Mail-Order Public Service

Your editorial on “Mail-Order Public Service” of Feb. 11 is highly critical of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for its creative gifts catalogue where the public can provide extra amenities to the public lands for the public’s increased enjoyment of these lands.

The editorial did a disservice to the people of California.

You said, “The total budget of the BLM has been slashed from just less than $1 billion when President Reagan took office to about $750 million this year.” There has been no slash at all; but rather, BLM’s responsibility for mineral revenue management, including the collection and distribution to the states, was shifted to the Minerals Management Service in 1984, thus reducing funding of permanent appropriations for BLM by approximately $543 million annually from the 1983 figure.

You criticize the gift catalogue effort by dragging up a Trojan horse claiming BLM has sold “government services at far less than market value,” and illustrating that contention by stressing “fees to farmers for grazing their livestock on the public land.”

To finally put this non-issue to rest, the grazing fee schedule was determined by a formula set by Congress in 1978. That formula expired in 1986. A study was submitted to Congress, and the President has continued the earlier formula until Congress acts.

You make hay by suggesting that BLM has been and is “too cozy with those who seek to exploit the public domain for profit.” Again, Congress determined the public lands should be used for as many things as possible including mining, livestock grazing, wind energy production, oil and gas development, geothermal energy, wildlife enhancement, and certainly recreation by the public--all forms of it.

BLM finds it more appropriate to work with people on a friendly basis--cooperating to obtain the best and most appropriate use of lands--as Congress mandated.

The catalogue is not unique. The National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service both have made use of the idea for years, such as the Death Valley National Monument, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area catalogues.

When BLM develops an idea that might permit us to enhance the public’s enjoyment of their lands, BLM is still criticized. Kind of reminds one of that old saying, “You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.”

ED HASTEY

State Director, BLM

Sacramento