The sagebrush rebels are riding again, only this time they are more subtle, arming themselves with consultants and federal law rather than bulldozers.
Instead of threatening the safety of federal officials in their battle for more local control of federal lands, as happened during the original Sagebrush Rebellion a decade ago, rebels are working from within. A primary tool is their demand that the Bureau of Land Management abide by a section of the Federal Land Planning and Management Act that requires consideration of "local custom and culture" in deciding land use.Until now, when the federal bureaucracy worked on its land plans, "the local government has always sat on its duff and never got involved," said Uintah County Commissioner Glen McKee, Vernal. Uintah and other counties seem determined that they won't ever again lose environmental battles by default.
The latest development in the rebellion is the hiring of Salt Lake consulting firm Eckhoff, Watson and Preator Engineering to write new county master plans.
"It had its beginnings in what I'll call, for lack of a better term, a mini-Sagebrush Revolt," said David Eckhoff of the consulting company. "There were many people, particularly from the rural counties of Utah, that felt some of the federal land-use decisions were being made in a manner that ended up precluding local custom and culture."
The new rebels banded together, aiming at taking advantage of the requirement in the federal planning act about local custom and culture in an effort to alter federal planning. In September, the Utah Association of Counties solicited proposals for the planning process.
According to Eckhoff, a group called the Land Center Institute, based in Albuquerque, had spent a lot of time talking to Utahns about writing county plans. The institute's proposals were more aggressive than Eckhoff thought appropriate.
"We felt like the approach that was being suggested at that point in time perhaps would have been a little bit short-sighted," he said. Eckhoff, Watson and Preator got the contract, formalized in a letter signed Dec. 16 by Jerry Lewis, president of the Utah Association of Counties.
The consultants put togethera team of experts to work on the plans, including Ralph Becker, a principal in the Bear West consultants firm, and Kathy Loveless, president of Loveless Enterprises. "We have agreed to include the Land Center on our team as we put this together," Eckhoff said.
According to Eckhoff, a generic land-use plan would be of limited use in the long run, so Eckhoff, Watson and Preator Engineering convinced the counties association's public lands committees that specific plans should be written for each county that involved.
The committee agreed, he said, and seven counties indicated they may be interested in the first round of plans: Rich, Uintah, Emery, possibly Grand County, San Juan, Garfield and Kane. Each county's plan may take a year to draft; within three or four years, the planners hope to have developed statewide policies.
Will Sagebrush Rebellion objectives be included in the planning? "I think that if we go through a good planning process with them (the counties), and the results of the planning process indicate that those (objectives) are supportable public policies, then I think, yeah, we might see those again," Eckhoff said. If not, they will be removed.
Eckhoff emphasized that respecting local custom and culture is an important requirement under the planning act.
"No matter what the consultant does . . . local people are the ones that ultimately have to make the decisions" about the form of the final county plan, he said.
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History of rebellion
In the original Sagebrush Rebellion during Jimmy Carter's presidency, rebels throughout the West pushed bills through their state legislatures calling for the "return" of control of federal land to the states. A Nevada bill attempted to confiscate land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.
The most visible symbols of Utah's participation were in Grand County. First, rebels bulldozed down an earthen berm that had been built by the BLM to keep motorcycles out of Negro Bill Canyon. Then on July 4, 1980, they used a county bulldozer in an attempt to blade a road in a wilderness study area, thinking that would preclude its consideration as wilderness because the area would no longer meet the legal definition as a roadless area.
The movement lost steam after President Reagan named ideologically compatible appointees to important federal posts, notably Interior Secretary James G. Watt.
Perhaps revitilized by President Bush's avowals of environmental protection and by the continuing controversy over wilderness, a new generation of sagebrush rebels is tackling the federal bureaucracy.