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Show Hews tile Rox 6310 Lincoln, Neb. 60506 Gam introduces major bill to divest feds of western Sand A bill which would drastically affect the nation's federally-owned lands was introduced in the U.S. Senate this week by Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah. The Garn bill, which was co-signed later this week by Utah Senator Orin Hatch, would require the federal government to transfer most of its land holdings in the West to the States in question. It would not affect any established wilderness areas or national park, and would principally impact those lands under the control of the Bureau of Land Management. Garn noted that the federal government owns 35 million acres in Utah which is over two-thirds of its total 53 million acres. "Now this land ownership pattern would not be in itself unbearable if it weren't for the way the management of the land ties up mineral and energy resources," Garn said. "The fact is that increasing federal management manage-ment means abandonment of the multiple use concept that has . governed the federal lands until the fairly recent past. Since 1964, wilderness designation has been the primary means of restricting federal lands to single use and its threat hangs over the state of Utah right now." He continued, "Of the 53 million acres in Utah, right now the National Park Service is recommending recom-mending 1.3 million acres for wilderness; the Forest Service had identified 2.9 million acres as 'potential wilderness, ' but the most serious potential impact would be the Bureau of Land Management's possible identification of as much as 11.5 million acres as potential wilderness. This is a total of almost 16 million acres, or one third of the state." Garn said that everyone agrees that we need wilderness and virtually everyone agrees that we need development. The problem is in getting the balance that everyone also agrees we need. "My general philosophy is that land-management land-management can be best exercised by the government closest to the people. I want to challenge . the present trend that land manage-. ment can be done best from Washington. It cannot. It is my hope that this legislation will change this course and that it will be adopted by the Congress," he concluded. Although the Garn legislation has been endorsed enthusiastically by state, city and county officials from around Utah, most observers give it little chance of success, due to the predominence of Eastern legislators whose states contain no pub he land, and who feel that Western public lands should be held in perpetual trust for the nation as a whole. Environmentalists Environmental-ists are naturally opposing the legislation, feeling that state management would open up the questioned lands for exploitation and development. The Salt Lake Tribune editorially editori-ally gives the bill little chance for success. In an editorial published Sunday, Feb. 19, the Tribune laboriously plotted the development develop-ment over the years of public land policy which began initially with the government encouraging private ownership of public lands through homestead grants, and later evolved evolv-ed into a policy of tying up those lands in perpetual untouchable trusts. "The Senator's chances of success are, at best, dim," The Tribune concluded. |