The Bush Administration Hates Free Market Environmentalism

I don't normally even bother to read John Tierney but title of today's column caught my eye, The Sagebrush Solution. Much to my amazement it's a good column. It seems an environmental group and some ranchers in Utah have reached an agreement that both are very happy with. The only problem is the Bush administration isn't happy.

Even though Mr. LeFevre and other ranchers along the Escalante willingly sold their grazing permits, local and state politicians are fighting to put cows back on those lands. They say their communities and the ranching way of life will be destroyed if grazing lands are allowed to revert to nature, and they've found sympathetic ears in the Bush administration.

The Interior Department has decided that environmentalists can no longer simply buy grazing permits and retire them. Under its reading of the law - not wholly shared by predecessors in the Clinton administration - land currently being used by ranchers has already been determined to be "chiefly valuable for grazing" and can be opened to herds at any time if the B.L.M.'s "land use planning process" deems it necessary.

But why should a federal bureaucrat decide what's "chiefly valuable" about a piece of land? Mr. Hedden and Mr. LeFevre have discovered a "land use planning process" of their own: see who will pay the most for it. If an environmentalist offers enough to induce a rancher to sell, that's the best indication the land is more valuable for hiking than for grazing.

You'd expect Republicans to welcome this use of the market to resolve an environmental dispute, with a voluntary, mutually beneficial transaction instead of a political or legal fight leaving winners and losers. It's a classic case of the free-market environmentalism that Gale Norton espoused before becoming interior secretary and overseer of the B.L.M. lands.

The new policy may make short-term political sense for the Bush administration by pleasing its Republican allies in Utah and lobbyists for the ranching industry. But it's not good for individual ranchers, and it ensures more bitter range wars in the future. If environmentalists can't spend their money on land, they'll just spend it on lawyers.

What can I say? Even a wingnut like Tierney thinks they are wrong.