Let’s Get Businesslike With Federal Lands

[Oak]

At the risk of WSJ getting me for C infringement, I'm copying and pasting.

I should point out that Mr. Anderson is also the past president of PERC.

WSJ Opinion​

Let’s Get Businesslike With Federal Lands​

How Elon Musk and DOGE can improve the environment and reduce the national debt.​

By Terry L. Anderson
February 14, 2025

President Trump meant business when he created the Department of Government Efficiency, and Elon Musk is taking care of business by cutting the cost of government. Now Mr. Musk needs to manage the nation’s assets better, especially federal lands.

Federal agencies manage 640 million acres, 28% of U.S. land. The three largest federal land agencies—the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service—together manage a swath of terrain almost the size of Argentina.

If Messrs. Musk and Trump owned the federal lands, they would have three options: raise the price of goods and services (timber, minerals, visits to national parks), reduce labor costs and liquidate money losers.

Mr. Musk should begin by asking the federal land agencies to submit profit-and-loss statements, as any business does. It took days for me to unearth this information from the government. I estimate that for 2023 (2024 data aren’t available yet) the Bureau of Land Management lost $734.6 million, the Forest Service lost $9.77 billion, and the National Park Service lost $2.82 billion.
In 2015 the Department of Commerce estimated that all federal lands were worth $1.8 trillion. Applying a simple long-term government bond yield of about 5%, a $1.8 trillion asset should yield $90 billion a year, not lose more than $13 billion.

Here are four Economics 101 recommendations to turn the red ink black.

• Raise revenue. Suppose that entry fees to Yellowstone National Park increased from $35 a car to $50. In 2024 Yellowstone had 4.7 million visitors. Assuming three people per car, charging an extra $15 would bring in an additional $23.5 million a year. As the late Senate leader Everett Dirksen is said to have observed, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
• Take Mr. Musk’s sharp knife to land management agencies. Among the more than 60,000 employees in the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, there must be redundancies. A 2015 analysis by the Property and Environment Research Center, of Bozeman, Mont., found that state trust land in Arizona, Idaho, Montana and New Mexico generated an average of $14.51 per dollar spent, compared with 73 cents for every dollar spent on federal land managed by the Forest Service and the BLM. Find those efficiency gains.
• Turn ownership of some federal lands over to the states. Federal lands cover nearly 50% of Western states such as Alaska, Nevada and California. The states also own large amounts of land—in Montana it’s 26% of the state, in Arizona 12% and Utah 7%—which generate significant revenue. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said in 2024 that thanks to “responsible management of state lands,” $92 million from Montana trust lands revenue would go to public schools.
• Consolidate “landlocked” parcels that create a checkerboard of landownership, making good management and profitability difficult. In 1991, the U.S. Forest Service entered into a land swap with a developer that traded 140,000 acres of company-owned timberland for about 13,400 acres of Forest Service land. The developer then built the Yellowstone Club, a private ski resort in Montana. Before the swap, both parties had many 1-square-mile parcels that could generate revenue only from clear-cutting. Due to consolidation, the Yellowstone Club is worth billions, with part of the land set aside as wilderness. The U.S. Forest Service has many uses for large blocks of land, including logging, recreation and endangered species protection.

Long before Mr. Musk might consider privatizing America’s natural wonders such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, there are huge gains to be made from better management of federal land. By following sound business practices, he can stanch the hemorrhaging red ink, reduce the burgeoning $36 trillion national debt, and improve the environment. Win-win-win.

Mr. Anderson is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

 

[Oak]

Gianforte provided commentary on the link above.

 

[Oak]

Way back in 1999, Terry Anderson provided a blueprint for auctioning off all federal lands in 20 to 40 years.

 

[SAJ-99]

GG needs an education on who is doing more with less.

 

[Beignet]

The Hill recently published an op-ed from someone at the Cato Institute* critical of the concept of a US Sovereign Wealth Fund. A line in that piece mentioned that pro-fund circles have the idea of selling public land as one of the means to fund the SWF.

The piece was “The fool’s gold of a US sovereign wealth fund” from 2/16/25.

*Cato is a very libertarian, limited government think tank, if anyone was concerned about their bias.

 

[Chama Grande]

I'm struggling to understand the budget that some people think they're looking at

 

[Schaaf]

Proposing market rate grazing fees is gonna be a hilarious self own.

Through the inspiration of our corporate overlord- Elon Musk and DOGE, I plan to have a tough conversation with my two children this evening about how they can be more business like and stop providing a negative asset to the monthly balance sheet. Put up or shut up, kiddos.

 

[Big Fin]

Very timely that you bring this up, @Oak. With PERC based in Bozeman, I knew Terry quite well when he was the Executive Director. We would go to lunch and joust about these topics, never changing either person's mind. No doubt he's very intelligent. He is an avid hunter. His ideas in the WSJ piece are pretty toned down compared to past ideas he has proposed for public lands.

