Sagebrush Rebellion Redivivus

by William Perry Pendley, President, Mountain States Legal Foundation,

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on April 23, 2014, at a Hillsdale College event in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

For many or maybe even most Americans, reports that a rancher in Clark County, Nevada, was at odds with federal land bureaucrats, that scores of federal lawyers were litigating against him, and that SWAT-garbed and heavily armed federal law-enforcement officers had surrounded his place might have come as a surprise. They might have been even more surprised, in the wake of this standoff—which ended short of deadly escalation thanks in part to negotiations by a local sheriff—to hear that over 50 elected officials from nine Western states had gathered in Utah to discuss a state takeover of a significant portion of federally owned land in the American West. But Westerners—especially rural Westerners who make a living on the federal lands that predominate beyond the hundredth meridian, by logging, mining, ranching, or developing energy resources—were not surprised at all.

What has been most lacking in the reporting on these stories is the background of the disputes. And it should be stated up front, in all fairness, that the Obama administration is not unique in pursuing policies anathema to Westerners. On that score, it has simply followed the examples of the Carter and Clinton administrations.

In the late 1970s, President Carter’s “War on the West” spawned what came to be known as the Sagebrush Rebellion, which Ronald Reagan embraced during his campaign for president in 1980: “I happen to be one who cheers and supports the Sagebrush Rebellion,” candidate Reagan proclaimed in a speech in Salt Lake City. “Count me in as a rebel.” The uprising was spurred by the fact that, more than any other region, the American West had been victimized by the environmental policies implemented—utterly regardless of their destructive economic and human consequences—during the previous two decades. Reagan had seen firsthand the transformation of the environmental movement from one of conservation and stewardship, in which the part played by human beings and technology was vital, to a movement in which humans and technology were understood to be enemies of nature. As articulated by Reagan, opposition to extreme environmentalism represented a return to true environmentalism. America’s “environment[al] heritage” will not be jeopardized, he promised, while at the same time insisting that “we are going to reaffirm that the economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our environment.”

In terms of the public land issue, Reagan blamed “a tiny minority opposed to economic growth” for locking up federal lands that hold “probably 70 percent of the potential oil in the United States,” and he vowed to support the use of federal lands to meet America’s energy, economic, and foreign policy needs. As former governor of California, he knew all too well that the federal government owns a third of the land that makes up the United States, the vast majority of this being in the West. Federal holdings include nearly a third of Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Washington; roughly half of Arizona, California, Oregon, and Wyoming; and two-thirds or more of Alaska, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. By comparison, the three non-Western states with the most federal land are New Hampshire at 14 percent, Florida at 13 percent, and Michigan at ten percent.

Some portion of this federally owned land, of course, consists of parks, which are preserved for public recreation. Other parts are wilderness areas, where motorized activity is barred. But most of the land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service is open, by law, to “multiple use” activities, including cattle grazing, recreation, and energy and mineral development. This is the land where disputes arise over use—and it is in these disputes where the Obama administration has picked up where the Carter and Clinton administrations left off, adopting the no-use policies promoted by environmental groups who view all federal lands as off limits to productive human activity.

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