Wilderness Alert - Fairy lanterns in Cache Creek, a Bureau of Land Management Wilderness Study Area.
BLM wildlands threatened nationwide! Please write a letter by April 23!
The Bush Administration is again working to open up and give away our public lands, this time on a huge scale.
BACKGROUND
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Gale Norton's Interior Dept. is quietly proposing changes to an obscure federal regulation, RS2477. If it succeeds, the agency will be able to hand over great chunks of some of America's wildest and most beautiful places to special interests.
THE THREAT
The BLM's proposal emerges from secret negotiations between the BLM and the State of Utah over disputed ownership of federal lands in that state. Utah has insisted it owns some 10,000 individual tracks, trails, paths, and portions of streambeds of varying lengths crisscrossing federal public land in some of Utah's wildest and most beautiful places. They include parts of national parks and lands proposed for wilderness designation in America's Red Rock Wilderness Act.
The State alleges that these are "highways" under a 136-year-old federal law known as R.S. 2477, which was repealed in 1976. If the BLM recognizes these claims, it will simultaneously surrender control of them to Utah and to other states making similar claims. The bulldozers will begin to carve up the West. This threat is not speculative; it is real. Several Utah counties have illegally bulldozed roads into proposed wilderness areas already, even before their bogus claims are decided.
Such claims are a burgeoning trend throughout the country.
-- The Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park in California recently received a letter from local counties alleging over 2,300 miles of R.S. 2477 routes in the Preserve and Park.
-- Under the Alaska Supreme Court's incredibly broad standard for RS 2477 claims, every section line in the State could qualify as an RS 2477 right-of-way, criss-crossing the State with over one million miles of claims. Granting these claims would threaten Alaska's most treasured National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, National Forests and designated Wilderness areas. That, precisely, is the claimants' goal.
-- Several counties in Montana, Idaho and Oregon have asserted claims to every road on the national forest lands within the county boundaries.
WHAT THE CHANGE IN RULE WOULD DO
An orderly process for considering the legitimacy of RS2477 claims already exists. The new rule would allow the BLM to give away the land to non-owners, outside of judicial proceedings, with minimal public involvement. Current law requires that such claimants assert their claim within 12 years of learning of disputed claims. The BLM's new proposal eliminates the 12-year statute of limitations for asserting such claims, opening the door to a flood of old claims. The proposal is custom-tailored to bypass existing protections.
TAKE ACTION
Please write the BLM by Tuesday, April 23, 2002, and tell the agency that it should withdraw its proposed rule and that you strongly oppose its attempt to give away rights-of-way that would lead to the fracture of otherwise unroaded areas and allow motorized use in the few wild places now safe from the drone of motors.
Tell the BLM that:
-- It should withdraw its proposed rule (67 FR 8216) that makes it easier to give away federal lands-including rights-of-way-to states;
-- Giving away rights-of-way would fracture otherwise unroaded areas and allow motorized use in wild places. If you can, give examples of public lands you have visited that would be harmed;
-- The rule is illegal.
-- National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, National Forests and public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management are valuable public assets that should not be given away nor their management dictated by bulldozer.
-- Many claims of rights-of-way for "highways" across public lands are not valid claims, but are cynical attempts to thwart wilderness protection or otherwise break up public wild lands. The agency should, apply a rigorous determination process for validating each claim to a right-of-way across public lands.
Send your letters to:
Mr. Jeff Holdren, BLM Lands and Realty Deputy Group Manager Bureau of Land Management
Ms. Cynthia Ellis, BLM Regulatory Affairs Group and the Office of the Solicitor.
Bureau of Land Management, Eastern States Office
7450 Boston Boulevard
Springfield, Virginia 22153
Attention: RIN 1004-AD50
Email: WOComment@blm.gov
(please use AD50 in the subject line of your email)
Fax: 202-653-5287
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Just three miles off of Interstate 80, 
