Wyomingites like their public land. They hunt pronghorn in Shirley Basin’s high desert sagebrush, ogle exploding geysers in Yellowstone National Park, ride horses on trails cut through the Bighorn National Forest and hike among wind-carved spires in the Red Desert’s Adobe Town.
And nearly 60% of Wyoming residents oppose giving the state control over federal public lands, including national forests, national wildlife refuges and national parks, according to a recent poll out of Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project.
The poll is considered a gold standard of surveys examining the opinions of western voters, and its results ring true on the ground. Almost 90% of respondents said they visited federal public lands in the last year. One-third of Wyomingites visited public land more than 20 times in the last year, more than any other state and obvious to anyone pulling into a crowded national forest campground in the summer.
But the results come amid renewed efforts to cull federal land. Wyoming lawmakers recently proposed and debated bills attempting to prevent the federal government from owning more land and even a resolution demanding the feds cede all public land outside Yellowstone National Park to the state.
If a majority of Wyomingites like public lands, why do lawmakers continue to propose ways to wrest those lands from the feds?
Likely due to a whole host of reasons, observers say, from low voter turnout to an oversimplified public lands messaging campaign. Some fear threats to public lands will only get worse as on-the-ground biologists, trail crews and other federal employees continue losing their jobs to the Trump administration’s cuts, lawmakers struggle to refill firefighting coffers and proposed land transfers keep cropping up.
“I think there’s been a bigger push for privatizing public lands … And I’m going to be the guy who tells them no. I don’t want the public to take it in the teeth.”
Buzz Hettick, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers’s Wyoming chapter
“I think there’s been a bigger push for privatizing public lands,” said Buzz Hettick, co-chairman of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers’ Wyoming chapter and longtime public lands advocate. “I wouldn’t say we’re further along, but the pressure just doesn’t ever let up … And I’m going to be the guy who tells them no. I don’t want the public to take it in the teeth.”
High value lands
Cyrus Western, a former Republican lawmaker from Sheridan County, blames low voter turnout for the disconnect.
While the State of the Rockies poll surveyed more than 400 registered voters in each western state, including a mix of Republicans and Democrats, they may not have captured those who actually voted, especially in the primaries.
“Less than a third of people showed up to vote,” he said. “I mean, I would agree the broad public really appreciates and wants public land … but the people who show up to vote are the people who call the shots.”
Sabrina King, a lobbyist for Wyoming’s Backcountry Hunters and Anglers chapter, agrees. She also believes the public land message becomes lost in the mailers and screaming noise often from voices outside of Wyoming.
“It keeps people away from the polls who would vote on public lands,” she said. “When they’re bombarded with PAC mailers who think everyone is terrible, folks don’t go vote.”
For Jessi Johnson, the Wyoming Wildlife Federation’s government affairs director, the disconnect might be a little bit more subtle, and the sportsmen’s community shoulders some of the blame.
Public land advocates, and the public in general, have boiled down the conversation to be bite-sized pieces like “public lands in public hands.” While the phrase may be catchy, it becomes hard to convey the particular benefits of federal public lands. Legislators then think that as long as the public has access, they will be happy. But it’s federal public lands like those run by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service that allow dispersed camping, hunting and fishing. It’s federal public lands that are managed for multiple use. State lands are managed to raise money for schools.
“Could some federal lands be run more efficiently? Absolutely. But we love multiple use. We love that everybody has a say in what moves forward and not just following an industry need,” Johnson said. “We get frustrated because allowing everyone to have a voice at the table is clunky and there are knock-down drag-out fights and it’s cumbersome.
“But when we simplify things to be bite-size, we forget what makes it special and that we can work to make it better.”
Efforts to trade, transfer and sell
All out transfers of federal land to the states — and also likely to private landowners — aren’t the only worries among Wyoming’s public land users. They also fret over proposed land transfers with major consequences.
Wyoming contains about 3.05 million acres of landlocked public land. Largely due to the scattershot way the government and settlers moved across the West, there are islands of public land trapped within private land. As a result, landowners frequently propose land trades or all-out purchases with the state and feds to consolidate their properties. While the sales can sometimes result in more access for the public, they more often end up blocking the public from prime hunting, fishing or hiking grounds, said Jeff Muratore, longtime Wyoming hunter and public land advocate.
He and Hettick worry that’s the case with current land trades proposed in central Wyoming. Ranch owners near Hanna recently held a public meeting to discuss trading some of their private land near Seminoe Reservoir with BLM land near the Freezeout Hills. The trade hasn’t formally been proposed to the BLM, but Hettick attended the meeting and says it would block 100,000 acres of elk, deer and antelope hunting. Another ranch north of Casper proposed buying state land north of Casper that would result in more than 10,000 acres of lost hunting grounds in prime elk and pronghorn habitat.
“There are some land exchanges that have gone down that have been good,” Western said. “There have been some land exchanges that have gone down that have been horrible for the public.”
But all of them lack transparency, he added. As a lawmaker, he pushed for a bill that would require the state lands office to alert the public shortly after a landowner proposes a trade instead of years into negotiations. The bill ultimately reached Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk, but he vetoed it.
“Quite frankly, I think the process was designed to not be transparent,” he said. “I think it was designed to keep the public out.”
If the public isn’t informed on land trades — or begins to conflate state land with federal public land — the very land they love could begin to disappear, Johnson said.
“The silver lining is that this push for federal lands is not going away, so it means we’re going to have to keep having this conversation,” she said. “These efforts push us to have that conversation again and relook at what we love about public lands.”
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