September 2007By Alison Berry
Public Lands
By Holly Lippke Fretwell and Kimberly Frost
Introduction
Although the forests of British Columbia, Canada, are 96 percent government-owned, the management of the forests is far more market-driven than in the U.S. Forest Service, according to a new report by PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center.
Seattle Post-IntelligencerApril 11, 2006
By Holly L. Fretwell
Guest Columnist
The forests of North America represent enormous natural bounty. Yet, in the United States at least, the benefits of this wealth of nature are not being fully realized. Taxpayers lose money on their public forests, and the forests face severe ecological threats.
Billings GazetteSeptember 11, 2004
By Holly L. Fretwell
Tacoma News TribuneJuly 4, 2004
By J. Bishop Grewell
Beginning in 1996, the federal government started raising (and in some cases newly instituting) recreation fees on public lands and using them at the sites where they were collected. This Fee Demonstration Program, which is scheduled to end in 2004, has sparked a debate over ethical and practical issues.
From the Pacific Research Institute and
the American Enterprise Institute
Full Text PDF
A new series of books for young people offers objective and balanced discussions of controversial issues.
State parks across the nation are serving more and more visitors while struggling to preserve natural and cultural resources. As demands for tax-generated revenues grow, many state legislatures are cutting appropriations to their park systems. Shrinking funds and growing usage threaten the well-being of all our state parks.
July 12, 2002
By Holly Lippke Fretwell
June 26, 2002
By Linda Platts and Holly Lippke Fretwell
"The nation finds itself struggling with forest management systems that do not work," says Roger Sedjo, a Senior Fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based research organization Resources for the Future. "The future management of the national forests is unlikely to be smooth, because no political consensus exists."
Americans are on the fast track to land preservation as more and more federal land is set aside at an increasingly rapid pace. Now is the time to pause and ask if locking up great expanses of land provides the good stewardship that we want for our public lands.
Terry L. Anderson and Alexander James Editors
It's time to let federal agencies buy and sell land, says Tim Fitzgerald in a new PERC Policy Series paper. "Federal Land Exchanges: Let's End the Barter" offers a practical way to reform the costly and time-wasting federal land exchange process.
"If we are to protect America’s most valued lands, federal land management policies must be reformed and private conservation efforts encouraged," says PERC researcher Holly Lippke Fretwell.
By J. Bishop Grewell
Tiny microbes living in the mud-pots and geysers of Yellowstone National Park have
sparked a mammoth controversy.
Fees for Recreation? Yes! Says PERC Researcher. The federal government's program to raise entrance and user fees in national parks and forests is an important step in the right direction, says PERC researcher Holly Lippke Fretwell.
November 1999Executive SummaryRead Full Article - PDFby Terry L. Anderson, Vernon L. Smith, and Emily Simmons
A Summary
Private land trusts are proliferating around the nation as ways of preserving environmental values. So why not a federal land trust to manage the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah?
vBozeman Daily ChronicleAugust 4, 1999
By Richard Stroup
Our national forests are in appallingly poor health. An estimated 39 million acres are at risk to catastrophic wildfire and another six million are dead and dying from insect infestation. Fish and wildlife habitat, water quality, recreational opportunities, and the commercial value of the timber could all be wiped out with a single stray spark.
"The concern for forests today is not simply that trees will die from bugs or diseases--it is that entire forest systems are so far out of normal ecological range that virtually every element in the system is affected, and may be at risk."
Rocky Mountain NewsJune 7, 1998
By Terry L. Anderson
Sacramento BeeAugust 5, 1997
Forest Service Roads Opened form Recreation Would Defray Costs
By Donald R. Leal
July 10, 1997Statement for the Subcommittee on Parks and Public LandsBy Donald R. Leal PERC Senior Associate
Wall Street JournalJanuary 28, 1997
By Holly Lippke Fretwell and Linda Platts
Parks in Transition:A Look at State ParksRS-97-1 1997By Donald R. Leal and Holly Lippke Fretwell
Once considered America's "crown jewels," our national parks have become tarnished by monetary problems. Campgrounds are closed, buildings are in disrepair, roads are potholed and natural resources are degraded.
Chicago TribuneSeptember 3, 1996
By Terry L. Anderson and Mark Liffman
Public Lands and Private Rights:The Failure of Scientific ManagementBy Robert H. Nelson
The Forest Service needs strong incentives to adhere to the bottom line. The right motivation could help create a profitable timber program.
Obama's Great Outdoor Initiative is not a bottom-up approach, but once again a top-down effort that will create more government programs and reduce local control.
Federal Land management has largely led to poor stewardship. Permanenty funding the Land and Water Conservation Act to provide $900 miilion annually for more land purchases is a bad decison. The feds should focus on managing the 25 pecent of the US that they already own.
The Federal Government continues to acquire more land, much of it is donated, but the cost of land maintenance at this scale is immense and the feds do not have the funds to do the job.
