Public Lands ‘A Priceless Legacy’ For Future
A former solicitor for the U.S. Interior Department sought to set the record straight on public lands Wednesday, disputing Western activists’ views that U.S. government ownership amounts to an unfair land grab and reminding listeners that much of the land was the federal government’s from the beginning.
John Leshy, professor emeritus at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and Interior Department solicitor during the Clinton administration, said the divisiveness and partisan nature of the debate over public lands is relatively new, and also worrisome because it jeopardizes vast areas that have traditionally been managed for public benefit and enjoyment.
“Most of these lands … are open public access, managed for broad purposes — mostly protected purposes — for open space, for wildlife, for scientific study, for recreational access, for inspiration, for contemplation,” Leshy said. “There is nothing in the Constitution that says we have to keep these places, so it’s up to every generation of Americans to decide whether they want to keep them or not, and how they want them to be managed.”
The debate over federal lands was dramatically illustrated in 2014 during an armed standoff between government officials and ranchers led by Cliven Bundy, who owed fees from grazing cattle on federal land, money that Bundy claimed the government had no right to collect. In 2016, his son Ammon Bundy was among those who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to highlight their view that it is the state, not federal, government that should own such lands.