New ‘Sagebrush Rebellion’ Smolders in Western States

More than 10 years have passed since Ronald Reagan rode into the White House and extinguished the Sagebrush Rebellion, and the modern-day range war over public lands management is heating up again.

Many of those who participated in that rebellion--a movement to have federal property managed by the Bureau of Land Management turned over to the states--now say that President Bush’s environmental leanings are jeopardizing their livelihoods.

Fearful of losing control over their own land and of losing access to natural resources on public lands, a group of at least 50 ranchers, miners, loggers and local government officials recently met in Las Vegas to develop a strategy for opposing the Bush Administration and the conservation movement.

“I think the new push by President Bush--that he wants to be the environmental President for the century--has certainly caused an uproar,” said Dean Rhoads, the Nevada rancher and legislator who led the Sagebrush Rebellion back in 1979.

That year, Rhoads traveled throughout the West spreading the message that federal public lands management policies would bring economic ruin to the region.

The federal government owns more than half of Utah, Idaho and Oregon. Rhoads liked to point out that 87% of Nevada belongs to Uncle Sam. He told audiences then:

“We’re operating, in a state of 70 million acres, on 4 million acres. I think it makes us a little smaller than Connecticut, if we were to look at the size of private land.”

Ranchers complained that the grass on grazing lands, which they lease from the BLM, was being destroyed by wild horses, and that the agency’s stringent regulations were wiping out sheep ranching.

The idea caught on, and Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona all passed measures calling on the federal government to relinquish control of such lands.

But Reagan’s election cooled off the rebellion. Westerners considered Reagan one of their own, sympathetic to their troubles and sure to solve the regulatory nightmares.

“When Reagan came in, the West felt they had someone there that would help them,” said Marlene Simons, a rancher and member of Wyoming’s House of Representatives who joined Rhoads in promoting the rebellion 11 years ago. “When James Watt got in (as interior secretary), they thought they had it won.”

Since Bush succeeded Reagan in 1988, those whose livelihoods depend on use of millions of acres of public lands have sensed a tightening of the regulatory noose.

They cite a number of developments that are causing them growing concern:

* Federal government efforts to preserve wetlands.

* Management decisions favoring recreational uses over logging in national forests.

* Moves in Congress to designate more protected areas.

* A recent proposal in Congress that fees for grazing rights be increased fivefold by fiscal 1994.

William Perry Pendley, chief legal officer of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, said the opposition should strive for a unified strategy on natural resources.

“The side that wants to use the lands are not as well-financed (as environmentalists), they are not as aggressive, and, frankly, they have got to get back to work,” he said.

Wayne Hage, a rancher from Tonopah, Nev., has written a book on the public lands controversy, which he says began as the West was settled.

“The sentiment that spurred the Sagebrush Rebellion has always been here in the Western states,” he said. “It’s just that, occasionally, depending on how heavy the hand that the federal government has been wielding, we get an outburst of more intense reaction.”

The current flare-up is tied to what Hage calls the anti-development tactics used by the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and Army Corps of Engineers.

State and local governments are becoming increasingly alarmed “as they see the potential for devastating economic chaos settling into their own areas,” he said.

And those in the movement point to the Pacific Northwest, where habitat protection plans for the northern spotted owl will curb the timber industry in some areas, and to Nevada and California, where a tortoise preserve keeps part of the Mojave desert off limits.

Cy Jamison, director of the Bureau of Land Management, disagreed as to the extent of unhappiness among Westerners, however.

“We’ve really tried to be a good neighbor out in the West,” he said in an interview from his Washington office. “There’s still some spots . . . especially where we have a lot of resource conflicts, where there’s a deep frustration.

“Overall, I think we’ve really changed a lot of attitudes out there, but I could find one person about everywhere you went that wouldn’t agree with me on that.”

Jamison said the key to resolving the growing discontent is compromise.

“We have to have a little bit for everybody,” he said.