Poll: Most in West favor fed protection for public land
PHOENIX — For all the Old West drama and agitation for local control of public lands, a poll of registered voters in this region suggests a clear preference for federal protections.
Most voters in the Rocky Mountains and Southwest — almost two-thirds in Arizona — oppose transfer of federal lands to the states and even want new land protected as national monuments, according to the sixth annual Colorado College regional poll of attitudes on conservation.
Federal land guardians, including former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, say the numbers prove that even in the states with vast federal holdings, most Americans don’t back protesters like Cliven and Ammon Bundy.
Cliven Bundy was the Nevada rancher at the center of a 2014 armed standoff with federal agents over cattle grazing fees; Ammon Bundy, his son, followed up this month with the armed occupation of a U.S. wildlife refuge in Oregon.
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“Bundy and his ilk are just squeaky wheels getting the grease,” Salazar said Monday. “Anyone who tells us we should hand our public lands over to private hands and states is not telling a story that will stand the test of time.”
The topic remains a contentious one as politicians around the West in recent years have agitated for federal relinquishment of lands. Both Gov. Doug Ducey and his predecessor in Arizona have vetoed measures asserting state control of federal lands. Arizona voters also handily rejected such a proposition in 2012.
A Salt Lake City-based initiative called the American Lands Council has championed the premise of state takeovers as a way of increasing the land's economic output and putting the West on "equal footing" with mostly private Eastern states. The council's leader, Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, rejected the poll's findings.
If the questions focused on federal mismanagement of burning forests or on the West's treatment as "orphans or second-class citizens" without property rights, Ivory said, the results would be different.
"By all accounts federal lands are in trouble," he said. While federal bureaucracy inhibits development, he added, states make money on their lands.
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The poll, conducted by land lines and cellphones in December, found that 65% of Arizonans oppose transferring federal lands “such as national forests, national monuments, and national wildlife refuges” to the state government.
The question included a statement that in the event of a transfer Arizona “taxpayers would pay all costs, including the cost of maintenance and preventing and fighting wildfires.”
Among the 400 Arizona voters polled, 73% said they would favor designation of a new, 1.7 million-acre national monument outside of Grand Canyon National Park, making permanent a temporary federal ban on new uranium mining claims.
It also found that 84% of Arizona voters considered the Colorado River “at risk,” and that 89% were at least somewhat willing to make household changes to reduce water consumption by 20%.
Regionwide, 58% opposed state control of federal lands.
The poll, conducted jointly by Democratic and Republican polling firms, surveyed voters in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The pollsters said the randomly selected respondents were roughly equally distributed between Republicans, Democrats and independents. In Arizona, a majority of all three groups said conservation is an important issue in candidate selection: Republicans 54%, independents 72%, Democrats 87%.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., has proposed a 1.7 million-acre Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument on national forest and Bureau of Land Management lands north and south of the national park. It would make permanent a 20-year ban on new uranium claims that Salazar approved while leading the Interior Department during President Obama's first term.
Supporters of the plan have acknowledged that it's unlikely to pass in the current Congress but have treated it as a blueprint for a potential monument designation by the president under his Antiquities Act authority.
That is the same legal authority that President Theodore Roosevelt used to protect the Grand Canyon, initially as a monument; 84% of Arizonans in the Colorado College poll said they favored retaining the power for future presidents.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., has blasted the monument proposal as a job killer and "the misguided agenda of extremist environmental groups."
Gosar also was among several Arizona politicians who visited the Bundy family during the 2014 standoff. His office on Monday did not respond to a request for comment on the poll findings.
The poll has a stated margin of error of 4.9% in each state, or 2.74% regionwide.