Where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management wants more solar farms in Utah and on how much land

Every wondered how much land is consumed by solar power farms? Here is an example!

That the federal government owns so much land in some of the states is another subject!

Unreliable wind and solar power is the greatest scam of our time! It is evil and medieval!

"The U.S. Bureau of Land Management wants to be a landlord to more solar energy development in Utah and across the West, but it has a few rules:

• Keep the panels off the hillsides to avoid erosion and visual blight.

• Keep them near existing or planned power lines to avoid building new ones.

• Keep the cows away.

The BLM, which manages 42% of Utah land, has put out its draft environmental impact statement for utility scale solar development, and its preferred choice would make 3.8 million acres in the state available for solar farms. The draft is open for public comment until April 18. ..."

Where the BLM wants more solar farms in Utah The BLM’s recommendation would open up nearly 7% of the state to solar arrays, but only a tiny portion of that is expected to be developed in the next couple of decades.

Do you like this kind of huge waste of landscape?

Devastating Forest Fires Thanks To Federal Government Policies

Posted: 9/6/2015

Trigger

Just read this recommendable summary article about how the federal government has screwed up forest management on federal lands for several decades Devastating Fires Show Forest Management Reforms Are Badly Needed. This is by far not the first article on this subject that I have read.

The Federal Government Built Up A Tinderbox

That the orthodox doctrine of total fire suppression and the prohibition of logging in federal forests have created a formidable tinderbox over the decades has been known for at least several years if not longer. And the federal government, which owns way too much land, has failed to act.

“In 1990, the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the northern spotted owl as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. Largely in response to this listing, the Forest Service implemented a new “ecosystem management” policy, which resulted in a further reduction in timber harvests. Then, shortly before he left office President Clinton introduced a rule that severely restricted the use of existing roads and construction of new roads on 49 million acres of National Forest, limiting the ability of the Forest Service to thin the dense thickets of trees that resulted from almost a century of fire suppression – or even remove dead trees.”

“The net result of these changes was a dramatic decline in the amount of timber removed from federal lands. As Figure 7 shows, between 1960 and 1990, an average of 10.3 billion board feet of timber were removed each year from Forest Service land. Removals declined precipitously between 1991 and 2000. From 2000 to 2013, an average of just 2.1 billion board feet of timber were removed from Forest Service land. That represents a near 80 percent decline in removals. Similarly, from 1990 to 2002, timber sales on BLM land fell 74 percent as a direct result of these policy changes and has remained at these suppressed levels since then.f”

BLM - Why Is The Wave In Arizona So Inaccessible?

Bureau Of Land Management

This federal agency like several others are involved in managing the outlandish large land owned by the federal government, including national parks and national monuments.

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument In Arizona

See e.g. here and here.

To quote from the BLM website: “This remote and unspoiled, 280,000-acre Monument is a geologic treasure, containing a variety of diverse landscapes from the Paria Plateau, Vermilion Cliffs, Coyote Buttes, and Paria Canyon.”

The Wave

The Wave is one of the spectacular attractions of the Vermilion Cliffs NM and beyond. You can search the Internet for photos of it.

Outrageous Access Policies

As can be expected from a big federal government, the access policy is such that it severely restricts access to the people of this country.

The website of the BLM hides the information about the permits required, thus I will quote from Wikipedia here: “BLM limits access to the North Coyote Buttes Wilderness Area to just 20 permits per day. Ten of the permits are available in advance by an on-line lottery conducted four months before the month for which the permit is sought. The remaining ten permits are made available by lottery the day before one's intended hike.”

The Wave can only be accessed via a dirt road of 5-10 miles length, which may not be suitable for regular vehicles. Once you reach the trailhead, one has to hike another 3 miles across desert to get to the Wave.

Thus, effectively a large majority of the people of the U.S. will probably never in their lifetime be able to see the Wave thanks to these outrageous measures imposed by the federal government.

Wilderness For Wilderness’s Sake

I am personally opposed to such extreme nature conservation.

We The People should ask big federal government:

1. To return such federal lands to the respective states
2. To develop attractions like the Wave by private businesses for more tourism

Previous, Related Blog Posts

See here and here.

Nevada Rancher Versus Federal Government

Trigger

Lately a standoff between a Nevada rancher (Mr. Bundy) and the federal government got the attention.

Here is just one sample article of many articles about it.

What Is Really The Issue?

The federal government owns way too much land especially in the west. I have previously blogged about this subject here.

U.S. Government Owns Too Much Land!

Socialism Is Alive In The USA

Not only is the healthcare sector totally dominated by the federal government even before ObamaCare, the feds also own considerable amounts of land.

Recently, I read that the federal government still keeps buying or acquiring significant amounts of land.

In this blog post, I focus only on land owned by the federal government with the exception of Arizona.

Facts & Figures

The National Park Service (NPS) owns a total of 84,000 acres of land. This translates almost into the size of Germany or the size of 1.7 times the average size of any of the 50 states.

Now, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) owns a total of 260,000 acres of land. This represents about 3 times the size of Germany or 5.4 times the average size of any of the 50 states. This is clearly way too much! When is the federal government finally going to sell some of it to reduce the federal debt?

Situation In Arizona

According to the “State Land Department Annual Report” of 2012 (most recent), the federal government owns a whopping 42% of Arizona’s land. The state government’s land trust owns 13%. Thus, government owned land in this state alone is 55%. Private owned land is only 17%. Indian trusts make up 28%.