Only 2% of our cattle production comes from public land lease. Ed Abbey wrote that if the public land ranchers quit tomorrow, "we'd never miss them."

LAND USE - MINING

The 1872 Mining Law gave mining the dominant use of public lands. Miners have been able to purchase pristine public land for as little as $2.50 per acre. Even though $3 billion worth of precious metals are mined each year, no royalties are paid to the U.S. Treasury.

Meanwhile, mining produces more solid waste than any other industry in the country. 47 of the Nation's Superfund hazardous waste sites are abandoned mines. Who hasn't tried to hide his eyes while driving to a desert peak trail, to avoid being aware of the miles of inner earth piled up to forever despoil a once beautiful desert?

One source reports that frequently our land is used for claims to hype investors, utilizing "promising" assay reports to bait the public. This results in a triple waste - a waste of our land resource, a waste of our environment and a waste to the unsuspecting investor.

WILDERNESS PROTECTION

In 1964 the Wilderness Act established the Wilderness Preservation System, protecting to date 91 million acres of land from all kinds of human intrusion. If you leave out Alaska's 56 million acre share, this represents only 1.8% of total U.S. lands.

Other land areas are under consideration to be designated wilderness status, including land in Montana, Utah, Colorado, and of course the desert land in southeastern California (the California Desert Protection Act), as well as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The Refuge won't really be protected from oil drilling operations until such wilderness designation is made.

LOGGING

A panel appointed by Congress last year concluded that the maximum sustainable annual cut from the forests in the Pacific Northwest is 1.7 billion board feet. 4.1 billion board feet was cut in 1990. The endangered species act has had some success at slowing the loss of our ancient trees, but more direct legislation is needed.

Our U.S. Forest service administers the selling of our timber to commercial companies, accompanied by below cost prices netting you and me a $5.6 billion loss over the past decade. A move is underway to change the role of the U.S. Forest service from a timber operation to that of a steward of wooded public lands (as some of us naively thought all along!)

PARKS

In 1990 the number of national park visitors equaled our Nation's population (250 million.) Meanwhile a $2 billion backlog of maintenance, preservation and public safety projects has accumulated with the Park Service.

Many park supporters are banking on increased franchise fees from the private concessions for a bailout. (Concessionaires make more than $500 million each year while returning less than $12.5 million in fees.)
 
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