It's 'Political Sleight-Of-Hand': For Their Next Trick, Republican Magicians Will Make Your Federal Land Disappear

Earlier this year, a group of right-wing extremists, led by the infamous Bundy family of Nevada, took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for 41 days before the FBI and state police were finally able to apprehend them. The occupiers have slowly been revealed to the nation for what they are: a cluster of conspiracy theorists who can barely articulate a coherent opinion, much less an intelligible ideology.

But looking past this group of yahoos, with their guns and their handles of Wild Turkey, one finds a much more sinister and powerful effort to sell off huge swaths of public land to private interests looking to exploit the land’s resources for profit.

“A couple of years ago, we started seeing legislation popping up in state legislatures,” John Sterling of the Conservation Alliance explained, “asking federal governments to transfer federal lands to the state.”

These bills, invariably introduced and supported by Republicans, are wrapped up in a “small government” ideology, the same kind that the Bundys were spouting when they commandeered the wildlife refuge. The rhetoric appeals to “a vocal group of people who don’t want the federal government doing anything,” Sterling explained, and so are easily lured into the idea that the federal government’s control of these lands is somehow a violation of “states rights.”

But, as conservation experts understand, there’s a multitude of reasons that this land is better held by the federal government than state governments....
http://www.alternet.org/environment/republican-magicians-make-federal-land-disappear