WESTERN DIVIDE Transcript

December 2001

They're not seeing wildlife that's natural, they're seeing it in many cases stressed and fleeing from machines.

Young people have been driven away because this constant round litigation and this fighting.

The bottom line of it's our guys against your guys. The rural's are just massively outnumbered.

Funding for FocusWest has been provided by a grant from the Ford Foundation, committed to encouraging communication and cooperation throughout the world.

JOAN:
Good evening, I'm Joan Cartan-Hansen.

JIM:
And I'm Jim Peck. Welcome to Western Divide. Public land is possibly one of the most ambiguous and argued over phrases in the west.

JOAN:
Now we have an audience full of people who are passionate about public lands. Our panel has spent a great deal of their careers dealing with public land issues, let me introduce them. Cecil Andrus former governor of Idaho and Secretary of the Interior under the Carter Administration. Jack Ward Thomas is the former head of the U.S. Forest service and now at the University of Montana. Former Idaho congressman Helen Chenoweth-Hage and professor and author Greg Cawley from the University of Wyoming. Thank you all for joining us. Governor you kind of sat on both fences on, on either side of the fence on your issue, dealing with public land issues, as governor you worked on, for the state.

CECIL ANDRUS, FORMER IDAHO GOVERNOR:
Let me point out first of all, Joan, that you're using the right nomenclature when you say public lands, not federal lands. They're managed by the federal government by direction of the people and those public lands are out there for all of the people, not just a chosen few and when flipped not federal land management policy act was passed in 1976, signed into law at that point in time it said we'll manage the lands, we won't dispose of them.

JOAN:
But how do you decide what is the best use for a piece of public land, how did you make that decision as Secretary of Interior, how did you make that?

CECIL ANDRUS:
Well we use, we use collaboration, we'd bring the people together and sure we'd argue and some would curse and throw things and they'd say well because my family's been here for a 100 years why I have the right to, to control it and then other people would say not so I'm a taxpayer those are my lands too. So you bring the, the two groups together. It doesn't do any good to stand out there and throw bombs at one another.

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, FORMER CONGRESSMAN:
Well I think there can be collaboration so long as people understand that there are rights attached to these lands that we, that we commonly call public lands, but which I believe and I agree with the Supreme Court with regards to the definition of public lands. The Supreme Court in a decision entitled Barden vs. the Northern Pacific Railroad and many, many other Supreme Court and high court decisions have defined public lands as those lands left open for disposal or sale by the, by the federal government and those lands which have no private rights attached. The Supreme Court clearly said that when private rights are attached to any land, they are not public lands, they are federal lands with private rights attached. There are private rights attached through the adjudication process on many of what we call public lands. Those private rights are water rights, and range rights including forage rights as well as ditch rights and various courts have upheld that over and over again.

PECK:
When ranchers, recreational users and environmentalists turn their focus on the same piece of American public land passions can run high as common ground is literally at stake.

KATE KITCHELL, Bureau of Land Management:
Well I certainly believe there is a way to bring people together. I think that we probably have more in common than not. What draws people to these debates is usually a passion about the place.

JOHN CRANCER, IDAHO PUBLIC TELEVISION:
Sprawling across southwestern idaho, northern Nevada and eastern Oregon is the sparsely populated Owyhee desert, it's six million acres of sagebrush, volcanic rock and rugged canyons. Here cowboys still ride the range and rafters float down lonely rivers. Most of this high desert is public land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

KITCHELL:
Well first of all I'd say probably the biggest challenge is something you've already talked about and that is the increasing diversity and complexity of the public land users.

CRANCER:
With the rising population in the west, more people are rediscovering the value of these arid lands. The renewed interest in this desert landscape has challenged the Bureau of Land Management to redefine the way it meets its multiple use mandate. Activities like ranching, mining and even military training have to be balanced against conservation, wildlife and recreation. The balance is delicate and the clash over the land often contentious, many Owyhee county ranchers are battling lawsuits over the impact of grazing on public lands. They feel the suits threaten the lifestyle that has been part of this country for more than 100 years.

MIKE HANLEY, OWYHEE COUNTY RANCHER:
Young people have been driven away because this constant round litigation, this fighting and they can find out they can get a job someplace else with more security. I absolutely have no idea whether I'll be able to run cattle next year or not.

CRANCER:
Coping with new challenges is a big part of the discussion at this annual meeting of the Owyhee Cattlemen's Association. It's a well attended meeting that also includes representatives of the BLM. They're here to talk about various management plans and to get some feedback from ranchers.

RANCHER:
We believe that we're going to be locked out of, of the front and so they wanted to be involved and make sure that, that doesn't happen.

CHRIS SALOVE, OWYHEE COUNTY COMMISSIONER:
There are less cattle on the lands today then there ever have been and in large part it's because of the increase in other uses. We believe we can protect the land and have the uses, and we wouldn't have it any other way, we won't destroy the land, because that destroys our future.

CRANCER:
Here at another gathering in the Owyhees, a different set of goals is being discussed. This is the annual rendezvous put on by the Owyhee Canyonlands coalition. The coalition is made up of a number of conservation groups that say overgrazing, excessive off-road use and other impacts are damaging the land. They'd like to see more protection for the area.

