Three reasons Karen Budd-Falen is unfit to lead the Bureau of Land Management

[Smokin Joe]

Three reasons Karen Budd-Falen is unfit to lead the Bureau of Land Management

Greg Zimmerman
Latte drinking forester. Sagebrush rebel. Western politics. Public lands owner.
Jun 21

https://medium.com/westwise/three-reasons-karen-budd-falen-is-unfit-to-lead-the-bureau-of-land-management-29634afbbb3

Rumors are swirling that President Trump will nominate Wyoming lawyer Karen Budd-Falen to direct the Bureau of Land Management.

Budd-Falen is uniquely unqualified to oversee the BLM, a department charged with managing 258 million acres of America’s public lands — and nearly 700 million acres of oil, gas, and other minerals — on behalf of the American public. She has spent her career fighting against the very existence of U.S. public lands, filing frivolous lawsuits against the BLM, working to subvert public land managers, supporting unpopular efforts to dispose of public lands, and even aligning herself with fringe extremists.

Here are three important reasons Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the Trump administration should look elsewhere rather than nominate Budd-Falen to run one of America’s most important agencies.
Budd-Falen sympathizes with...

Excerpt, More at: https://medium.com/westwise/three-reasons-karen-budd-falen-is-unfit-to-lead-the-bureau-of-land-management-29634afbbb3][url]https://medium.com/westwise/three-reasons-karen-budd-falen-is-unfit-to-lead-the-bureau-of-land-management-29634afbbb3[/url]

[Smokin Joe]

IMHO, this is worth reading to know why Conservatives should support her, and to see the liberal view of The Western US.
Over 50% of the land (and resources) west of the Mississippi River is owned by the Federal Government.

[EC]

Yep. She reads like a good pick. For a lawyer, anyway. 

[Smokin Joe]

Yep. She reads like a good pick. For a lawyer, anyway. 

Currently, the BLM controls an enormous amount of land, and approximately 1/3 of the mineral wealth in the US. If we want to swing the pendulum back from policies antagonistic to the Constitution, let's swing it back to policies more in concert with it. The Government is authorized to own land for military reservations, post offices and some other purposes, but over half of the land west of the Mississippi is not justifiable.

[EC]

I'd even throw in National Parks as a justifiable holding for the Feds (I'm a huge fan of parks). Even so, the Feds should be holding what - 5% of the land at the absolute maximum? 

[Smokin Joe]

I'd even throw in National Parks as a justifiable holding for the Feds (I'm a huge fan of parks). Even so, the Feds should be holding what - 5% of the land at the absolute maximum? 

I can see military bases, launch facilities, some National Parks, but not an endless string of Presidents one-upping each other in acreage removed from productivity as 'national monuments' or 'wilderness areas'. Tremendous forest fires have occurred because of flawed forestry policy and "endangered species habitat preservation".

5% sounds more livable than the current arrangement.

If we're going to sell beef to China, let's graze the herds. Antelope, deer, and other critters will find food, they always do, even in the middle of a ranching operation, and the Government acts like it is the only one who knows how to manage herds (of wildlife), when there are folks out there managing domestic herds with a lifetime of experience on the very land they work, adjacent to or intermingled with BLM tracts, with wildlife on the same land.

You can tell a lot about a person by who their enemies are, and if the "sustainability" crowd is against her, she sounds like a step in the right direction.

[EC]

If we're going to sell beef to China, let's graze the herds. Antelope, deer, and other critters will find food, they always do, even in the middle of a ranching operation, and the Government acts like it is the only one who knows how to manage herds (of wildlife), when there are folks out there managing domestic herds with a lifetime of experience on the very land they work, adjacent to or intermingled with BLM tracts, with wildlife on the same land.

You picked up one of my pet peeves.

Millions of buffalo were destroyed - that was a poor and short sighted decision. However, it happened.

If you want the prairie type habitat to remain viable for everything from antelope to mice, the buffalo need replacing. They did everything from toughening the roots of the ground cover (thus maintaining the fairly thin soil), to fertilizing, to keeping watering holes open. Cattle do the same job quite nicely.

[Smokin Joe]

You picked up one of my pet peeves.

Millions of buffalo were destroyed - that was a poor and short sighted decision. However, it happened.

If you want the prairie type habitat to remain viable for everything from antelope to mice, the buffalo need replacing. They did everything from toughening the roots of the ground cover (thus maintaining the fairly thin soil), to fertilizing, to keeping watering holes open. Cattle do the same job quite nicely.

I was working on a wellsite in the early '90s, down near Glenrock, Wyoming, and decided to take a few minutes of off time and hike up on the ridge west of the drilling rig. As I got up to the top I could see the rig on one side, the access road running down the other side of the ridge until it came to a gap, where it crossed the ridge line and proceeded to the well pad. I was knocking around, looking to see what I could find (fossils, minerals, artifacts, whatever there was to see) and heard vehicles approaching on the lease road. Three black suburbans in convoy went past (down the hill from me) at a high rate of speed, pulled onto the well site like a swat team, the doors flew open and people scattered from the vehicles with clipboards in hand. It looked like a raid.
Me?
I just decided since it was my off time, I'd just stay where I was and observe. No sense walking into that, it just had a bad vibe.

After about an hour of them climbing all over everything looking at and under stuff, the herd marched off to the Company Hand's shack with a couple going in and the rest milling around the outside. When the two who went in came out, they climbed back in the vehicles and left, in convoy again, down the lease road in a cloud of dust. Only then did I come back off the ridge to see what had been going on. It was a BLM inspection, looking for violations. I was told if they had caught one of the hands taking a leak on the edge of the location it would have been a Felony, punishable by a $10,000 fine and possible jail time.  Whoa. As if those herds of buffalo, from horizon to horizon, that took three days to pass just held it and never urinated...

I knew then we were facing an unrealistic interpretation of the ecosystem. It has only gotten worse.