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Access Needs a Second Act

If you want to fight for access, the Public Land/Water Association is a good place to start

By Rob Breeding

I have two lasting memories from the Outdoor Writers Association of America conference I attended in St. George, Utah, in 2001.

The first was a slightly disturbing, fireworks laced explosion of good, clean pop rock from a group billed as “The Osmonds Second Generation.” I always watched the “Donnie & Marie” show (what lustful boy of that era didn’t love Marie) and realize the Osmonds are Kardashian-like royalty in the Beehive State, but I didn’t enjoy those offspring of the original boy band.

As we rode the charter bus back from the concert we shared nips from a friend’s flask. It was “Osmond antidote,” we joked, replacing the bad taste in our mouths with that of whiskey.

We still laugh about that evening in St. George around hunt camp. That, however, isn’t my most important memory from the conference 14 years ago. It came later, in a workshop featuring a pair debating the privatization of public lands.

I don’t recall the names of the speakers, but if you’ve been paying attention to the more recent land transfer debate, you are familiar with the arguments.

The public-land advocate said that these lands are a birthright to be passed down to future generations. The privatizer argued that corporations and the free market are better stewards of public lands, and that supply and demand was the best arbiter of the value of natural resources.

It’s the same pap that’s been shoveled at us for years. The speaker — like the current wave of anti-public-land radicals — tell us we should ignore our traditions and experience and rich history of outdoor recreation on public lands. Instead, they argue, we should put those traditions in the hands of Wall Street bankers so they can decide what’s worth preserving, and what should be sold to the highest bidder.

If you’re comfortable leaving the fate of our hunting and fishing traditions in the hands of the same dudes who nearly brought down our economy in the last decade, then by all means join with Montana Sen. Jennifer Fielder of Thompson Falls, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the United Property Owners of Montana. They are all devout opponents of the Montana tradition of hunting and fishing on public lands.

But if you think these traditions are worth fighting for, then I don’t think you can afford to stand on the sidelines much longer. The privatizers got their heads handed to them in the last Montana legislative session, but they are not going away.

If you care about access to public lands, then you ought to consider joining the Public Land/Water Access Association, a Montana group that has led the fight on issues such as access on the Ruby River and the Durfee Hills/BLM land exchange. I attended the group’s annual meeting in Bozeman last week and heard a familiar refrain — we’re not getting any younger — as one gray-haired gentleman after another spoke about the group’s work.

Oh, and about that debate back in St. George. In the Q and A session I asked the pro-public lands speaker if he had noticed that the legislators who want to transfer public lands to private hands were usually the same politicians who vote to slash the budgets of public land management agencies, only to then rail about how horribly those underfunded agencies did their job?

Wasn’t this all a concerted strategy to undermine the concept of public lands so that they could someday claim ownership for themselves, I asked?

“Man, you’re really cynical,” was his naive reply.

Fourteen years later we know better.

If you want to fight for access, the Public Land/Water Association is a good place to start. Those dudes know they’re not getting any younger, and hope their own Second Generation is ready to rock the house.