ROGER SINGER, SIERRA CLUB:
We have been as a coalition working to find some means of better protection for this area for the last couple of decades.

CRANCER:
In recent years that goal led the coalition to push for national monument designation for much of the Owyhee's.

HENLEY:
I think that's regressive because it's been proven many times over that the let it go back to nature thing and the utopia doesn't exist and every time somebody's tried it, it's been a failure and there's always management and scientific principals that are applied to management of not only land, but everything else and as long as best management practice is followed I don't think there's going to be any problem.

CRANCER:
Hanley and members of the Canyonlands coalition know each others' arguments well. in fact this year's Owyhee rendezvous took place on land Hanley often uses as part of his BLM allotment. Some of his cowhands didn't appreciate that choice of locations, but despite big differences of opinion Hanley stopped by to talk with rendezvous participants. Both sides say they prefer conversation over litigation.

SINGER:
We respect the local community that's out here and the ranchers who have been here historically, our intent is never to end grazing or to kick them off the land, the intent is to permanently protect the, the resources out here and the land.

HANLEY:
The reason it's so attractive is because people like myself have been managing it, maintained it like that, without people like us there tied to the land, there wouldn't be anything worth saving.

CRANCER:
Katie Fite of the Committee for Idaho's High Desert disagrees. She says she can point out many areas where cattle are damaging the ecosystem. She feels current management policies aren't protecting the public's land.

KATIE FITE, COMMITTEE FOR IDAHO'S HIGH DESERT:
There has to be some fundamental changes made I think in how the land is perceived as whether it's something that you use to extract the maximum amount of cow flesh from or whether it's something that you do take measures to protect for everybody and not just do what benefits you the most economically.

CRANCER:
Needed protection or unnecessary regulation. It depends on your viewpoint. People for the Owyhees, another group interested in this area, backs the rancher's right to be here. They also contend the National Monument proposal is just a way to keep some users out.

SANDRA MITHCELL, PEOPLE FOR THE OWYHEES:
This land has been used for hundreds of years by grazers, by recreationalists and it's unspoiled. And the reason it's unspoiled is because those of us who use the land, love the land and we're intent on making sure that it's protected as much as possible. So I think that reasonable, responsible use of the public lands by grazers, by recreationalists is certainly appropriate.

CRANCER:
There are multiple issues and multiple opinions surrounding the public land in the Owyhee's. Another organization looking for some common ground in the debate is the nature conservancy. In 1996 the conservancy purchased 45 ranch on the south fork of the Owyhee River. With the purchase of the 240 acre ranch it also received a 70,000 acre federal grazing allotment, but Trish Klahr says that instead of eliminating grazing on the allotment the conservancy decided to continue the operation on a smaller scale.

TRISH KLAHR, NATURE CONSERVANCY:
In order to gain the trust of the other people that are working out here we have chosen to continue traditional uses such as livestock grazing, some consider that a very controversial move, but its allowed us to gain the trust of some folks to really have conversations on what do we want the future of this land to look like, how can we work together since we're all out here.

CRANCER:
That is the central question, how can such a diversity of users reach a compromise and find a way to share this precious resource?

KITCHELL:
It requires a lot of commitment and optimism to bring folks together and again we have to remember that the cornerstone is the land and that's what we're all here for.

CARTAN-HANSEN:
If you're interested in this issue we'd invite you to join our moderated discussion right now, online at focuswest.org. Let's pick up on that question of rights. If I'm a grazer if I have my, if I'm running cattle on land I have, I have a right to graze my cattle on it, do I also have a right if I'm a hiker and I want to keep that as a pristine area?

ANDRUS:
First of all I would, I would point out that, that there are rights given for the grazing, but as pointed out on your film a moment ago they said reasonable and responsible grazing on the lands. It varies from year to year how much spring rain we have, how much forage we really have, how many A.U.M.'s can it carry and not just the canyonlands you've got to look at the entire state of Idaho, you've got areas that have been abused, riparian areas where the stream has been destroyed, cows in the creek, and you have other areas where they are being responsible and it works very, very well, so the hard heads are going to have to realize that if they continue to abuse they'll be kicked off, as it should be. But I have seen a change in the last six or seven years to where management has improved tremendously on the public lands to where when the stubble gets to a certain height that's the end of the grazing season. Now admittedly that makes a financial burden on the operator who says what am I going to do with my cows for a month if I have to take them off early? It does create an economic problem, but the other side of that is to beat the ground into the dust and destroy the stream-bank vegetation and then you have encroached upon the public's right.

C.J. HADLEY, RANGE MAGAZINE:
I'm C. J. Hadley with Range Magazine. I think the problem in the west is that the land is not managed properly, if it was managed probably everything would be satisfied, the recreationalists would be good, there would be plenty of forage for livestock, and there would be more wildlife. I just wish that you would keep in mind that cattle are not the problem; it is management that's the problem and I would like you to comment on that.

ANDRUS:
We've had conservationists of the year, cattlemen in this state also that do an excellent job, I can show you Bear Valley some years ago and there are people in this audience that are very familiar with that, it was absolutely destroyed. But it has changed over the years, there are good operators and poor operators and it makes a difference which one you have on a certain allotment. But you're right that if it's properly managed that was the key to your statement and I don't disagree with that, but I can show you some real tough looking stuff in this state.