When I read that article it got me started on my treatise of the history of what I call the APL movement, or Anti-Public Land movement. I am about a third of the way through the history and why it is so relevant to what is going on now. Terry himself, and people I met through Terry, were a helpful window to what the goals were, and still are, of the APL movement; at least in my mind formed over almost forty years of engagement on this.

As a note, since Terry departed from PERC, PERC has moderated a lot and has shifted from "sell or transfer the public lands" to more of a "manage them better and here's how" approach to improving public lands. The new ED, Brian Yablonski, was the chairman of the Florida wildlife commission for the Jeb Bush administration. He has a much wider view of the issues at hand and complexities that come with managing public land.

That 1999 piece is not the only time Terry and others have proposed this idea. His writing is often used by the APL movement as support for what I call the 50-year liquidation strategy, the focus of my long-winded dissertation I hope to have done in a few weeks. From this "group think" comes Gayle Norton and William Perry Pendley, both from the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the latter being the unconfirmed Assistant BLM Director under the prior Trump administration.

Pendley, who is the author of the Project 2025 chapter dealing with public lands, has never hidden his desire to sell such. In 2016, in the National Review, he wrote a long article as to why and how it should be done.



The APL movement got their asses handed to them in the 1980s when they came out with the idea to sell the public land. With that beating, the Republican party moved the APL folks to a darker corner of the room. Yet, they're not fools. They came up with a strategy of how they could use Congress to make the public lands of America a mess, mismanaged, underfunded, a liability, and a revenue loser for locals, such that the time would eventually come where Americans would show little opposition to liquidating these lands; the long-term goal of the APL movement.

The 50-year strategy as witnessed by those of us who have been in this since the 1980s, and confirmed from tidbits gathered in my discussions with people like Terry, strategy fully promoted in articles from Pendley and others, the directives called for in public land chapter of Project 2025, shows that the strategy goes something like this:

1. Defund the agencies - Don't give them the resources to properly manage. Since public lands are such a low priority in Congress, it is easy to use public lands and agency funding as bargaining chips in bigger debates. Since 1990, such has happened.

2. Defund the rural counties with large tracts of public land - Federal lands do not get taxed as our private lands get taxed. Instead, we have two programs to offset those lost taxes - PILT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) and SRS (Secure Rural Schools). Both allow Congress to appropriate money to replace lost tax revenues. Yet, that assumes Congress would fully appropriate such amounts. They don't appropriate enough and stiff the counties. The APL movement pressure Congress to lower the appropriations for county payments that are supposed to replace lost tax revenues. Why? Because it is part of the 50-year plan to piss off rural folks, their County Commissioners, and their School Boards, by not allowing the Federal Government to pay the going rate on property taxes, resulting in lower collections and school funding, and causing locals to have a higher property tax burden than they should have. Since 1990, this plan has worked well and rural counties have lost a lot of Federal receipts.

3. Promote the idea of better land management, but pressure Congress to keep status quo - As I've stated in many videos, every single problem that frustrates us with Federal land management could be solved by Congress. Yet, Congress, as much as many of them complain, do nothing. For some in Congress who know little about public lands, it is a function of ignorance. For others, it is intentional disregard for their constituents interests.

4. Block every attempt to increase revenues from Federal lands - Some may not know that the Feds are to share with counties receipts from Federal lands of grazing, timber, O&G. Yet, when we try to get grazing lease rates somewhere above the 10% charged on adjacent state or private lands, these APL sympathizers in Congress squash any attempt that would increase the Federal revenues. That hurts counties, adding to #2 above, as there is now less revenue to share with Counties. O&G royalty rates increased recently, but they are still much lower than state or private royalty lease rates. Timber stumpage rates are below private stumpage rates. The Hard Rock Mining Act of 1872 exempt hard rock miners from any royalty payment on gold, silver, copper, and other minerals. When we ask Congress to impose a royalty on hard rock minerals, the biggest opponents are the APL sympathizers in Congress. In front of cameras they complain that Federal lands don't earn enough money, while in the dark room meetings they cut deals to make sure Federal land payments stay way below market rates.

There are more prongs to their approach, such as not funding backlogs, ignoring deferred maintenance, redirecting budgets to wildland fire, etc. . To their credit, they've been strategic, patient, and well funded. If you read the public land chapter in Project 2025, it gives you a clear picture of the road map they see ahead.

Their methods are far more nuanced. When Mark Kenyon was writing his book about public lands, he interviewed me while following on a bear hunt in 2017. We felt that the "State Transfer" idea was getting called out for what it was, an attempt to liquidate Federal lands. He asked me what I thought would be the next approach. I gave him my thoughts. He posted this on IG yesterday and I was surprised what a shitstorm it caused.



