Republicans back off land sales

WASHINGTON — For years, selling off some of the U.S. government's vast land holdings has been a goal of many Western conservatives. But now it's become the third rail of the region's politics: touch it and you'll get burned.

Consider the reaction to the Bush administration's proposal this year to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of national forests and other public lands: Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., declared the plan "dead on arrival." It was quickly rejected by the public and disowned by Republicans in Congress.

Now, the selloff proposal — while it remains alive — has been pushed into the shadows. Even President Bush's new interior secretary has spoken out against a key aspect of the plan.

"Among congressional Republicans, there's a recognition that this can't be done. But the administration seems stuck with its proposal," said Daniel Kemmis, senior fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Montana.

Other recent selloff plans have met similar opposition. A Nevada congressman's proposal to sell public land to mining companies was shelved under pressure from hunters and Western county commissioners.

And last September when a bill sponsored by Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., to sell 15 percent of federal lands to pay for disaster relief hit daylight, his announced co-sponsors abandoned him. One said, "I was wrong," and removed his name from the bill; another denied she had ever signed on.

"There is a political shift going on here," Kemmis said. The old Western inclination toward turning public land over to mining and other industries in the name of jobs, he added, has given way to a respect for pristine landscapes and a tourism-based economy.

"Livability and environmental factors have become bigger economic drivers than any kind of resource extraction," he said.

To Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., the outcry against land-selloff plans also can be chalked up to a Western hunting and fishing community that is increasingly willing to flex its political muscle.

"They want to be able to hunt the areas with their sons that they hunted in with their fathers," Udall said. "It points to the changing political environment in the West."