Why are Proposed Public Land Transfers a Source of Extreme Conflict and Resistance?

On the Ground
- The United States Federal Government owns and manages one-third of the land in the United States, primarily in western US states. There is fierce debate on whether the federal government should transfer management of public lands to state control.
- We reviewed a variety of agency periodicals/websites, contemporary articles, and/or rangeland textbooks and articles to better understand the key ecologic and socioeconomic processes on public rangelands.
- Using a systems thinking approach, we identified a number of system archetype structures, including Fixes-that-Backfire, Success-to-the-Successful, and Escalation, in the event that public land is transferred from federal to state control.
- Transferring management of public lands to state control would affect rangelands from an ecological perspective (e.g., over- or undergrazing) and would have potential socioeconomic impacts on urban and rural communities in the western states through increased friction at the state legislative level rather than the federal level.