(SitNews) Salt Lake City, UT – The growing movement in Western states to transfer public lands to state control could help reinvigorate Alaska's forest industry and make Alaska more competitive in attracting Arctic investment, Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell told the American Lands Council during a summit in Salt Lake City Wednesday.

Treadwell joined a 12-person delegation of Alaskans including Rep. Wes Keller, as well as members of Alaska's Citizen’s Advisory Commission on Federal Areas, which Keller chairs. Representatives of the Alaska Department of Law and the Department of Natural Resources also attended the two-day meeting with officials from 13 Western states.

Utah, Idaho, and Nevada have passed legislation seeking, demanding or studying transfer of federal land within their boundaries to state control, in order to gain equal treatment with states to the East which received most federal land. The American Lands Council is coordinating efforts throughout the West to facilitate the transfer campaign. Utah has called for a formal interstate compact to bind states together to address this issue.

Federal Owned Land is in Red
Click on the above map to go to an interactive map to look at each state's map
Graphic courtesy American Lands Council

Treadwell told delegates that Alaska's legislature passed SCR 2 earlier this year, which asked Congress to put National Forest Service acreage from the Tongass National Forest into the Southeast Alaska State Forest to provide a long-term timber supply for logging and value-added industry. At Statehood, according to the resolution, Alaska was barred from selecting more than 400,000 acres in Alaska national forests to save land for long-term federal timber supply contracts. In the mid-1990's, the federal government limited those contracts, leading to the closure of two pulp mills and a major sawmill in Southeast Alaska.

Treadwell also noted that Alaska's Arctic neighbors, including the Yukon Territory, the Northwest Territories, and Greenland have received almost complete control of federal or "crown" land within their boundaries during the last decade, while Alaska struggles for access to explore federal land in the Arctic both east and west of state North Slope lands near Prudhoe Bay.

"It's hard to compete in attracting investment to the Arctic when our neighbors can offer greater regulatory certainty and access than we can," Treadwell said. "We should be filling the Alaska pipeline, not dithering – as the Interior agencies have – over exploration on the North Slope.

"When the federal owner can't fulfill responsibilities to protect people, people's needs, and nature, it's time to get a new owner," Treadwell said. "Washington, D.C. is an unreliable partner; it does not do development well, it does not do environmental protection well. People who live in these areas should be managing their own lands."

Treadwell’s remarks included a wide range of challenges Alaska has with federal land managers, from the federal refusal to allow an 11-mile, one lane road from King Cove to Cold Bay, to the U.S. Forest Service Roadless Rule, which prevents access for timber, mining, and renewable power development in the Tongass National Forest.

Alaskans attending the summit approved a statement of policy goals presented to the public Wednesday, and committed to work on a broad range of legislative and legal strategies to gain a greater say in federal land use decisions in Alaska. Several bills are pending in Congress which would transfer U.S. Forest Service land to states, and give states development and mineral rights on other federal land within their borders.

Edited by Mary Kauffman, SitNews

On the Web:

American Lands Council
http://www.americanlandscouncil.org

Source of News: 

Office of Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell
www.ltgov.state.ak

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