CARTAN-HANSEN:
Where do you find that balance between the economic rights of, of humans and the need for nature and wildlife preservation?

HELEN:
Well I do want to say that public lands did exist when we, when ranchers grazed in common out here, but there came a time when attached to the base place certain allotments had to be defined and once those allotments were defined then the rancher then realized that, that included the entire ranch and those allotments by the way the rancher pays taxes on. He pays taxes to the county, he pays the state taxes and so if he doesn't own the rights and the public owns those rights then why isn't the public paying the rancher's taxes? The fact is that during the adjudication and most of the adjudication was complete by 1968.

PECK:
Mr. Thomas, I saw you wince as she was talking about the taxpayers paying the ranchers' taxes and, and that was a look you shared with Governor Andrus, what was that about?

JACK WARD THOMAS, FORMER FOREST SERVICE CHIEF:
Well one is there's a difference between grazing on BLM lands and grazing on Forest Service lands, which Forest Service largely attached to base property. At least my lawyers told me continuously that the courts had ruled that grazing was a privilege and not a right, but that those grazing leases were attached to base property. Now obviously they also transferred traditionally transferred when the base property transfers I see that as an oddity in that kind of an argument, but we had not only the authority, but the responsibility to make sure that grazing took place on national forest lands in a way that was compatible with thethe welfare of that land. We did that in combination or in, in cooperation with the permittees very rationally. That continues today, but I have not known of any ranchers that are paying taxes on national forest land they're, they may pay taxes and it may be I can see the argument where they're base, when they include it with their base property that it might be evaluated by the county at a higher rate and maybe that's where the discussion comes in, but they don't pay any taxes on federal land.

LAIRD LUCAS, ATTORNEY:
We've been hearing about private property rights of ranchers, but I'm wondering about their responsibilities. Ranchers pay $1.35 for feed for a cow and a calf for a month to the federal government, $1.35, I can't feed my cat for a month for $1.35. Shouldn't ranchers have to pay a fair market value?

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
They own the forage. They own the forage already, so why are they paying the federal government a fee to use the forage? The last instance of a court decision on that issue was found in Hage v. U.S., a decision issued in November 1999, 1998, November 1998, where the judge defined the rancher's rights on the allotment. He defined those rights as the water ditch rights. [Editor's note: the 1998 decision mentioned by Chenoweth-Hage here was a preliminary one. It has been superceded by a decision filed in January 2002.]

LUCAS:
And that's a case under Nevada law, correct? That didn't apply to anywhere else?

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
No, it was heard in the United States.

LUCAS:
Could we hear from the other panelists about why the ranchers don't pay a legitimate fee.

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
Let me answer your question. It was heard in the United States Court of Claims, which has national jurisdiction.

LUCAS:
Right, it was a takings case correct?

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
Issued, issued by the senior judge.

LUCAS:
Could we hear from the other panelists about this $1.35, why don't the ranchers pay a fair fee?

THOMAS:
That's a matter of definition, of course congress sets the fee by which the $1.35 comes up.

LUCAS:
Actually it's set by regulation. It's set by the Forest Service and the BLM . . . Regulation.

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
Not under the . . . No you're wrong.

THOMAS:
I'm sorry you're wrong.

LUCAS:
Well it's under . . . They set a formula and there's a regulation adopted by the Forest Service and the BLM in the late 1980's that set it at a $1.35 and it's set annually these days.

THOMAS:
Are you asking me a question or you want a, can I respond to your question?

LUCAS:
Sure.

THOMAS:
Alright. One is I don't have a particular objection to that, but there is a formula there and I don't really think the chief of the Forest Service is going to wake up one morning and unilaterally decide to alter that formula, so for the Forest Service that's a fact of life. The next one of it is, is obviously if you go out and bid on private grazing you're going to bid different things under different circumstances. You're going to bid more in georgia then you bid in nevada. So one of the big differences is, it's a difference between being on private land, there's been a big change if you want to bid this $1.35 now you build your fences where the Forest Service tells you, you maintain 'em to standard, you develop the water, you move the cattle as they tell you and so on. Well private land there's a difference. It'd be worth more on private land than federal land. First I hate to tell you this, but we didn't get the good stuff. Private land got it. So there's some difference, what that difference is you might call a subsidy, but it's going to be very different in different places at different times and you turn around and you say what do I get for this and what you get for this originally and I think today is some deal of stability in the, in the grazing situation and now I would contend some viability of associated ranches and I don't know that it's worth the difference, I don't know that it's worth the argument. I think, I think the $1.35 is a surrogate argument for getting cows off the federal land.

DAN DAGGETT, AUTHOR:
My name's Dan Daggett, I'm from Flagstaff, Arizona, I work with a couple of environmental groups, one Ecoresults and the other the Quivera coalition out of Sante Fe. Jack said a minute ago that really it's not a matter of use versus protection, but what we really ought to be talking about here is what do we want to have out on those rangelands, what do we want them to be like? The Quivera coalition and Ecoresults worked with ranchers to identify what we as environmentalists want there and then we work with ranchers to achieve those goals and so what we have here is use achieving the goals that we might otherwise try to achieve by protection and we find out that we're being more successful that way I know you've got a lot more to say about that, how can we change this from this false choice either or to, to make this really about the land and about the health of the land.

