Pombo Strikes Again

As if the budget reconciliation bill weren't bad enough already, it turns out Rep. Richard Pombo (R-White Trash) has inserted a provision that would potentially eviscerate public lands in the West. The L.A. Times (via my friend Andy Johnson):

A budget bill that the House of Representatives is expected to vote on this week would force the federal government to put "For Sale" signs on public recreation lands in California and the West, including national forest holdings throughout the Sierra Nevada and remote parts of the Mojave Desert.***
The bill would lift an 11-year-old moratorium on the patenting — or sale — of federal lands to mining companies for a fraction of their mineral worth. While the patent fees would rise from $2.50 or $5 an acre to $1,000, the price would continue to exclude the mineral worth, which can amount to billions of dollars.
In a rewrite of an 1872 mining law that reverses long-standing federal policy that the government keep public lands, the proposal also orders the Interior Department to sell land adjacent to mining claims for "economic development." [emphasis added]

Opening up new mining claims is bad enough; the really insidious part of this is the sale of adjacent lands. Why? Read on:

Because the West — especially the Sierra Nevada, California desert and Colorado Rockies — is studded with millions of mining claims dating to the 1800s, former Interior officials say the measure would open the door to the widespread privatization of federal lands used by millions of people for hiking, hunting, and off-road driving.

Exactly. At one point or another miners got into every nook and cranny of the Sierra, and the Mojave is a patchwork of old mining claims. And here's the good part: there's no time limit in the bill. It doesn't matter if the claim was made today, 11 years ago, or in 1849--Interior would still have to offer adjacent lands for sale. Which poses an enormous threat to at least one National Park and one National Preserve:

Although the proposed mining law changes exclude national parks, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas designated by Congress, dropping the patent moratorium would allow miners to move ahead on hundreds of old claims within park boundaries that had been largely halted by the moratorium. Most of those claims are in California, including 36 in Death Valley National Park and 432 in the Mojave National Preserve. [emphasis added]

The other thing to keep in mind here is that not only would old claims be revived within National Parks and wilderness areas, but new claims would be allowed right up to the boundary of existing wilderness. This is particularly significant in California, where it would likely cripple the ongoing campaign to deisgnate new wilderness areas and expand existing wilderness. Knowing Pombo, this is probably one of his goals: preventing any additional land from being designated as wilderness.

"It looks to me like the whole purpose of it is to take public land and to put it in the hands of private people with the full intention of having them develop the land for whatever purposes they see fit," said Sean Hecht, executive director of the UCLA Environmental Law Center.

Umm...you think?

Snark aside, this really is one of the most egregious anti-public lands measures to come along in a long, long time. How bad?

"When I first saw it, it took my breath away. It's really quite stunning," said Mat Millenbach, who was deputy director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management during President Bush's first term. "This could have the impact of making public lands harder to get to and use. There will be huge issues of incompatible uses." [emphasis added]

Yes, that's right: it's so bad that a Bush appointee is shocked and appalled. That's pretty goddamn bad.

We really, really need to defeat Richard Pombo next year.

Update: More good stuff on the article here.