We’re big fans of the Montana Bully Pulpit blog; they’re one of the many regional groups touting the upcoming Montana Public Lands Rally to be held in Helena at the Capitol at noon on the 27th of September.
The event (see the event FB page here) sagely coincides with National Public Lands Day as well as National Hunting and Fishing Day and plans to make a strong statement against the push among many to transfer Federal lands to State control and quite possibly, as has been seen in many, many cases, on into private hands with loss of public access and enjoyment.
As with many things in life, the issues at hand are much more complex than many bantering partisan groups would have you believe, though there are some voices of reason out there. That said, there are plenty of reasons to view the touted transfer of lands from Federal to State control, which seems to have been spawned out of Utah but be infecting much of the West, with a skeptical eye.
By way of example, here’s a nice piece from Martin Nie (Land Transfer is a Prelude to Privatization), the director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests in Missoula.
And another very interesting one from Ted Williams via Field and Stream – Sportsmen and Environmentalists: Together Politically, An Unstoppable Juggernaut. Like several other Teds out there, he is often a lightning rod for (often much deserved) criticism, though one of his points here is that some issues are so simple, and so important, that groups with historical enmity can and should work together to get the right thing(s) done.
Keeping public lands public is one of those things we should all be working on.