THOMAS:
I think that is changing and I think it's a matter of survival. When do people collaborate, when do people compromise, when do people come to consensus? They don't do it as long as they think they got the other guy down and they're about to finish him off.

But in all my career we've had one side get the other side down and think I can finish him now and it'd go the other way and the other guy says now I can finish him and when you turn around and say can't do that how do we live together with this situation. We've been at war over these things for 30 years now, the enviros won, now they wander about the battlefield bayoneting the wounded. The people that were the extractors on the other hand lost and they're having ghost dances trying to bring back the good 'ol days and that's not going to happen either. What we need is what you're talking about and World War II analogy is a Marshall plan. How do we now work to make the best of this circumstance given the full recognition of where we stand at the moment and I, and I think you're suggesting one way to do that.

CARTAN-HANSEN:
Sometimes the issue of access is at the center of this western divide. In Nevada a small determined group has taken that issue into their own hands.

:I mean just the fact that this road was built here doesn't mean it's the right place for it to be.

BILL VAN BRUGGEN, USFS DISTRICT MANAGER:
July 4th of 2000, hundreds of activists armed with shovels flocked to remote northeastern Nevada to repair a rural road. Why? It all comes down to a question of control.

ERIN BREEN, KNPB, RENO:
Remote pristine areas like Copper Canyon above the Jarbidge wilderness in northeastern nevada are god's country. And while relatively few people can say that they live on or really know this land there is a nationwide struggle afoot for control of it. And no where is that more evident right now than in Elko County, Nevada.

Here county commissioners, community activists, environmentalists, and the U.S. Forest Service have locked horns over the future of a 1 ½ mile stretch of very rural roadway outside the town Jarbidge.

It's about as remote a town as you can get to in Nevada, it sits at the edge of Jarbidge wilderness only about 20 people live here year-round, but they are adamant about their lifestyle in their corner of the west. And they believe that over the years government agencies have eroded their rights, eliminated income sources here and they say they are now encroaching on their access to land they depend on for the survival of their town.

DOT CREECHLY, CAFE OWNER:
There's no industry to speak of, just tourism, which is what the road is all about, tourism. We need people, we need campgrounds, we need access.

JO ZIRKLE, JARBIDGE RESIDENT:
I pay my taxes and I want to use that road. That's all.

VAN BRUGGEN:
I think all over the west this is, this is an issue with particularly local people that have you know hunted or used these roads historically for their various recreational pursuits or whatever they were doing and I can understand how it can be aggravating when a road that they've used for years all of the sudden gets cut off.

BREEN:
South Canyon road is an access road to the trailhead for the Jarbidge wilderness. It was washed out in a flood in 1995 and since then it's been the center of a tug-of-war over who can use it, who can fix it, who controls it, and how they do it. After three years of frustration over the lack of access, the Shovel Brigade comprised of hundreds of activists from all over the west took to the project by hand, but the emergency listing of the bull trout as endangered brought work to a stop for studies.

DON EVANS, IDAHO HUNTER/HIKER:
Well they're trying to do their job, but I don't know sometimes they go a little overboard.

BREEN:
Gary Back is an ecologist who spent five years with the BLM. He's currently a consultant for the county and he's searching for middle ground, not just for South Canyon Road, but for grazing, the sage grouse, the bull trout and general road closures on public lands.

GARY BACK, ECOLOGIST:
That has an impact on that local economy and when you start cutting that out, you're impacting the livelihood of people and that needs to be considered when these broad initiatives come down.

BOB VAUGHT, HUMBOLDT TOIYABE FOREST SUPERVISOR:
I think it's very unfortunate. It is very small potatoes, it is a very remote area, I remain confused a little bit about the importance of this particular piece of road.

GRANT GERBER, SHOVEL BRIGADE ATTORNEY:
If you take that argument on down is Elko large enough to have roads, or is, is Wells, Nevada, large enough to have roads, or do we just eliminate the roads around Jarbidge because it's a little town?

ERIK HERZIK, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROF AT UNIV OF NEVADA RENO:
The small businessman, the rancher, the mom and pop organization out who actually living on the land and trying to make a living on the land they are well virtually powerless and the federal laws are in a sense geared to help the big lobby groups who work the halls of Congress.

VAUGHT:
I don't think that we need to do something so that they can havea bigger say or more of say because they have a very big say already. Any actions that we take we work very closely with the local people.

HERZIK:
Their recourse actually is to make it more sensationalized to you know stand up there and try to in a sense catch the . . . imagination.

BREEN:
Which is exactly what Grant Gerber tried to do with this video as part of the Sagebrush rebellion, a forerunner to the Shovel Brigade.

MUSIC:
So don't get mad about what we do. We're buying all America just for you.

BREEN:
And the Shovel Brigade has staged it's own dramas in organizing huge anti-government rallies and even flying in wheelchair bound activists to make their point on access. Meantime the government has acted on behalf of Americans as a whole, a challenging balancing act at best.

HERZIK:
You take this kind of virtual representation, the people of the United States, an urban environmentalist from Las Vegas will say I have as much right to how that land is governed because it's federally owned land as the person who lives out there. The, the actual representation of the person who lives on the land is increasingly lost.

