Pay attention to public lands
Letter to the Editor:
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell released a speech on April 19 regarding the future of public lands. Her speech comes in light of the centennial of the National Parks, and while many topics in her talk are broader reaching, the topics have application in Lincoln County as well. Jewell discussed her vision to improve outdoor education and public lands through budget increases regarding land and resource management, she says it “cannot be oversimplified,” and the variety of those land uses— logging, mining, hunting, fishing, recreation—is as varied as the territory it occurs in.
Jewell stated, “We need to take a holistic look at an ecosystem – on land or in the ocean – to determine where it makes sense to develop, where it makes sense to protect the natural resources, and where we can accomplish both. […] From coast to coast, we’ll talk to communities about: What places are special to you and why? What’s important to your community’s economy, your identity, your heritage? And how can we make it easier for you to visit and enjoy your public lands? […] And likewise, the groundswell for conservation that is building today is different from any other we have seen. It is digital, it is diverse, and??ore than ever??t is motivated by values that are widely shared among Americans of all political beliefs.”
Jewell also nodded to the need to stronger education of millennials about public lands and land management, noting the trend in demographics for visiting public lands, stating, “The majority of visitors to national parks today look like me: older and whiter. Which means we haven’t found a way to connect with the young people of today, who are more diverse, more tech-savvy, and more disconnected from nature than ever before”, and went on to outline her plans to increase public outreach and education and improved accessibility to public lands. Jewell’s notion of the “forever business” is key to this–-there needs to be a future that knows how to manage these places, and we are lucky to have so many people in this region invested in the lands and knowledgeable about its working, and concerned for its future in different sectors.
Secretary Jewell indicated that a large emphasis in improving public lands falls in changing the budget to ensure that resources sufficient to protect these places long into the future are in place. There is a disconnect between the visitation rates and expenditures of maintenance of public issues, and the budgets necessary to maintain them; increased budget for the management of these places and to replace outdated infrastructure could be beneficial to the public lands here. She claims that forthcoming collaboration with the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis will “produce an independent study on what impact outdoor recreation has on our nation’s economy. Hunting, boating, hiking, OHVing, wildlife viewing, and other outdoor activities are so closely tied to the health and accessibility of our public lands, yet this sector has, for too long, been overlooked and undervalued. Industry estimates show that consumer spending for outdoor recreation is almost equal to pharmaceuticals and motor vehicles and parts combined??nd yet the federal government has never fully recognized or quantified these benefits”.
In a western landscape, where we are fortunate to have so much public land around us to enjoy and safeguard in Lincoln County, there is a lot of this to consider when we think of the future. We rely on the public lands professionally and recreationally, and I believe that in the centennial of the national parks, it can be beneficial to all our public lands for more attention being paid to their management and operation, both in the near-term and long term. I’m looking forward to the conversations and common ground discussions being continued on these important matters of home and responsibility.
Lowry Bass,
Yaak