OCR Text |
Show Management goals were not established for most of the withdrawn lands other than the national forests and national parks, and those that were established were broad and general. Finally, in 1934, the Taylor Grazing Act3 ended the era of unrestricted entry of the remaining unappropriated public domain and provided a classification authority to enable the Secretary of the Interior to determine how those public lands might best serve the public interest. Thus, by 1934, although numerous disposal laws remained on the statute books, Congress had armed the Secretary with broad authority to preclude the operations of all of them except the mining law, which had been excluded from the withdrawal and classification authority conferred in the Pickett and Taylor acts. Nevertheless, the Secretary continued to make withdrawals suspending the operation of the mining laws in certain situations without express statutory authority. With increasing use pressures on all the public lands in the post-World War II period, Congress in 1960 and 1964 set forth broad public land management goals for the national forests and the unappropriated public domain administered by BLM. The Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act of 1960 4 declared that the national forests are established and "shall be administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes," and directed the Secretary of Agriculture to develop and administer the renewable surface resources of the national forests for "multiple use" and "sustained yield." The Classification and Multiple Use Act of 1964 5 provided similar temporary authority for BLM administered lands and, in addition, directed the Secretary of the Interior to develop criteria to be used in determining which of those public lands should be disposed of and which should be retained in Federal ownership for multiple use management. But the basic thrust of both of these acts relative to the management of public lands was to give the agencies authority to manage the lands for recreation and other purposes for which prior authority was lacking or unclear. The 1964 act was a recognition by Congress that the existing pattern, by which the old goals of the traditional disposal laws had generally been subordinated to broad Secretarial discretion to nullify them on a case-by-case basis in response to individual applications, was no longer an acceptable public land policy. Hence, it provided a new approach on an interim basis until this Commission could submit its recommendations. The new authority provided the 3 43 U.S.C. §§ 315 et seq. (1964). * 16 U.S.C. §§ 528-531 (1964). 5 43 U.S.C. §§ 1411-1418 (1964). Secretary with a broad planning charter with directions to identify those factors which ought to be considered in determining whether lands should be disposed of or retained in Federal ownership. Moreover, it gave him a broader authority to suspend the operation of the public land laws in aid of his classification function than he possesses under the authority conferred on him by the Pickett Act or the Taylor Grazing Act. However, the act did not provide goals for either disposal or retention and, with respect to retained lands, the multiple use authority which it conferred suffered from the same vice as its 1960 predecessor for the national forests- failure to specify or provide standards for determining priorities of use or guidelines for resolving conflicts. The lack of clear statutory direction for the use of the public lands has been the cause of problems ever since Congress started to provide for the retention of some of the public domain in permanent Federal ownership. The relative roles of the Congress and the Executive in giving needed direction to public land policy have never been carefully defined, and this has been a source of friction throughout the years. As related to land use planning, the use of the executive withdrawal power has long been a problem; and in recent years administrative actions under the multiple use acts have created new problems. The 1960 and 1964 acts were primitive first steps toward sound public land management, and as such they take on an historical significance because the start had to be slow. If viewed nonetheless as being "late" for their purposes, we must remember that both the Executive and Congress share the responsibility for failure to anticipate the needs of the public that dictated a form of management guide for these lands. The Withdrawals Problem Concern about problems associated with the "withdrawal" and "reservation" of public domain lands was strongly voiced in the deliberations which led to the creation of the Commission, and was a recurring subject of complaint in the Commission's public meetings. The contractor study of withdrawals indicates that they have been used by the Executive in an uncontrolled and haphazard manner.6 Withdrawals have been used since the earliest days of the Republic when the President was given statutory authority to set aside land for public purposes such as military reservations, Indian trading posts, lighthouses, and townsites. During the 19th century 6 Charles F. Wheatley, Jr., Withdrawals and Reservations of Public Domain Lands, Ch. XI. PLLRC Study Report, 1969. 43 |