VAUGHT:
But in my career I have found in almost all cases and in fact Jarbidge is almost an exception,the only exception that we are able to work out our differences for the common good of the national forest as well as the local people.

BREEN:
South Canyon Road is as controversial as it is remote, but like so many areas in the west for those who live on the land it represents a symbolic struggle for control.

MUSIC:
This land is your land, this land is my land from the Californias to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf stream waters, this land was made for you and me.

PECK:
You can dig into extensive information and resources at focuswest.org and join in on our live discussion right now. Who should have the biggest voice in what happens out here?

THOMAS:
One you have to obey the law and once you're in compliance with the law obviously perhaps this being the exception that one of the speakers talked about local people do, but let's look at that. They had a threatened species, fish and wildlife service had an emergency listing, if anybody can even look at that thing and not realize that, that road is an environmental disaster. No question about that. They had to deal with that particular question, they could not defy the law as defined in the listing and so they didn't fix that road. I can understand why they didn't. Congress might have said okay we want another road, we want you to put it in a safer place and we're willing to spend X amount of dollars to do that and we could do that in an environmentally sound way, there might have been a way out, but in that particular circumstance I hardly see how you could hang that road back in there and satisfy the concerns over that particular drainage and the threatened fish.

ANDRUS:
That particular situation the law is very clear a thoroughfare, a public thoroughfare is defined into law, if you have a difference of opinion that's no way to resolve it. I would say take it to the courthouse and if they say no it is not a public thoroughfare then you have the responsibility of going to the BLM or the Forest Service and saying give us another access. That's the way to solve that, not pushing people out there in a wheelchair with a shovel in their hand to try and make an emotional point.

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
The fact is that the county owns that road, it has taken jurisdiction over the road and it still owns it and what the Forest Service did was by assertion.

CARTAN-HANSEN:
But congresswoman shouldn't we have gone to court instead of bringing in people in wheelchairs . . . Shouldn't they have done that?

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
I think that point's a very good one Joan. If the Forest Service had a problem why didn't they take the county to court? Instead what they did was get their bulldozers in the middle of the creek, which Cecil Andrus hates and they tore that road up and they made a horrible mess out of it. I mean our former Secretary of the Interior would've been furious if he could've seen what the Forest Service did.

CARTAN-HANSEN:
In weighing the different people who have a voice in public land use should we give more weight to the people who live next to or on the land or who use the land more than say someone who lives in the east coast?

THOMAS:
I don't know if we should or shouldn't, but we do. Basically on the fact that, that's the people you talk to on a continuous basis when somebody is standing in, in your office or you're together on an allotment somewhere, those are the people you talk to most frequently.

ANDRUS:
After all the people live there and, and you've got to listen to their rights, but that does not transfer into that representation their rights to, to violate the management plan of the area or . . . But do you listen to the people? Absolutely. They're out there everyday and they probably have more knowledge on a day to day basis than anybody else.

ANDRUS:
But devil's advocate, couldn't they be too close to the progress, it's their dollar, it's their economic interest, isn't it possible that the local people are too close to make a decision on a national basis?

THOMAS:
The Forest Service manager certainly has to say I'm responsible in the end here for obedience to the law, the welfare of the land, etc. I suspect when I'm talking to somebody about their lifestyle and their welfare and whether they're going to be able to pay their taxes next year I suspect they have a rather focused interest in the outcome, so I think that's the difference there. This is just a little facetious, but not much, if I had been in office I'd say be careful what you ask for, you may get it. Here is your road baby. Now you take care of the consequences of the condition of that road, it's all yours and they would've been dealing with the Fish and Wildlife service and they would've had a closed road or that county would've had to spend some really considerable dollars to bring it into condition. I would've been very tempted to have said you want it, you got it.

GREGG CAWLEY, UNIV OF WYOMING:
Yeah one of my favorite understatements from the political science literature comes from a guy named Robert Dahlwho observed people who say their ways of life at stake are seldom willing to compromise. Now he probably got tenure for that statement, but it seems to me that especially the Jarbidge incident really drives home that kind of a point. One of my concerns here is that the way we argue about the federal lands or the public lands I can go either way on this is really from an individual perspective alright and everybody then begins to believe that somehow their way of life is at stake, whether it's an environmentalist who, who feels that their way of life is of, of going out and, and camping and communing with nature is at stake or rancher or the timber beasts, pick, pick your favorite land group okay now if, if that's the case then that would explain to us why these arguments would start getting intense on us, but we have September 11th to demonstrate to us that in, in sometimes it is possible for us to come together, set aside our individual differences and, and have a public that's greater than some of the parts.

ANDRUS:
What's the status of that road now Helen?

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
The Forest Service has admitted that the county owns the road under RS 2477, but they pulled a real caveat and that is they got the county to agree that the county would enter into a new process with the Forest Service. I was opposed to this, Governor, because the person who, or the entity who controls the property rights actually controls the property and so I think what happened was they handed the, the control of the road right back to the Forest Service after they won.

ANDRUS:
Yeah, but then is there another access to get the people to where they want to go on that road?

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
Well it, it needs to be repaired.

ANDRUS:
Another access needs to be.

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
Yeah because the Forest Service went in there and tore it up.

ANDRUS:
Well that's, that's, that's what we should look to is providing another access instead of beating ourselves silly over the other aspect of it and it'll cost you a whole lot less money I would suspect. I haven't been on the ground, but I'd a sure handled it differently.

