts to reorganize the federal government, urging any DOI reorganization to include the relocation of select agencies out West.