New year, new battle with the feds. This time around, Gov. Butch Otter's issue with Uncle Sam centers on federal lands policy.
On Tuesday, Otter sent a pointed letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, urging him to rescind a Dec. 23 order that could create Bureau of Land Management "wild Lands" that would be managed like wilderness.
The letter contained a few boilerplate phrases about "top-down" and "one-size-fits-all" land management, and Otter said Salazar's order would place "significant and sweeping authority in the hands of unelected federal bureaucrats."
For good measure, Otter garnished his standard letter sign-off — "As Always — Idaho, 'Esto Perpetua'" — with a footnote: ("unless this Secretarial Order stands"). And he underlined it, lest Salazar miss the message.
Otter went public with his opposition in a news release Thursday, and said the order would direct the BLM "to treat much of the Idaho acreage under its control as 'de facto wilderness.'”
Does it? The BLM says it undertaking an inventory of its lands, to identify acreage that has wilderness characteristics. "The land use planning process will consider a range of alternatives of protection and non-protection," the BLM said in a fact sheet.
After a public process, the BLM could designate acreage as "wild lands," and manage it as wilderness, which could block uses ranging from oil and gas drilling to motorized vehicle use and mountain biking.
Is it a land grab or a land inventory? Regardless, expect to hear more about this issue — known officially as Secretarial Order 3310. Within hours of Otter's news release, the head of Otter's Office of Energy Resources took up the mantle. At a Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce luncheon with legislators, Paul Kjellander predicted the order would hamstring efforts to build transmission lines across BLM acreage. "It's something that we all have to be engaged in."
Don't fret about that. If there's one thing legislators are good about engaged in, it's a tussle with the feds. Salazar came under firing for the timing of his announcement — in the virtual news blackout of the Christmas season.
Is it possible, just possible, that Otter decided to call out Uncle Sam just in time for the opening week of a tough legislative session?
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Butch Otter
...Wow! This is what Idaho gets huh? It's an inventory just like congress originally mandated the BLM to do or complete by 1982, or was it 1983? Anyway, it's just an inventory of BLM lands that have potential wilderness values. Guess this proves Butch can't read. The BLM is doing what they have a directive to do, I know this must be hard for a rogue cowboy like Clem to understand.
Otter
Soul-crushing stupidity
It's a deceptive inventory aka land grab
And it could undermine Crapo's signature work on the Owyhee Canyon lands compromise. Maybe Rocky was too busy Christmas shopping to notice this order, but the WSJ promptly reported on it.
Stand Tall Otter
Don't fall for libby tactics...the left gets angry very easy...
Wow Otter actually underlined
Esto Perpetua (Let it be perpetual) in protesting ""wild Lands" that would be managed like wilderness"? Must be that his definition of perpetual would be the constant taking from and destruction of what we value most with more mining, clear cutting and destructive grazing of non native species.
I like the BLM's approach to Esto Perpetua a lot better, let's preserve some of what we love of Idaho for the future, in perpetua.
Weed he cannot control.
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Happy Jesus Thing and a Chinese New Year
BLM Sneaking Super Grab
It is claimed as an inventory. We know how they sneak in. AN inventory that without notice becomes something else. What is the good of Wilderness where very few can access it? As a senior I do not have the health to hike any more even though in my youth I was a mountain climber of some note. I never objected to someone traveling into the wilds anywhere. The Feds understanding of wilderness is that no (non-manual) travel is allowed for any reason. Energy transmission lines would be prohibited. I can understand a "wild lands" designation whereby major development would be disallowed. But this will keep out everyone that would not have a back-pack and even some of that could be limited.
BLM my B U M
USFS
NEXT
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Happy Jesus Thing and a Chinese New Year
let me get this right
If I understand this correctly, Otter is objecting to BLM's inventory of BLM land. That must be something like my objecting to my neighbor inventory of his land. Now if BLM was conducting an inventory of Idaho land I could appreciate the Guv's concern. Why is it he keeps telling the feds to mind their own business but he seems to be minding theirs.
Good job Gov!
What this really is, is another payback by Obama to ultra-liberal special interest groups that want to lock up land to prevent mining, grazing, ORV, etc use... nothing else. The clowns of the Sierra Club, GYC, etc are getting
repaid for supporting our current administration. The BLM is a federal agency that has lost it's way, all BLM land should be controlled by the state in which it lies. Let the people and their representatives decide what is best
instead of Fed. govt officials and outside interests that have never even been to Idaho....