PECK:
Well many of the issues related to the use of our public lands come to head each year in Yellowstone where snowmobiles and silence are focal points in the western divide.

PATRICIA DOWD, CROSS-COUNTRY SKIER:
Skiers, people who sled on a traditional sled not a snowmobile sled have been leaving the area.

KATHARINE COLLINS, WYOMING PUBLIC TELEVISION:
By the early 90's snowmobiling in Yellowstone was huge business. Outfitters in Wyoming and Montana brought thousands of sledders into Yellowstone. The Park Service concluded last year that the 65,000 machines entering the park each winter threaten wildlife, pollute the air, and destroy the experience for other visitors. The Clinton Administration decided to phase out the snowmobiles by next winter, the issue however remains unresolved and the clash of values still resound.

JON CATTON, GREATER YELLOWSTONE COALITION:
People that go into the park now, don't hear the hiss and splash of a geyser nearly as much as they hear the buzz, whine and roar of snowmobiles. They're not seeing wildlife that's natural, they're seeing it in many cases stressed and, and fleeing from machines.

GREG KOLL, SNOWMOBILE OUTFITTER: They want to eliminate access to the national park that all Americans have a right to visit. It's an elitist attitude.

CATTON:
What is truly elitist is to say I want to go into Yellowstone National Park and I want to go in the way I want to go in.

RICK SPENCER, BUSINESS OWNER:
What concerns me the most about 'em stopping snowmobiling in Yellowstone Park is that if they can do it there, they can do it anywhere.

TERI MANNING, PRES., WY STATE SNOWMOBILE ASSOC.:
I think the extremists on the enviro, environmental side would like to have no one in the parks and on the other side you have the extremists in the snowmobiling community who want to ride everywhere regardless and neither, neither one is correct.

COLLINS:
Debate over access to Yellowstone was well underway before the park even opened. According to the warning of a Montana newspaper editor in 1872 under government control the Yellowstone Country will be remanded into a wilderness and rendered inaccessible to the great mass of travelers and tourists.

The Bush administration wants to reverse the phase-out of snowmobiles in Yellowstone, but John Sacklin firmly backs his agency's rationale for the ban.

JOHN SACKLIN, CHIEF PLANNER, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK:
When we looked at the quantity of snowmobile use, where it was occurring, and how it was, how it was occurring and looked at the impacts of that use we believe that the best way to address the issue was to change the mode of transportation from snowmobiles to snowcoaches.

JOHN KECK, DIR., WY. DEPT OF PARKS AND CULTURAL RESOURCES:
When you come in on a snowcoach you are in what is jokingly referred to as canned spam, you're stuffed into a small metal enclosure, if the driver agrees to stop you can stop, you lack some of the freedom to basically see these things for yourself and it changes the whole experience.

COLLINS:
Idaho, Montana and Wyoming fear the collapse of the winter economies in communities surrounding the park so they demanded a voice in the preparation of a supplemental, environmental impact statement to reconsider the ban. A Wyoming report claimed that the ban would result in the annual loss of 40 million dollars in expenditures and tax revenues, plus 1,000 jobs.

KOLL: There are approximately ten outfitters in the Jackson area and I believe all of them depend on Yellowstone for the majority of their business.

COLLINS:
The rapidly accelerating two stoke engine remains the choice for powder busting, high marking back country adventurers. Industry has responded to the Yellowstone controversy by developing a less polluting four stroke engine.

KECK:
Current snowmobiles do have emissions problems, they do have noise problems, the industry will move forward, I feel very confident in that. The demand is there, they need to meet it.

CATTON:
We don't believe that the industry is genuinely wanting to produce a truly cleaner and quieter snowmobile. They have pressured the Environmental Protection Agency to set the bar very low, a weak standard, and the Environmental Protection Agency has so far responded and said okay if that's what you want industry that's where we're going to set the standard. However clean and quiet snowmobiles don't address wildlife concerns, don't necessarily address safety issues, don't necessarily address all other visitor experience kinds of questions.

COLLINS:
Regardless of what happens in Yellowstone, the larger issue is motorized recreation on millions of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands. Off road vehicle use has more than doubled on public land in the past ten years. In Wyoming conflicts between skiers and snowmobilers are on the rise.

KECK:
The highest amount of snowmobile use in Wyoming is currently occurring in the Snowy Range just west of Laramie and it's an area that we're looking as far as how do we manage that resource there, how do we coordinate with the Forest Service to manage that use and to manage the other winter uses that should be actively pursued as well?

COLLINS:
Winter recreation is essential for business owner Rick Spencer of Centennial.

SPENCER:
There's snowmobiling, we're about five miles away from a real nice down hill ski area, there's some great cross country skiing up here, there's some great areas for snow-shoeing and the last few years we're starting to get a lot of the dog sleds.

COLLINS:
Wyoming has heavily promoted snowmobiling on the Medicine Boat in an advertising campaign directed at Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan and Colorado. Local skiers such as Patricia Dowd blame the state for the motorized invasion of their tranquil winter hideaway.

DOWD:
There's obviously been a tremendous increase in the number of users of snowmobiles on the forest and as a result skiers, people who sled on a traditional sled, not a snowmobile sled, have been leaving the area. So as a result I no longer go skiing in the Snowy Range on the weekends in the back country.

