Advertisement

Profiteering, Neglect : BLM Woes Spill Onto Public Lands

Share
Times Staff Writers

Other people saw only a scarred and trash-strewn hillside. Miner Frank Melluzzo recognized opportunity.

Under an antiquated century-old federal mining law, he staked a claim on 60 acres of federally owned land overlooking Phoenix and eventually was allowed to buy it from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for $2.50 an acre.

He was looking for building stone. Instead, he struck real estate gold.

In 1980, six years after acquiring the land, Melluzzo sold an interest in it to the developer of a planned condominium-golf course project called the Pointe Tapatio Cliffs. A $150 investment earned him $400,000 and an 11% share in the resulting $360-million resort.

Advertisement

“I’m set for life,” Melluzzo said, quickly adding that a city zoning plan forced him to sell the proper-ty. “The city grew up around me,” he observed, “and the time came when you couldn’t mine in the city of Phoenix.”

In a time of huge federal budget deficits, however, such cut-rate giveaways are focusing attention on the outdated and ineffective laws that govern public lands--and the primary federal agency assigned to administer them, the Bureau of Land Management.

Exposing the Land

Interviews with dozens of conservationists, bureau employees and government auditors lead to a common conclusion: budget cuts, politicization and outdated laws have hobbled the BLM and exposed many millions of acres of public property to private profiteering, neglect and environmental degradation.

Because of the massive size of BLM’s assignment--in one way or another, it manages about a quarter of the entire United States--environmentalists are characterizing the bureau and its problems as a pre-eminent conservation issue of the 1990s and a crucial test of President Bush’s commitment to the environment.

At stake is some of the most valuable and vulnerable land in the country--572 million acres in all, most of it in the West. Included are 272 million acres of desert, rangeland, forest and tundra, as well as the mineral rights to another 300 million acres, mostly under national forests administered by the U.S. Forest Service.

Under federal law, the BLM is obligated not simply to preserve the public lands it administers, but to make them productive as well. BLM must set aside some lands for mining as well as wilderness, for grazing in addition to wildlife and for backpackers and off-road vehicle riders alike. The argument comes over whether the agency has tilted too far toward production and away from conservation. Its critics argue that it has.

Advertisement

GAO View

“BLM has often placed the needs of commercial interests, such as livestock permittees and mine operators, ahead of other users (and) the long-term health of (the public’s) resources,” said James Duffus III of the General Accounting Office, a congressional watchdog agency.

“As a result,” he continued, “some permittees have come to view the use of these (public) lands as a property right for private benefit rather than a conditional privilege conferred by the public at large.”

BLM officials acknowledge that some ranchers feel proprietary toward public lands but deny that the bureau acquiesces to them. Instead, officials say the agency accommodates ranchers as legitimate users of public land and regulates them as much as possible with the money allocated by Congress.

Criticism is not new to the agency. Those who contend it is too deferential to cattlemen and prospectors have long mocked BLM as the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining,” while ranchers often grumble about the arrogant “Bureau of Land Mismanagement.”

Congress tried to improve the BLM in 1976 by passing a comprehensive set of guidelines called the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, but critics both in and out of the bureau contend that the law has been thwarted by ideologically conservative appointees of the Reagan and Bush administrations in senior management positions.

Staff Respected

Even the harshest BLM critics respect the agency’s staff--”Some of their field managers are the best you can find, anywhere,” said Bern Shanks of the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University--but the rules, regulations and orders under which they work have led to a litany of abuses:

Advertisement

- Multinational mining outfits strip-mine billions of dollars worth of gold, silver and other valuable “hard rock” minerals from lands owned by taxpayers, but pay no royalties nor any other compensation to the Treasury.

- A small fraction of the country’s cattle graze public rangeland, sometimes until it is turned into desert or otherwise ruined for wildlife, while ranchers pay fees that are as much as 70% or 80% below what adjacent private landowners charge.

- Other land is sold well below market rates--as low as $2.50 or $5 an acre--or swapped for property of significantly lower cash value because the bureau is bound by antiquated mining laws and lacks adequate staff to appraise all of the land it manages.

* Park-like wilderness areas and invaluable cultural resources are scarred by vandals and off-road vehicles while the BLM debates whether and how to protect them. At the same time, it has reversed decisions already made for millions of acres of land, opening wildlife and recreation areas to development.

* Delicate areas of designated “critical environmental concern”--pockets of endangered cultural or wildlife resources--sometimes are opened to oil drilling or military maneuvers, or simply ignored and left to deteriorate.

