Journey across the B.L.M.& Forest Service domain today & you’ll find no shortage of uses that look more like abuses, thanks to protocols set by complicit federal regulators, who are overseeing public land for its tacit privatization — land that we might as well declare public in name only. Oil and gas fields blight the deserts and steppe. Coal, copper, silver and gold mines stab into cliffs and mountains. Forests are felled for timber interests, grasslands are overgrazed for the benefit of cattlemen. The result is ecological impoverishment, biotic simplification and a widespread collapse of biodiversity. Among the lyrics that never made it to radio when Woody Guthrie released “This Land Is Your Land:” “The sign was painted, said ‘Private Property’ / But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing / This land was made for you and me.' "
At www.nytimes.com