SUSAN MARSH, REC PLANNER FOR BRIDGER-TETON NAT'L FOREST:
We've seen some conflicts between use and, and mostly that's tied to the increases of use. People are going places where they didn't five years ago. We have some places where you have to stay on the trail because there are moose, elk, other wildlife, you can't ski, you can't walk there.

PAM LICHTMAN, JACKSON HOLE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE:
And we are working very closely with the Forest Service and the Game and Fish Department to try to educate the public as to where these areas are and why they're important to wildlife and why we need to stay out of them.

MANNING:
If I see someone who's, who's committing a, a no-no I'm not afraid to go up and tell them don't poach the snow, don't go in areas that are closed. Don't endanger the animals who are out there trying to survive through the winter.

SPENCER:
It's tourism that keeps the family store going. Without them coming in year round I'm outta here.

CARTAN-HANSEN:
Do we have the right to tell that man we're going to block snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park and you're out of business because it's more important to save that wildlife?

THOMAS:
The Park Service has a schizophrenic mission to preserve things in a pristine condition at the same time being a pleasuring ground for the people. I think when that was written down nobody could quite visualize snowmobiles in that number. Yellowstone in itself is a weird situation. You're wintering big game animals, buffalo, elk and others at very high elevation on very tough ground. Disturbance of those animals is very costly in the nutritional sense and because of the purity of the mission, there's no supplemental feeding or anything like that. If that gets tough enough they follow the groomed trails off the Yellowstone Park, down onto the National Forest and then those dirty rotten guys that work for the Forest Service has to deal with the control of brucellosis in exchange with their livestock. So this is a lot bigger issue rather than can somebody run a snowmobile around in Yellowstone Park. It has consequences. The consequences have to be weighed and measured and they have to be adjusted rationally and reasonably, but I consider snowmobiles as part of the federal land system, yes I would. Would I turn around and say you have a right to run snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park, i'd say no, I don't think so.

TOM GLASS, BLUE RIBBON COALITION:
How can we get some kind of cooperative relationship going? I view the Park Service as still harking back to their military roots, you know because they, they don't seem to want to cooperate.

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
Now there are problems at the west gate, at West Yellowstone of high carbon dioxide and noxious, nitrous oxide, but you know if the federal government, if the National Park Service would work with the industry I think the snowmobile industry has set an extremely good example. They're working with many universities and challenging university engineering students to come up with quieter, more efficient snowmobiles and they have contests between universities, I guess Waterloo won the big prize last year. That's encouraging, the only thing is the industry is waiting for EPA to give 'em their guidelines. How can they produce new machines that meet what everybody wants without EPA's guidelines? So again you know the federal government is dragging their feet.

CAWLEY:
There's a word that's been used several times this afternoon and that's change. Okay do we take change just as a given? Is it a constant? You know if change comes along then we just say yeah let's go with it, we have to go with it or do we have I suppose moving maybe into the morale or ethical range, do we stop from time to time and say well we're not going to accept change here and, and I think that's one of the fundamental questions we're arguing about in terms of the federal land.

THOMAS:
Do you really believe that if you reduce emissions on snowmobiles by 80% and reduce their noise level by 75% that the issue will change? Alright well let's address what the real questions are. It's not that the snowmobiles stink and they do, I mean some of that is awful. And they make a lot of noise. And people do things with 'em that they shouldn't. Well if they didn't get off the trail and you reduce these things as I suggested the issue's solved right? Wrong. This is going to be a question about what's appropriate recreational use in Yellowstone Park. Why don't we talk about the issue rather than talking about this other stuff because the issue won't change and I think it's a legitimate question to argue about whether we ought to have a lot of snowmobiles running around in Yellowstone Park. But that's not the question whether they have emissions or they make noise.

ANDRUS:
Does a human being in Yellowstone in the winter adversely impact the park? No. Does one snowmobile? Probably not. But I'd want to know what the answer is to the, the management, the impact upon the game animals that you have there for all of the reasons that we have talked about and then I'd look at the numbers, now we've said here a moment ago we're talking about if, if you've got forage on the BLM that'll only handle 50 A.U.M.'s and you put a hundred A.U.M.'s out there, you're a dirty guy. Alright? If it'll handle five snowmachines and you put 100 out there you're a dirty guy. There has to be some decision made, probably this is going to end up either/or. I think it's headed for a confrontation that will ban snowmobiles from the park and that's, that's probably too bad, but when they come in the numbers that they're there no one can convince me that you're not adversely impacting the game.

PECK:
Well sometimes I think people see this as a kind of a foot in the door, if you get rid of snowmobiles then what, what's the next step going to be and who decides that and how far do we go? We heard in one of the pieces people saying maybe what some of these people are really trying for is to get people completely out of these parks and only think about the land and the animals based on those criteria.

THOMAS:
The western, the United States is growing at X percent per decade, the western states are growing twice as fast as that and counties within that have a county seat within 50 miles of a National Forest boundary are growing twice as fast as that again. This is producing an incredible demographic shift and then we're just going to be looking at more people related to the public lands or federal lands and I don't know that we can handle that just blase' fair. I suspect when things go into short supply and conflicts develop you're into a situation where the managers are going to have to manage and then when you manage somebody wins and somebody looses and you, you have big controversy so I think that's inevitable.

