GOP chair of Natural Resources Committee seeks public lands giveaway disguised as environmental bill
Two Republican Utah congressmen have introduced a deceptive public lands initiative designed to open a million acres of public land to private interests while pretending to protect other lands under a bogus “wilderness” designation where weakened environmental regulations would make that label a very unfunny joke.
For 40 years, extremists have been eager to take over federal lands. It started with the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, which was reincarnated in the 1980s and ‘90s as the so-called Wise Use movement, which was and is a network of right-wing grassroots and corporate front groups focused on attacking environmentalists and promoting free-for-all resource exploitation.
Among its exemplars have been James G. Watt, the corrupt secretary of Interior appointed by Ronald Reagan, and funders like the cult fascist Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Washington Times. The movement’s anti-government, anti-environmentalist rhetoric has sparked its own cohort of stormtroopers whose latest action is on display in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where ever more militants are showing up every day to join the armed takeover and demand that the land be given back to its original owners. They mean themselves, of course, not the Northern Paiutes whose presence there dates back several thousand years. That land has been in federal hands since it was pried from the Paiutes nearly 140 years ago.
The Wise Use movement has sought to open all but a small portion of federal lands to unfettered clear-cutting, mining, grazing, and the driving of off-road recreational vehicles. The rhetoric of today’s movement, polished in The Wise Use Agenda, a 1989 book edited by Alan Gottlieb, talks a good game to the uninitiated. But it dismisses environmental concerns.
Rep. Rob Bishop is one of the congressional leaders of what the Wise Use movement has evolved into. He’s chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. In April last year, he and fellow Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart, together with a few other mostly Western representatives, founded the Federal Land Action Group. Said Bishop in an announcement about FLAG:
“This group will explore legal and historical background in order to determine the best congressional action needed to return these lands back to the rightful owners. We have assembled a strong team of lawmakers, and I look forward to formulating a plan that reminds the federal government it should leave the job of land management to those who know best.”