* Threatened or endangered species are moved closer to extinction when their habitats--sometimes even their lives--are lost to miners, bikers, mismanaged predators and grazing livestock.

Advertisement

Examples of such problems can be found throughout the BLM’s dominion, which includes significant chunks of 11 western states and Alaska. Many of these areas were singled out for protection by Congress or previous BLM management teams, only to have managers under Reagan and Bush ignore them, or actively manage them for short-term private profit.

“The (BLM) has really been whipsawed over the years by opposing forces and the degree to which people have played politics with (it) have really affected it in a very, very, very fundamental manner,” said Johanna H. Wald of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Starving the Agency

“I don’t think the damage is irreversible, but I do think the bureau as an institution . . . is really going to have a hard time undoing what has been done to it.”

In many cases, Wald and other critics say, the BLM’s problems can be traced to a conscious effort to starve the agency of the money and staff needed to do its job. They contend that impoverishing the BLM lets a few public servants enrich their friends--and sometimes themselves or their families.

Outgoing BLM Director Robert F. Burford, for example, has used public lands in Colorado to graze his livestock--cattle currently managed by a blind trust run by his ex-wife and sons--and he has many friends who do the same. He also headed the BLM during a time when grazing fees fell sharply, grazing allotments grew and efforts to halt overgrazing were stymied by endless studies.

“In many cases, (BLM’s) failure to do an adequate job . . . can be traced to a lack of staff and funding,” said Faith T. Campbell of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. The problem, she said, is caused by the “BLM’s deliberate refusal to be realistic about its needs.”

Advertisement

‘Deep Concern’

The House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs made a point of this in reviewing the 1989 BLM budget proposal. With a note of unusual frankness, the committee publicly expressed a “deep concern” over the “skewed priorities” of recent BLM management. Budget cuts proposed under Reagan--and followed by President Bush--”have undermined the ability of the Bureau of Land Management to properly meet its responsibilities under existing law.” Congress added $17 million to the White House budget request for BLM.

“The philosophical outlook of an agency is shaped by the professionals who staff it,” said Frank Gregg, a BLM director in the Carter Administration. “(Former Interior Secretary James) Watt understood that and set out immediately to reduce the number of people in both the wildlife and resource management programs.”

According to Congress, between 1981 and 1988, the inflation-adjusted budget for land-use planning in the BLM plummeted 51%; funding for resource management dropped 29%; wildlife management funds fell 26%; grazing management funding declined 39%; money for range improvement was cut in half.

Budget Manipulation

The committee’s statement concluded that, “as . . . Watt prophesied, (BLM) policy has been distorted through the manipulation of the budget.”

With the new Bush Administration, all of the traditional users of public lands are waiting to see which direction BLM will take. Early signs do not encourage conservationists. For example, Bush’s BLM budget request has been dismissed as inadequate; Rep. Peter H. Kostmayer (D-Pa.) calls it little more than “warmed over Ronald Reagan.”

Bush’s nominee for BLM director, Cy Jamison, worked for eight years as an aide to one of Congress’ top anti-conservationists, Rep. Ron Marlenee (R-Mont.).

Advertisement

Nowhere is there a sign Bush will try to restore BLM’s funding or staff.

‘Spread Very Thin’

“We are spread very thin in the BLM,” conceded Deputy Director Roland Robison. “Compared to the Forest Service, we’re really under-funded. We’ve got far fewer people to manage the acreage than other organizations.”

Indeed, as bureau critics note, the federal government’s major multiple-use management agencies have remarkably different budgets. The Forest Service this year was authorized to spend $10.54 on each acre it manages; the BLM, only $2.68.

Burford dismisses the under-funding argument. He notes that he has advocated increases in several programs: river recreation facilities, identification and cleanup of waste-disposal sites and the management of cultural resources.

“I don’t want to be a mini-Park Service,” he said recently at his office, looking more like a crusty Colorado cattleman than Washington bureaucrat as he fidgeted with a tin of Copenhagen chewing tobacco. “They have guides who take people on nature walks. I don’t think we should do that.”

Political Clout

Evidence indicates that when preservation policies come into conflict with production, BLM rules in favor of politically potent “consumptive users” over other groups.

For example, the Nestucca River in western Oregon is a remarkably beautiful steelhead trout and salmon fishery that the bureau has termed an “area of critical environmental concern,” a legal designation meant to save wildlife, scenic and cultural resources from damage by a human activity--in this case, logging, said BLM Resource Area Manager Dick Prather.