CHENOWETH-HAGE:
And I remember back in the 70's when we in the northwest faced the fact that logging was shutting down, mining was shutting down, our traditional industries were fading away. What we heard was don't worry about it because the economics will still be there in tourism. Well the fact is that snowmobiling provides for this nation a twelve billion dollar industry and the problem is that those people who are making the decisions, the general public have lost trust in. The reason being is because the National Park Service in Yellowstone extended a comment period to one side without a general notice to everyone and so most of the comments against snowmobiling came in that additional forty day period. Now that's skewing the results and there is a lawsuit pending on that, but that creates a loss of trust in those who have to make the decisions. If we had a Jack Ward Thomas over there I personally could trust him. I can't trust many, but I could trust Jack Ward Thomas.

WALLY BUTLER, IDAHO FARM BUREAU:
Mr. Thomas just mentioned the word collaborative and several times we've heard compromise, but seldom have we heard consensus and to me there's quite a lot of difference in some of those terms and I'd like to ask the panelists to express some of their feelings along those lines.

THOMAS:
Consensus is an objective, but it's very difficult to achieve unless you can do a fairly quick process. Now let me give you this, two statements of fact. Decisions get made by those who show up and two decisions are made in a democracy by the majority of the minority that cares about an issue. But if you drag these things out a long, long time the professional gunfighters will come into the game and you don't have a chance on consensus. I think for consensus to work it's got to be quick and relatively fast and it has to be more locally focused, though you can't operate outside the law.

BILL BACHMAN, PROFESSIONAL FORESTER:
My name's Bill Bachman, I'm a professional forester, I live here in Boise, Idaho. I wanted to ask this question of all four of you so I'll ask you first. Do we need a public land law review? We have not had one for a long time and after hearing what Jack Ward has just said, don't we indeed need the review, a serious one?

ANDRUS:
Yes I would say absolutely we do and they should move to it and they should move to it rapidly and take, it's easy to like Helen has said, you know laws that are old and some that have been superceded in court cases that have been litigated years ago and . . . All of those things has to be put together and we do need a land law review in my opinion.

BACHMAN:
Would you support that?

THOMAS:
We simply, we have a process in place that is so slow, so excruciatingly difficult, so easy to be sued upon. Look the process is okay, but we need a three step process instead of 144 step process, we need an appeal, one, one appeal, we need to have that stepped up. If I could change the world I'd do one thing, you sue, loser pays. Right now the federal government can be sued over and over and the worse that can happen to the person that sues is that they have to absorb their own cost. I assure you if you sue me in my personal capacity and you lose, I'm coming after you.

CAWLEY:
Maybe what we need to start doing is paying attention to the way we talk about these things. Maybe that's where we need to move. For instance in one of these little video strips it occurred to me that this wonderful juxtapositioning of ranchers, balancing ranching and grazing with conservation. Well a 100 years ago, give or take a few decades among friends, conservation was about balancing ranching with concerns of the land. Alright now what's happened is the word conservation has been appropriated to seem simply mean preservation.

LOU LUNTE, NATURE CONSERVANCY:
I've heard some pretty discouraging things about collaboration as far as what we can look forward to in success. I was wondering if you could give us some guidance or some principals that you believe we should keep to heart as we try to make this collaborative process work.

THOMAS:
I've mentioned three things that I think we could do, one was public land law review commission, the other was simultaneous revision of regulations, then I said there's collaboration. That's the one that's immediately on the table, these other two are theoretical and they're out there somewhere and they might or might not happen. Collaboration is ongoing, it's already underway. I teach school about these sort of things there have been some, some successes, there have been some things that look like successes that turned out to be failures.

ANDRUS:
It worked for me on I'll give you one quick example without trying because there's a man in this audience that participated, two men in this audience who participated in the water quality regs. I said . . . two sides, get to the table and work it out and I'll sign the results. And we had to force 'em to stay at the table, they worked it out, we haven't had a problem and that was eight, nine years ago.

THOMAS:
You learn as you go about how to do this and there are some people that are beginning to examine all of these collaborative processes and the ones that worked and the ones that didn't and said here's what worked, here's what didn't work, here's how to do it next time. So I think we're feeling out way through these things. Quick story: when I was a kid in a little town nothing to do we used to shoot dice under the street light behind the drug store. The game got busted and I ran over Barney Fife the Deputy Sheriff and stumbled and he caught me, happened to be my cousin, said what are you doing in this game it, it's rigged and I said well yeah, but it's the only game in town. Right now collaboration is the only game in town and there are no rules. There are experiences, but there are no rules. So I'd say you keep looking at the experiences and trying to improve and I hope I didn't come across as disparaging because I think at the moment it's the only game in town.

PECK:
To see all of the action head to our website at focuswest.org where you can watch the extended presentation of this program. Once there you'll find a wealth of information about public land issues, links to important sources as well as more from our audience and panelists.

CARTAN-HANSEN:
Public lands touch all of us and we choose the ways they're used. Information and understanding can help bridge this western divide. I'd like to thank our guests and our audience. I'm Joan Cartan-Hansen.

PECK:
I'm Jim Peck thank you for watching.

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