At the annual meeting of the Society for Enviromental Journalists, PERC researcher Holly Fretwell suggested that the national parks would benefit most from earning their own funds from entrance fees rather than depending on politicians to hand over more tax dollars. Meanwhile, the parks continue to deteriorate.
Why are ranchers and mineral companies allowed to bid on federal land leases, but the public cannot? If environmentalists could lease the land they want to conserve, taxpayers might see a higher return and also avoid some bitter disputes.
Facing the "fiscal cliff," perhaps the president and Congress should start thinking in terms of the "foreclosure crisis." All lenders, whether a local home-loan bank or the Chinese government, expect to be repaid either from the borrower's income or, if that is insufficient, from the sale of assets. Where does that leave the U.S. government?
In the wake of the 2012 Colorado fires, PERC President Terry Anderson and former PERC fellow Sarah Anderson take a look at the motivating forces behind Forest Service fuel management decisions.
Since 1997, more than 40 million acres of forests across the West have been devastated by pine beetle.
The Clinton administration signed off on the Roadless Rule [PDF] in 2001 to preserve 58.5 million acres of national forest land by preventing road construction, reconstruction
Amid the state's budget crisis last spring, California's governor threatened to close more than 70 state parks by the spring of 2012 to save the state money. This threat of park closure is a common occurrence in California and other states.
The National Forests cover 8 percent of the nation, an area about the size of Texas. All public lands make up about one-third of the nation’s timberland. Timberland is differentiated from forestland by its ability to provide commercially valuable timber.
Protecting endangered species is hard when you view nature as static. James L. Huffman in the Wall Street Journal:
ABC's Radio International interviewed PERC's very own Laura Huggins last week about the planned closure of 70 state parks in California later this year.
The threat of park closures is part of the state budget crunch package.
What effect do U.S. federal land programs have on private conservation?
The United States land mass covers nearly 2.3 billion acres. About 27 percent of that is managed by one of the government’s four federal land agencies: the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and National Park Service.
No politics. No advocacy. Just boots-on-the-ground work.
Selling assets to meet liabilities; that is what people do when they have reached the end of their finances and are not credit worthy for a loan or do not want to further extend their financial liabilities. What a novel idea for the U.S.
Last spring President Obama announced America’s Great Outdoors action
Just hours before Tim DeChristopher made false bids in a BLM oil and gas lease auction, he to
The U.S. Forest Service once provided nearly 25 percent of the nation’s timber consumption but today it provides less than 2 percent. The mandate has changed to forest preservation, a problem because forests are always changing and don’t preserve well.
by Shawn Regan
In 1962, Congressman Wayne Aspinall wrote to President Kennedy asking him to establish a commission to review public land laws.
In this policy series, Alison Berry continues her work on the quality of forests that result under different management schemes. She contrasts side-by-side forests in Montana. One is operated by the United States Forest Service under the watchful eye of Congress. The other is run by Indian tribes on reservation lands.
Environmental, fiscal and economic irresponsibility in the name of protection.
Features
Are entrance charges keeping low-income people from enjoying the outdoors?
A professor at Case Western Law School writes about the perverse results of the Cleveland airport's "mitigation" of the loss of a wetland. To build a new runway, the airport must pay to "create" wetlands by damaging a beautiful and serene park sixteen miles away.
Senator Tom Daschle takes care of the Black Hills National Forest while much of the West burns.
Fires of 1988 serve as a wake-up call for better forest management
Web Exclusives
Excess forest fuels could launch a viable wood biofuel industry
By Shawn Regan | That there are moose in Yellowstone today tells us something about nature and our role in it.
Columns
Perspectives
A Distorted Picture of Canadian Forests
Alison Berry?s article about Canadian forest management (?Timber Tenures,? March 2005) takes a somewhat truncated view of the situation?giving us all of the good but none of the bad.
Federal land management agencies are increasingly receptive to innovative partnerships that can help share the burden of managing millions of acres of public land.
While there has been no lack of news coverage on the sad state of our national parks, there is still not enough money to shore up the buildings and patch the roads.
Founded 30 years ago in Bozeman, Montana, PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center—is the nation’s oldest and largest institute dedicated to improving environmental quality through property rights and markets.
PERC’s publications, each designed to resonate with specific groups, move ideas generated at PERC to broader audiences.
Research is at the heart of PERC's work, with a focus on the question: What is the link between economic growth and environmental quality?
The goal of PERC’s programs is to fully realize the vision of establishing “PERC University,” where scholars, students, policy makers, and others convene to expand the applications of free market environmentalism.
PERC's fellowships share a common goal of exposing new scholars, students, journalists, and policy makers to free market environmentalism, as well as enable scholars already familiar with FME to explore new applications.
PERC continues to publish and present a broad range of research and discussion through podcasts, videos, and other multimedia channels.