One big question probably will echo across the Mesa County Fairgrounds on Thursday night, when Donald Trump Jr., the outdoorsman son of the Republican presidential nominee, drops in for in what’s billed as a “campfire” discussion of wildlife issues.
If he is elected president, how would Donald Trump address proposals to transfer federal public lands to the states?
Here in flyover country, people do care about homeland security, the national economy, the Islamic State and health care. But Colorado’s lifeblood courses through public lands, particularly on the Western Slope, where millions of acres of federal land anchor the often conflicting economic engines of extraction and recreation.
“This public-lands transfer question is pretty much the foundation that sets the tone for all other issues,” said Aaron Kindle, the Western sportsmen manager for the National Wildlife Federation’s Rocky Mountain region.
But sportsmen and conservation groups have had to pry opinions from the two leading presidential candidates about the idea that states can better manage public lands than the federal government does.
“This particular election cycle has been unique in that the public lands takeover issue has been at the forefront,” said Corey Fisher, a senior policy director with Trout Unlimited, which counts Donald Trump Jr. as a member. “While there are a bunch of these Western issues that sometimes get ignored, this one has risen to the level of national politics. It’s a conversation that we need to be having.”
Earlier this month, a coalition of more than 40 wildlife, conservation and sportsmen groups sent a letter urging Trump, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein to outline their positions on the Utah-born push to transfer public lands to states.
Clinton’s camp answered quickly, pledging that “public lands must stay in public hands.” She has proposed using “voluntary conservation partnerships” with private landowners and state governments to open access to 2 million acres of public land now closed to hunters and anglers. She has promised to double the size of the nation’s $646 billion outdoor economy in 10 years.
Trump didn’t respond to the letter. This has left conservationists and sportsmen sifting through past interviews to determine Trump’s position on the public-lands transfer proposal, which many fear would limit their access as more federal lands are opened to energy development.
They still are searching. In January, Trump told Field & Stream magazine that he opposed transferring wide swaths of federal lands to states because he wants “to keep the lands great.”
“And you don’t know what the state is going to do,” Trump said. “I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land.”
But courting Nevada caucus voters a week later, Trump blasted “the draconian rule” of the Bureau of Land Management as damaging the economy.
In February, Trump answered a question about transferring Nevada’s federal lands to the state, saying the issue is more about management than ownership, suggesting that states should play a larger role in governing federal lands.
“The Department of Energy and the Department of Interior must find ways to work with state and local governments to make sure that public lands are used to the best purpose,” he wrote to the Reno Gazette Journal. “Congress should address this issue on a much larger scale and make the determination on how federal lands should be managed by the executive branch, state and local governments.”
The choice is clear for conservationists — especially after news that Trump, if elected, may tap an oil executive to run the Department of Interior.
“We have heard Secretary Clinton say she would strengthen the network of public lands. She is talking about increasing funding for national parks, doubling the size of the outdoor recreation economy. Those are the kinds of things that are important to Coloradans,” said Pete Maysmith, executive director of Conservation Colorado. “From our perspective, it’s pretty clear that Donald Trump is not good for our public lands.”
The decision is murkier for sportsmen — a broad group with an array of rural members who support the Second Amendment and often lean Republican and independent. Donald Trump Jr., who is capping a hunting trip in Utah and Colorado with his stop in Grand Junction to meet with sportsmen, conservationists and outdoor lovers, has led his father’s push for support from sportsmen.
Sportsmen tend to think that a large-scale transfer of federal lands to states would throttle their access to prime playgrounds. In Colorado, for example, 20 percent of the state’s 2.8 million acres of trust lands are open to hunting and fishing, while the state land board leases the rest for grazing or oil, gas and mineral development. Hunters and anglers want all politicians to reject state efforts to wrest land from the federal government, said John Gale, the Colorado-based conservation director of the 10,000-member Backcountry Hunters & Anglers.
“We would love to see any candidate running for office connecting with voters by saying, ‘I stand behind keeping public lands in public hands and making sure the way we use public lands is balanced,’ ” Gale said. “Extraction cannot come at the expense of the sustainable recreation industry.”
Sportsmen groups have called for reform of wildfire funding that has sapped land management agencies such as the Forest Service and BLM. Gale said it is “disingenuous” for land-transfer supporters to cite the financial inefficiency of those agencies but neglect to mention how their budgets have been ravaged by fighting wildfires.
Sportsmen and women also are not big on attacking energy development. Instead, they float the “right way in the right place” argument, urging federal land managers to consider the maturing outdoor recreation industry alongside extractive industries, such as oil, gas and coal, when prioritizing the multiple uses on public lands.
“Hunting and fishing and outdoor recreation are sustainable economic engines,” Gale said. “If we take care of our public lands, we can count on those engines to fuel us in the future.”
Former Mesa County commissioner Jim Spehar said he has seen most national politicians “blow in, blow off and blow out” of the Western Slope, giving hasty, vote-snaring quips to issues that permanently impact livelihoods, lifestyles and economies.
He fears more of the same in the coming few months as presidential candidates elevate Colorado as a battleground. But there’s a rare opportunity for intelligent discussion right now on the Western Slope as oil and gas activity endures the current lull, said Spehar, who also was Grand Junction’s mayor and a city councilman.
“We ought to be taking advantage of this slowdown and using this time to figure out how we can do things a little more intelligently so we can preserve the stable part of the economy that isn’t subject to these peaks and valleys, and preserve the agriculture and the outdoor recreation while still accommodating oil and gas development,” he said. “Sadly, it’s pretty easy for politicians of any stripe to treat these things superficially.”