Advertisement

After designating the area for protection, BLM rehabilitated the stream bed and constructed sheltered pools that not only are pretty to see, but also have helped restore the Nestucca as one of Oregon’s premiere fishing streams.

At the same time, however, timber companies and local governments funded by timber receipts have pressed BLM to keep the area open to clear-cut logging, in which all the trees in each section are cut down at once. Sportsmen and others say the practice is unsightly and threatens the fishery with siltation.

Pressure to Cut

Prather and another BLM manager responsible for the area, Dana Shuford, say the river is protected from these problems by a “no-cut buffer zone” several hundred feet wide. But they acknowledged some logging occurs within the buffer zone and said the real buffer is whatever remains after the area is logged.

Pressure to cut is almost irresistible. Congressional delegations want logs to keep local sawmills in business, and the bureau itself needs the money from logging to operate. Sales of Oregon timber generate nearly 60% of all of BLM’s revenue, even though it makes up only about 1% of the bureau’s total land base.

Few complained about the BLM tilt toward loggers, ranchers and miners until air conditioning and automobiles opened the bureau’s arid, remote lands to new types of visitors--people interested in preserving public lands for wilderness, wildlife or off-road vehicles.

Competition for Land

Water and access--scarce resources in the West both then and now--put all these different interest groups in competition for the relatively few chunks of land with the magic magnets of a river or a road nearby.

Advertisement

Now BLM finds itself trying to balance environmentalists who want to protect the land, conservationists who want to save wildlife, campers keen to preserve scenic views and miners, cattlemen and off-road vehicle users who want to be left alone to pursue their interests.

Over the years, miners and livestock operators have grown dependent on the public lands. Many western ranches, for example, have little summer or winter pasture of their own; their real value, and the income of their owners, depends largely on the right to graze on nearby public lands.

“It is like running a household of 12 children and every one of them wants to be No. 1,” said Robison, BLM’s deputy director. “It’s not my job, nor can it be, to satisfy all those guys.”

Attempt at Reform

Congress attempted to reconcile those inherently conflicting constituencies by devising the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, or FLPMA. It instructs BLM to employ the management practice called “multiple use-sustained yield,” under which local plans set out how best to use public lands so that a variety of activities can be pursued indefinitely.

But many BLM critics--in Congress, among environmental groups, even at the bureau itself--complain that the Reagan Administration, working through BLM’s appointed director, Burford, intentionally starved the bureau of the resources, money and staff needed to do that difficult job.

Burford, for example, is attempting to overturn two decades of previous BLM land-use planning and arbitrarily open 180 million acres of BLM land to miners and ranchers. The effort includes such areas as the South Pass of Green Mountain in Wyoming and the “Arizona strip” adjoining Grand Canyon National Park.

Advertisement

South Pass had been set aside as a useful fish and moose habitat; on the day Burford scuttled the plan, 199 gold- and uranium-mining claims were filed in that area--a total that has since topped 400. The Arizona strip protects scenic and environmental values of one of the country’s most popular national parks; it, too, is sought by uranium miners.

Environmental Suit

The National Wildlife Federation sued to stop Burford’s plan, alleging that BLM violated federal law by reclassifying the land without notifying Congress, seeking public comment or doing an environmental impact study. A federal judge dismissed the suit on a technicality, but the wildlife group is appealing.

“The record is clear,” said Debbie Sease of the Sierra Club. “The Reagan Administration attempted to thwart the multiple-use stewardship mandate of the Bureau of Land Management.”

In a recent bureau-sponsored history of BLM, Burford wrote that he believes he did not fetter the bureau’s conservation programs as much as elevate energy and minerals to be “co-equal” with forests, grazing lands and recreation.

“As I reflect upon past accomplishments, I have seen a strong bond develop between BLM and the public land-users,” the former Colorado legislator penned in the history. “This partnership has successfully reversed the lock-up trend of previous administrations and returned control from the chosen few to local governments that are more directly responsive to the public’s needs.”

The Non-Professionals

For that same reason, Burford welcomed an unusual influx of non-professional political appointees to senior policy-making positions at the BLM headquarters in Washington. The watchdog General Accounting Office found that the number of political appointees increased from one when Burford entered office in 1981 to 14 in 1986, while the number of career BLM policy-makers remained at 19.

Advertisement

A political appointee himself, Burford has acknowledged that “feelings run deep and mixed on the presence of political appointees within the ranks of the agency.” But, he added, even though only eight remain, he believes appointees will help prevent BLM from becoming “an inbred, stagnant organization.”

