U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, the Whitefish Republican (pictured above) who served as Interior secretary in the first Trump administration, held a press conference this morning on the U.S. Capitol’s grassy House Triangle to announce the launch of his bipartisan Public Lands Caucus, a new congressional effort to protect and expand access to America’s public parcels. He was joined by Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat representing New Mexico’s 2^nd congressional district, as well as fellow Republican Montana Rep. Troy Downing and a slate of other western delegates.

The timing of the announcement couldn’t have been scripted better. It occurred hours after House Republicans on the Natural Resources Committee added a provision to their tax cut package authorizing the sale of thousands of acres of public lands in Nevada and Utah. The resource panel’s cloak-and-dagger after-midnight maneuver infuriated Democrats and prompted environmental groups to go on the offensive, calling it a betrayal of the public trust.

Having drawn a “red line” on public land sales, Zinke and his fellow members of the newly minted Public Lands Caucus emerged in the light of day as allies to a bipartisan movement for which a majority of Americans have expressed their unwavering support — don’t sell off the nation’s public lands.

“I follow the Theodore Roosevelt motto that public lands are ‘for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,’ and that means making sure we both conserve and manage those lands to ensure public access for the next generation,” Zinke said. “Public lands aren’t red or blue issues, it’s red white and blue. The bipartisan Public Lands Caucus brings together lawmakers who don’t agree on much, but we agree on and are ready to work together to promote policies that advance conservation and public access.”

Downing, Montana’s newest member of Congress and another founding member of the Public Lands Caucus, sharpened the point even further.

“Just to show how important this is to Montana, you now have, right here, one-hundred-percent of the Montana House delegation standing up for this,” Downing said. “We get two whole seats.”

Greetings, Beacon Nation, and welcome to your front-row seat for this Wednesday edition of the Daily Roundup.

If Montanans needed a litmus test to gauge support for public land transfers, the 69^th Montana Legislature delivered it in March, when a Flathead Valley lawmaker introduced a resolution to support Utah in its endeavor to assume control over “unappropriated” federal land.

Although the measure failed to muster a single proponent during its hearing before the House Energy, Technology and Federal Relations Committee in March, when 50 people testified against it, committee members sent it to the House floor for debate anyway. Although the resolution failed in Montana’s Republican-led House by a nearly 2-1 margin, its introduction signaled that the specter of federal land transfers has been reawakened in the West and is pressing forward at every level of government.

But efforts to transfer ownership of public land in Montana and beyond have consistently failed to overcome resistance from a majority of voters, who say they don’t want their public lands sold or transferred to states — a resounding message reinforced by a decade and a half of polling.

Across Montana, state and federal agencies, land managers and timber stakeholders are unequivocal in their opposition to land transfers, due in part because it is logistically and financially unfeasible. A report published last month revealed that state land transfers would increase the state tax burden on Montanans by nearly $8 billion over the next two decades, not counting the economic impacts to Montana’s $5.4 billion outdoor recreation economy.

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who chairs the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, said Wednesday that he joined the Public Lands Caucus on behalf of “a majority of Idahoans [who] don’t want to be selling off our public lands.” Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Michigan, who is vice chair of the Public Lands Caucus, said “we should be investing in our National Parks System and National Wildlife Refuges, not making it harder for Americans to visit these special places.”

For Montana’s Downing, who before running for Congress served as state auditor in Montana — a position accompanied by a seat on the powerful Montana Land Board — said he saw firsthand the enormous resources required to manage 5.5 million acres of state land. Under a federal land transfer, the state would be left shouldering a massive fiscal burden, assuming a ten-fold increase from the loss of federal support with no capacity to manage the soaring costs of wildfire suppression.

“In Montana, public lands and public land access — hiking, hunting, fishing — is incredibly important to us. You could say it’s in our veins,” Downing said, describing the creation of the Public Lands Caucus as an important step toward “multiplying our voice in protecting access to the public lands that are so meaningful to the culture of my state, to the culture of western states and to the culture of this country. I’m proud to be here.”

I’m Tristan Scott, proud to be here with you for a roundup of today’s top stories from northwest Montana and beyond …

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