Federal Lands Policy

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I particularly want to thank Congressman Gohmert for organizing this discussion on Federal lands policy and for his highlighting of the Federal Footprint Map.

You can find that at naturalresources.house.gov/federalfootprint or just Google ``Federal Footprint.'' When you do, you will have a complete picture of how much land the Federal Government owns and how much of your State and your community is affected. It may surprise you.

For example, the Federal Government owns just seven-tenths of 1 percent of the entire State of New York. It owns just 1.1 percent of the State of Illinois. It owns just 1.8 percent of the State of Texas; but then go further west, and you will see the reason for the Western revolt. The Federal Government owns and controls 62 percent of the State of Alaska. It owns and controls two-thirds of the State of Utah and 81 percent of the State of Nevada. In my home State of California, the Federal Government owns nearly half; 48 percent is Federal land. In one county in my district, Alpine County, the Federal Government owns 93 percent of the land.

If you are not from one of the Western States, you need to understand what that means. That is all land that is completely off the local tax rolls. That is land that carries increasingly severe restrictions on public use and access, which means it is generating very little economic activity to these regions; and, often, Federal ownership means that Federal land use policies are in direct contravention to the wishes of the local communities that are entangled with it.

Recently, the Natural Resources Committee held a field hearing in north Las Vegas at the request of Congressman Cresent Hardy. Now, if you have ever flown into Las Vegas, you know how vast are the empty and unutilized lands of Nevada, stretching as far as the horizon. Yet the local leaders there all complained of how the region's economy suffers from a great shortage of land--land for homes and shops, for businesses and infrastructure. What an irony and what a commentary about the harm that is being done by the decisions of our Federal land managers.

More than a century ago, we began setting aside the most beautiful lands in the Nation for the ``use, resort, and recreation'' of the American people. That was the wording of the original Yosemite Land Grant that was signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1864; but somewhere along the way, public ``use, resort, and recreation'' became ``look, but don't touch,'' and the Federal Government became indiscriminate and voracious in the amount of land under its direct control.

As I said, my congressional district is in the heart of the Sierra Nevada. Common complaints from my constituents and from local government officials range from abusive Federal regulatory enforcement to inflated fees that have forced families to abandon cabins they have held for generations, exorbitant new fees that are closing down long- established community events, road closures, and the arbitrary denial of grazing permits for family ranchers who go back generations on that land. A small town in my district that is trying to install a $2 million spillway gate for their reservoir was just given a $6 million estimate from the Forest Service just to relocate a hiking trail and a handful of campsites.

Let me relate one quick story of what it means to be entangled in this Federal morass that came to me from the sheriff of Plumas County, which is just outside of my district.

An elderly couple goes horseback riding near their home. They come across an old horseshoe. The wife picks it up, and an ambitious, young Forest Service official saw her pick it up. The next thing they knew, six armed Federal law enforcement officers descended upon their home. They tore it apart and, ultimately, prosecuted this elderly couple for removing the horseshoe, charging them criminally with stealing from the Federal Government. Ultimately, the Federal judge dismissed the charges and chastised the officials who were responsible for this travesty, but only after this couple had gone through hell.

Ask yourself how your local economy would fare if the Federal Government owned 93 percent of the land in your county, forbade or greatly restricted any economic activity on it, and ignored the pleas of your local city council or county board.

In my district, the Federal Government consigned our forests to a policy of benign neglect. We now have, roughly, four times more trees per acre than the land can support. In this overcrowded and stressed condition, the trees can no longer resist the drought and beetle infestation. Today, an estimated 85 percent of the pine trees in the Sierra National Forest--that is adjacent to Yosemite National Park--are dead. And I am talking about Christmas-tree-in-July dead just waiting to be consumed by catastrophic fire.

The National Park Service estimates it is facing more than $12 billion of maintenance backlog, yet we keep adding to the Federal holdings that we can't take care of now. That is why the Federal footprint map is so important to understand and why fundamental reform of our land use policy is of paramount importance.

Now, the Federal Lands Subcommittee has three principal goals: to restore public access to the public lands, to restore sound management to the public lands, and to restore the Federal Government as a good neighbor to those communities most impacted by the Federal lands. But overarching all of these imperatives is the simple fact that excessive Federal land ownership in the West has become a stultifying drag on our economies and a direct impediment to our ability to take good care of our public lands.

I thought Congressman Gohmert put it best in a subcommittee hearing we held almost 2 years ago now when he compared the Federal Government's land use policies to the old miser whose great mansion has become the town eyesore--overgrown with weeds, paint peeling, roof dilapidated, broken windows--while the old miser spends all of his time and money plotting how he can buy his neighbor's land.

There needs to be a proper balance between Federal ownership, State and local stewardship, and the productive private ownership of the lands. One look at the Federal footprint map should warn even the most casual observers that we have lost that balance and that we need to restore it.

I, again, thank the gentleman from Texas for organizing this time today and for yielding time.

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