Imagine buying a house but, when you go to move in, the whole family bickers about who should get which bedroom, how to arrange the furniture, whether to landscape or not. And since no one can decide, you just...let the house sit empty.
That's kind of what happened back in the early 90's with 45 pieces of land around Wyoming designated as Wilderness Study Areas. The studying was complete 25 years ago, but since then, no one’s been able to agree whether to officially make them wilderness, or let them be used for other purposes.
A new strategy called the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative that’s built on a novel concept: quit waiting for Congress to act and let the locals decide.
Just in Fremont County alone, there's five Wilderness Study Areas. County Commission Chair Doug Thompson can't even call them all to mind.
“There's the badlands up around Dubois,” he says, “there's Sweetwater Rock down around between Jeffrey City and Rawlins, there's Sweetwater Canyon...”
And for years, he's been trying to do something about them. He says some aren't even suitable for wilderness status because of all the human impacts there.
“There's portions of the Sweetwater Rock that are right next to a United States highway,” he says. “It has power lines, there's working ranches. In fact, I wrote a letter of opposition because it didn't match the criteria.
But Thompson says, there are other areas in his county that do fit the criteria. And that criteria is strict. Wilderness isn’t just a place without roads, but also bans motors and all wheels. Not even chainsaws or mountain bikes are allowed inside their borders. So making the choice to adopt one is often controversial with locals.
Wyoming County Commission Association Director Pete Obermueller says, that’s one reason it’s taken this long to deal with all these Wilderness Study Areas.
“The [Bureau of Land Management] in Wyoming made those recommendations in 1991. And they said about half should be wilderness and half should be released. Well, Congress has the sole authority to make that final decision and they haven’t done so. So the federal agencies are stuck in limbo. They have to manage these areas to protect them without giving them the full wilderness designation,” he says. He says there is one thing everyone does agree on, though.
“Right now, you can’t realize the full potential of these lands, no matter what your desire is for them.
He and many others think local stakeholders can best recognize those potentials. Wyoming's Wilderness Society representative, Dan Smitherman says locals usually do what’s best for their landscapes, and not just for sentimental reasons.
Right now, you can't realize the full potential of these lands, no matter what your desire is for them.
“Economic studies that have been done recently regarding public lands that show that proximity to public land is an economic benefit to the community.
Smitherman says the Wilderness Society is a strong supporter of such locally-driven initiatives because they brings everyone to the table: industry, recreationists and ranchers.
“It’s not about wilderness,” he says. “It's about looking at a landscape and deciding, what is the most appropriate way to utilize and protect that landscape.”
He says, once local groups do sit down together, the next step is, “These people collaborating come up with a recommendation on how to treat this area and they present it to the county commissioners. And then the county commissioners basically give it a thumbs up, thumbs down.
He says, other initiatives like this in the West show locals often do choose wilderness; or if not wilderness, other kinds of land protections, like National Monuments or recreation areas. The plan is to get all the participating counties to come together to bring a single state package to Congress.
“Congress in recent history has shown little appetite for unilaterally making a decision to go in and add wilderness,” he says. “And in places where we've had success with wilderness, it's been a bottoms-up approach that started with a grassroots movement and then was presented to Congress.
Wilderness Society Director Paul Spitler says he’s worked on lots of these collaborations around the West. He tells of one recently in Utah where five counties collaborated.
“When I started in this county, this commissioner literally could barely use the word wilderness. He almost had to spit it out like it was sort of an insult. And now, after two years, he has gone to the mat in his county for wilderness. And we're going to the mat in his county for the economic development interests that he's looking for.”
But Spitler says he's seen such local collaborations flop, as well.
“They're not balanced, not driven by stakeholder interests at the local level,” he says. “They're driven more by one side trying to impose its will on the other. And I will say those proposals on the whole have fared very poorly in Congress.”
He says, for it to work, the goal can't be to get everything you want: all wilderness or all economic development. The goal has to be a united front.
“What could be better than seeing a rancher, a motorized recreation interest, a conservationist and a county commissioner coming to Congress and saying, hey, we all agree on this proposal. Please support it.”
Counties should be able to start signing up for the Public Lands Initiative and organizing their working teams starting later this winter.