Others are less sanguine.

George Lea, a former BLM official who now heads the Public Lands Foundation in Virginia, a collection of 2,000 former and retired BLM employees, said that the use of political appointees in top BLM management positions has frequently skewed policies in favor of cattlemen, miners and other consumptive users.

‘This Bunch Is Mad’

“I have worked for several administrations,” he said recently, “but this bunch is just mad.”

A broad coalition of national environmental groups, including the Wilderness Society and National Wildlife Federation, recently warned that the public lands and their resources have suffered “tragic abuse” because BLM is “subject to political manipulation.”

“Today, as in the past,” the coalition warned in an agenda-setting report for the new BLM administration, “policy decisions are repeatedly altered, and resource decisions made by professionals in the field are frequently overruled (by political appointees).”

Often cited as an example is BLM’s lukewarm support of the “areas of critical environmental concern.” Conservationists argue that these areas, which are authorized under federal law, either are not designated or once chosen are not managed well.

Advertisement

Fragile Desert

High Rock Canyon in Nevada, for example, was designated an area of critical environmental concern in 1983 for its scenic, anthropological and wildlife values. A visually stunning formation in the high desert, it has one of the three highest concentrations of birds of prey in the nation. Prairie falcons, golden eagles and owls nest in the sheer, 400-foot canyon walls and feed on rodents scampering over still-visible tracks left by wagon trains traveling the Applegate Trail nearly 150 years ago.

But until 1987, sheep and cattle were allowed to graze the area, eating protective grasses, trampling delicate stream banks and encouraging the stream to erode large areas, including parts of the historic trail. Meanwhile, a lack of BLM staff still allows vandals to loot and deface priceless anthropological resources, from axle-grease graffiti left by 19th-Century settlers to evidence of Indian habitation dating back at least 12,000 years.

In other parts of the High Rock Canyon, motorcyclists have destroyed barriers that were designed to keep vehicles out of a sensitive meadow, unleashing more erosion of the slow-to-heal desert soil. Ironically, the barriers had been put up by environmentally conscious off-road vehicle clubs working with BLM to try to keep riders on designated trails.

Agency Helpless

BLM, lacking funds, has been helpless to check the abuse. Archeologist Hugh Bunten said it has taken him two years to obtain signs explaining the delicate nature of the area and asking visitors to be careful. Even then, the signs did not come out of BLM’s budget--they were donated by a gas pipeline company and will be installed by off-road vehicle owners.

Money to enforce the laws protecting the critical areas--enough for a lone ranger to cover a district that sprawls over three counties in northeastern California and northwestern Nevada--was made available only late last year.

Similar problems have been documented at other critical areas around the West by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Advertisement

“It appears to us that, to a large extent, they are ducking the nomination process,” said resource specialist Faith Campbell, who wrote the council’s report. “Even when they do nominate, they go out of their way to make sure they do not impinge on any economic interest.”

Morale Suffers

The cumulative weight of all these problems has long affected staff morale.

John Adams, a former BLM soils scientist, said inconsistent BLM policies made him feel like “a straight man in a Marx Brothers movie.”

“We used to even question whether there was a BLM management plan,” Adams recalled. “For example, people would bulldoze roads and then take out permits (to do so).”

Indeed, 12 years after the Federal Land Policy and Management Act was signed into law, BLM has finished only 57, or 37%, of the Resource Management Plans that are crucial to implementation of that law, according to its latest annual tally. One reason for this is the 50% cut in BLM’s planning budget between 1981 and 1988.

Setting a deadline for filing those plans is a key element in BLM reform legislation under preparation by Rep. Bruce F. Vento (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Interior Committee’s subcommittee on national parks and public lands. His other ideas include banning most political appointees and replacing rancher-dominated grazing advisory boards with more broad-based multiple-use councils.

Outside Pressure

BLM’s critics acknowledge that the bureau has improved several of its management practices--when protecting endangered species in the deserts and forests, for example, or devoting more resources to critical areas. But, they add, many such changes are the product of congressional pressure and environmentalists’ lawsuits, not enlightened management or successful lobbying by staff conservationists.

Advertisement

“For substantive progress . . . there will have to be a fundamental change” in BLM’s management philosophy, the GAO’s Duffus recently told Congress.

“For this to occur,” he stated, “BLM will have to abandon its historical identification with the interests of livestock permittees and other commercial interests. . . . Business as usual simply will not do if Congress’ expectations as set forth in (the Management Act) are to be realized.”

Advertisement