Recently there has been significant interest in the development of third-party for-profit conservation companies that would undertake conservation efforts on public lands. As part of these efforts these companies would be awarded saleable credits that can be used to fund or create profits from their efforts. This invites a motorized recreational perspective on the leasing of public lands.
Investors to Buy Rights of Federal Land in US
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced a partnership with an organization called the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG) to create a new type of company called a Natural Asset Company (NAC). The idea is the NAC would pool investors’ money to buy the rights to land in the United States with the goal of protecting, restoring and growing natural assets under their management to foster healthy ecosystems.
Motorized Recreation Concerns on Leasing of Public Lands
The host of concerns for motorized users that result from the NACs model of land management are immense and immediate. While this article is focused on federal lands, these organizations could absolutely function on state or local lands as well.
While many in the motorized community have been very focused and vocal about closures in Moab, the large-scale leasing of public lands to third parties is simply not being discussed at any scale. This proposal could possibly impact your access for almost every use on every acre of public land in the country.
For motorized users, closures of existing authorized trail networks will be a problem despite almost all of these routes being required to be sustainable since President Richard Nixon issued Executive Order 11644 in 1972.
No other user group has been subjected to this level of analysis to ensure sustainability. We doubt the NAC efforts will be integrating this conservation effort into their baseline.
Ongoing Monitoring of Trail Network
The last thing anyone in the motorized community wants is almost ongoing monitoring of their trail networks to make sure they are not leased to a third party without any public notice. This type of monitoring is going to be expensive. Who is going to cover those costs? The clubs are largely non-profit and we will be fighting a for profit corporation that probably will not even be in the state.
The motorized community does a lot of site-specific efforts that could qualify for a conservation credit, like trailhead clean ups etc. How would efforts like this be addressed when credits are provided? Our interests are also more programmatic in nature and involve the state OHV programs across the Country. No other trail-based interest is involved at this level.
Motorized Recreational Perspective on the Leasing of Public Lands
The relationship of these new NAC organizations to existing conservation efforts is never mentioned despite this being a hugely broad concern. No one stopped to ask if a lease is even the right concept to allocate conservation credits on. It may not be.
Those programs fund tens of millions in efforts annually that would be subject to a credit, like burn scar restoration, wildlife mitigation, signage and other management effort. These are efforts that try and avoid impacts entirely, like good trail maintenance avoiding watershed impacts or educational efforts like “stay the trail” or “Tread Lightly” programs.
These are less direct programs that are more important that conserving any single acre of land. Who will ensure that the party performing the conservation is getting the credit they deserve and the credit is not being misdirected to another group working in the area.
The relationship of these new NAC organizations to existing conservation efforts extend far beyond motorized recreation concerns.
Hunting and Fishing Community
The hunting and fishing community has been leading conservation efforts for more than 100 years for a huge number of species. In many areas, wildlife populations only exist due to hunting and fishing based funding and management.
The information that they provide will be critical to projects. If a project is protecting or increasing a population of deer in an area, all the population history will come from State Wildlife managers. Clearly, these programs should be provided credits for their efforts that they could sell to expand their budgets.
Selling Credits
All efforts like these must be provided credits. The motorized community would probably want to sell the credits and reinvest the money into the programs so we can do more work on the ground.
Allocations of credits at a state or regional level is most effectively done at the program level and not on a project-by-project basis. Not a simple discussion and probably needs to be addressed quickly so the scope of these proposals is fully understood as leasing starts.
Critical Engagement Needed
Despite the critical need for engagement on basic issues, outreach has been horrible. Managers have entirely failed to provide a unified coherent engagement effort with existing partners on how NACs will be addressed.
As an example, the BLM has chosen to provide leasing authority with scattered isolated provisions buried in hundreds of pages of analysis provided asserting nothing has changed. This is not a good sign.
Moving from the programmatic level to the project level questions about how the NACs effort is managed only get worse. It is no secret that USFS and BLM are short staffed. Most state and local land managers are in the same situation.
The motorized grant programs have basically provided an open checkbook to hire land management staff and there are still a ton of open positions. If managers cannot fill current positions, how will staffing needs be addressed to support these new leases?
Concerns of Natural Asset Company Leasing of Public Lands
This is a major concern as this new leasing model will create a huge amount of NEPA analysis, possible enforcement concerns and management issues that only the agencies can legally address. If managers cannot address staffing for these new needs while continuing to fulfill existing management requirements, we could make this situation worse rather than better. That is a huge concern.
While this article only scratches the surface of this problem and discussion, we hope it is enough to create engagement on the issue. This is a huge concern for the motorized community and it warrants a meaningful engagement process. Right now, that engagement process is being avoided rather than addressed and it probably falls to the motorized community to force this discussion if no one else want to. We have done it before and succeeded so there is no reason we cannot do it again.