Sagebrush Rebellion
The Sagebrush Rebellion was a movement in the
In 1981 James G. Watt, one of the leaders. became Secretary of the Interior in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, and worked to roll back federal environmental policies.[4]
The movement continues to have support by persons interested in developing the lands for resource extraction and private benefits, such as livestock grazing, mineral extraction, and timber harvesting. Opponents place higher value on private economic benefits by recreation and societal benefits of open space and hard-to-quantify economic benefits of
Background
The term "Sagebrush Rebellion" was coined during fights over designation of National Wilderness lands, especially in
The National Wilderness Preservation System grew out of recommendations of a
Much of the wildland was sagebrush, which some wanted to use for grazing, off-road vehicle use, and other development, instead of wilderness conservation. These "rebels" urged that instead of designating more federal wilderness protection, some or much of the land should be granted to states or private parties. They took on the phrase "Sagebrush Rebellion" to describe their opposition to federal management of the lands.
Public lands history
Among the first pieces of legislation passed following independence was the Land Ordinance of 1785, which provided for the surveying and sale of lands in the area created by state cessions of western land to the national government. Later, the Northwest Ordinance provided for the political organization of the Northwest Territories (now the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and part of northeastern Minnesota).
To encourage settlement of western lands, Congress passed the first of several Homestead Acts in 1862, granting parcels in 40-acre (160,000 m2) increments to homesteaders who could maintain a living on land for a period of time. Congress also made huge land grants to various railroads working to complete a transcontinental rail system. Much of the latter grants intentionally included mineral and timber-rich lands so that the railroads could get financing to build. Again, the hypothesis was that the railroads would sell off the land to get money.
Ultimately, however, it turned out that much land west of the
Complaints
Complaints about federal management of public lands constantly roil relations between public lands users (ranchers, miners, researchers, off-road vehicle enthusiasts, hikers, campers and conservation advocates) and the agencies and environmental regulation on the other. Ranchers complain that grazing fees are too high[9] and that grazing regulations are too onerous despite environmentalist complaints that the opposite is true[10] and that promised improvements to grazing on federal lands do not occur. Miners complain of restricted access to claims, or to lands to prospect. Researchers complain of the difficulty of getting research permits, only to encounter other obstacles in research, including uncooperative permit-holders and, especially in archaeology, vandalized sites with key information destroyed. Off-road vehicle users want free access, but hikers and campers and conservationists complain grazing is not regulated enough and that some mineral lease holders abuse other lands or that off-road vehicle destroy the resource. Each complaint has a long history.
Rebellion
Various bills intended to transfer federal public lands to western states had been proposed after 1932, all of which failed to garner much attention, let alone action. Among key objections to such transfers were the increasing value to the federal treasury of mineral lease receipts and complaints that the "crown jewels" of the national lands holdings, the National Parks, could not be managed adequately or fairly by individual states. Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks were considered to be national treasures, and few legislators would concur with turning them over to the states.
The spark that turned these complaints into a "rebellion" was the enactment in 1976 of the
The newly-elected Senator
Ultimately, Hatch's bill got little more than press attention. The election of Ronald Reagan as president put a friend to the Sagebrush Rebels in the White House, James G. Watt, and his appointees slowed or stopped wilderness designation legislation. By Reagan's second term, the Sagebrush Rebellion was back to simmering on the back burner of federal land management agencies.
See also
- Bundy standoff, 1993-2018
- Bureau of Land Management
- Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 2016
- Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act, passed into law in 2012, effective after 2014.
References
- ^ Ross W. Gorte; Carol Hardy Vincent; Laura A. Hanson; Marc R. Rosenblum (February 8, 2012). "Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data" (PDF). Table 1. Federal Land by State, 2010. Congressional Research Service. Retrieved April 28, 2014.
- ^ "The Open West, Owned by the Federal Government". New York Times. March 23, 2012.
- ^ "Andrus predicts end to West's 'rebellion'". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). Associated Press. June 11, 1980. p. 15C.
- ^ Michael E. Kraft, and Norman J. Vig, "Environmental policy in the Reagan presidency." Political Science Quarterly 99.3 (1984): 415-439. online
- ^ Dearen, Jason (September 2, 2012). "'Sagebrush Rebellion' Suffers Legal Setback". The Virginian Pilot. Associated Press. p. 10.
- ^ Coates, James (March 16, 1996). "Sagebrush Rebellion On Hold, Group Lights Other Legal Fires". Chicago Tribune.
- ISBN 978-0933280366.
- ^ E. Louise Peffer (1951). "Chapter 11: The Hoover Proposal". The Closing of the Public Domain: Disposal and Reservation Policies, 1901-50, Issue 10. Stanford University Press.
- ^ Carol Hardy Vincent (June 19, 2012). "Grazing Fees: Overview and Issues" (PDF). Congressional Research Service.
- ^ "Public Lands Ranching: The Ecological Costs of Public Lands Ranching".
- ^ S.1680 Western Lands Distribution and Regional Equalization Act of 1979, introduced March 8, 1979, by Senator Orrin Hatch
- ^ Forrester, Steve (December 9, 1979). "Sagebrush rebellion losing on Capitol Hill". Eugene Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon. Retrieved April 14, 2014.
Further reading
- R. McGreggor Cawley, Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics, ISBN 978-0700608041.
- Wayne Hage, Storm Over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands, 1989. ISBN 978-0939571154
- ISBN 1-55963-842-7
- Michael E. Kraft, and Norman J. Vig, "Environmental policy in the Reagan presidency." Political Science Quarterly 99.3 (1984): 415-439. online
- Robert Henry Nelson, Public Lands and Private Rights: The failure of scientific management, Rowman & Littlefield, 1995.
External links
- A brief history of the Sagebrush Rebellion from High Country News, hcn.org.
- A Guide to the Records of Sagebrush Rebellion, 85-04. Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Reno.
- "SageBrush Rebellion Collection No. 32" at the University of Colorado Denver Library [dead link]
- The Oregon standoff is far bigger than a group of armed men in a refuge, Washington Post, January 4, 2016, on the roots of the western land ownership disputes with the Federal government in multiple states.
- States' Rights Timeline, including the 1980 Sagebrush Rebellion, from the Forestry History Society
- Text of a 1980 article in U.S. News & World Report from the University of Virginia Digital History Center