Wilderness Advocates Fight Proposal to Transfer Fed. Lands
Suzanne Potter, Producer
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
PHOENIX – Environmental advocates want the Legislature to give up on the idea of taking over federal lands in the Grand Canyon state, and plan on packing a public meeting today of the Arizona Transfer of Federal Lands Study Committee in Phoenix.
This isn't the first time the idea has come up – a statewide ballot measure failed at the ballot box in 2012. Mike Quigley, Arizona state director for The Wilderness Society, says both current Governor Doug Ducey and former governor Jan Brewer vetoed similar legislation in the past.
"It would be really nice if the state legislators that are clinging to this bad idea looked at the will as expressed by the citizens of the state of Arizona and put an end to this," he says.
Quigley says the bill is highly similar in language to proposals introduced in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Idaho, all of which originated with the conservative group ALEC, short for the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Barbara Hawke, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, says there's no way the state could afford to manage millions of acres of federal land and maintain the current level of access.
"The economic burden is fully infeasible," she says. "The cost for wildfire management and other sorts of costs for public lands far exceeds what the Arizona state budget could possibly undertake."
According to Quigley, similar bills in the past have placed no limit on the federal land the state would acquire, meaning it would include the Grand Canyon plus all other National Parks, National Monuments, National Forests and Bureau of Land Management sites in Arizona.
The public meeting is at 10 a.m. at the Arizona State Senate Building, Hearing Room 109, located at 1700 W. Washington St. in Phoenix.
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