Mind Your Own Business

The U.S. Forest Service can't even responsibly manage the hundreds of millions of acres in its vast inventory, as anyone knows who has driven through Colorado, or read about the similar devastation sweeping across much of the West. It seems a joke, therefore, to read that the agency is also taking an interest in helping private landowners manage their lands.

If this were merely an effort by the feds to encourage private conservation, I would applaud. Too much emphasis is placed on government-centered conservation (which is an abject failure, as the forest health crisis demonstrates), to the neglect of private-sector alternatives, which frequently have shown much better results.

But nothing is innocent where the federal government is concerned. The deeper agenda is to get taxpayers to "incentivize" -- meaning subsidize -- private conservation efforts (even more than already takes place, through conservation easement tax benefits and the Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program). With federal money comes federal strings, meaning federal control. This threatens to corrupt, and co-opt, the whole idea of private conservation.

Although the feds tout their credentials as preservationists and "protectors," facts "on the ground" tell a more damning story -- one of massive mismanagement of public resources, resulting in a perfect storm of wildfire, disease, insect infestation and benign neglect. Most private forests are much better cared-for than publicly-owned counterparts, because a private owner's personal stake and (yes) profit motive generally make him or her a better steward of the resource than red tape-bound bureaucrats going through the motions.

Public land managers have precious little to lecture private owners about. They would do better to focus on getting their act together.

Tax Credits and Cooperative Conservation

I agree in principle with the goal of moving federal environmental policy away from coercive conservation (which has been the prevailing model since the early 1970s) and toward "cooperative conservation," a concept that was touted by the Bush administration but gained little traction (mainly because nothing touted by the Bush administration could possibly win favor with left-leaning greens). And a part of that paradigm shift will almost certainly involve using economic incentives, rather than the blunt force of government mandates, to encourage environmental stewardship.

Simply paying people to do the right thing -- to create or maintain habitat for the Salt Pond Slime Slug, for instance -- is one concept that some, like Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, are pushing. But as someone who also believes in the conservation of endangered tax dollars, I worry that the tax credit system Crapo is proposing, if not tightly controlled, will lead to widespread gaming of the system and a massive waste of money.

Crapo's attempt to incrementally reform the Endangered Species Act is laudable (given the political futility of trying to overhaul it all at once). But the tax credit component can hardly be called "targeted," and the potential for scams will be huge, if they'll cost an estimated $2 billion over ten years. Billions already are squandered annually, paying farmers to idle their fields in the name of improving wildlife habitat or protecting so-called wetlands. Whether any of these programs serve as anything more than a federal sop has never been shown (or seriously studied, as far as I know). It mostly amounts to slapping the "green" label on another government giveaway. Expecting Crapo's program to operate with more accountability, and integrity, is probably folly.

That's the sort of cynicism that's bound to greet even a decent and interesting idea, given the federal government's almost perfect track record for turning good ideas into a scandalous glop.

The Cat's Paw

Not so long ago, if the manager of a federal forest in Colorado tried to halt expansion of a ski resort, or to put the kibosh on a timber thinning project, by arguing that these actions might damage lynx habitat, he or she would have been laughed out of the room. That's because there were no lynx in Colorado, not so long ago.

But the state made a terrible mistake seven if eight years back, by agreeing to play host to an experimental colony of lynx, as part of a reintroduction effort. It seemed a reasonable compromise at the time: We'll do something to see if lynx can be restored to the Southern Rockies (which is the edge of their historic range), if the feds won't use that against us later, by pounding us with the regulatory sledge hammer called the Endangered Species Act.

The experiment held out promise not just for the cats -- who have done reasonably well after a rough start -- but for the possibility of a more reasonable application of this notoriously rigid law. But it was probably destined to blow up in our face, since there can be no compromise with environmental extremists, and with some federal regulators, once they have the bludgeon of the ESA at their disposal.

So now we in Colorado, as a reward for our good deed, are being punished, by seeing lynx habitat used as a reason to block this or that use of public lands, in violation of the agreement we thought we had with the feds. Not only is lynx habitat being raised as a possible objection to ski resort expansion, but it's being used to obstruct forest restoration projects designed to remove diseased stands and reduce the wildfire threat.

Instead of celebrating the day these wonderful animals were returned to the state, and demonstrating that a little flexibility and reasonableness from Washington can encourage cooperation instead of conflict, many Coloradans are kicking themselves for being such schmucks. Instead of a blessing, the cats are becoming a curse.

But so it goes with the Endangered Species Act.