I stand by those words from 8 years ago. What I see over the last eight years and what I read in comments and proposals from the APL crowd and their sympathizers, confirms that even more today. I would say that even without the changes that will come to public land management resulting from terminating many important Federal employees.

Maybe I'm lost in a big conspiracy theory I've cooked up since my days of first encountering this movement in Nevada in the 1980s. Could be.

Maybe my epitaph will say, "Here lies Newberg, the dumbass who spent most of his adult life trying to prove a theory that Congress was compliant in the liquidation of public lands." Those are surely a possible outcome.

For now, with what I know, what I see, the criticisms I get for my distaste of political parties, and having seen this trend across many Congresses and many Administrations, I suspect I'm going to my grave believing in that theory, and believing in it more each day.

Shitter's full. Blame Congress.

 

[El Jason]

I’ve directly seen 1-3 used as arguments against WLA acquisitions in several counties, and they are a common theme in some conservative counties who hate the feds.

 

[Justabirdwatcher]

Very enlightening and accurate IMO Randy. One add-on to your point #2 above - PILT doesn't apply to NWR lands which for whatever reason are singled out under the "Refuge Revenue Sharing" Act that is now funded at only 24% of its full authorization.

https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/RefugeRevShare%20Historical%20Summary2023.pdf#:~:text=The%20Refuge%20Revenue%20Sharing%20Act%2C%2016%20USC715s%2C%20as,lands%20that%20the%20Service%20has%20acquired%20in%20fe

 

[Justabirdwatcher]

I’ve directly seen 1-3 used as arguments against WLA acquisitions in several counties, and they are a common theme in some conservative counties who hate the feds.

#2 gets a lot of press for sure, although it usually sounds more like "the land will be taken OFF the tax rolls" (or more likely "roles" LOL)

 

[bullbugle307]

The concept of running a government service more like a business sounds good on paper to a lot of people.

I believe this was Louis Dejoys idea with his "Delivering for America" plan at the USPS. I don't think it's controversial to say that after a few years under his plan, there was strong bipartisan upheaval against it. Certainly an interesting case study on the overall idea of running the government like a business.

Dejoy just "quit" not long after embarrassing himself in front of congress. Hopefully the leaders of the land transfer movement will meet a similar fate, and not after its too late and the damage is done.

 

[longbow51]

Perhaps from reading Abbey at too young an age, I'm against Industrial Tourism in National Parks in general, but that ship sailed long ago. He was, as one of his biographies said, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness. No Savior followed though.

So, on a practical, rather than philosophical note, raising the entrance fees isn't a bad idea. Basic supply and demand, and demand is surging. An extra few bucks isn't going to change anyone's vacation plans. And not by 15 bucks either, make it 30, and recoup $47 million.

Tax mountain bikes, tents, sleeping bags, and all camping and hiking equipment (except boots, that would get tricky) at the current PR rate, with resources going to support natural resources. Add in all fishing gear with money going to stream restoration and other worthy projects.

I'm as anti-tax as the next person, but like taxes on guns and ammo, etc. to support wildlife. Sell it as supporting habitat, and I'll bet there would be enough buyers to get it passed.

Like most things, not a binary choice. We can have a little business and a little not-for-profit.

 

[Flynarrow]

Perhaps from reading Abbey at too young an age, I'm against Industrial Tourism in National Parks in general, but that ship sailed long ago. He was, as one of his biographies said, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness. No Savior followed though.

So, on a practical, rather than philosophical note, raising the entrance fees isn't a bad idea. Basic supply and demand, and demand is surging. An extra few bucks isn't going to change anyone's vacation plans. And not by 15 bucks either, make it 30, and recoup $47 million.

Tax mountain bikes, tents, sleeping bags, and all camping and hiking equipment (except boots, that would get tricky) at the current PR rate, with resources going to support natural resources. Add in all fishing gear with money going to stream restoration and other worthy projects.

I'm as anti-tax as the next person, but like taxes on guns and ammo, etc. to support wildlife. Sell it as supporting habitat, and I'll bet there would be enough buyers to get it passed.

Like most things, not a binary choice. We can have a little business and a little not-for-profit.

That's an easy attractive example to draw people into the "business like) concept. It gets trickier when you have to graze everything to the bare ground, cut most of the forests to generate capital, lease landscapes for exclusive hunting for outfitters, close most roads reduce road maintenance, etc to make it "like a business"?

 

[TheTone]

All those people commercially using public lands would be real upset if they starting paying a higher rate to help budgets

 

[MNElkNut]

@Big Fin You should write a rebuttal letter!

What a narrow-minded individual that must look at public lands solely through the lens of profit and loss.

 

[longbow51]

That's an easy attractive example to draw people into the "business like) concept. It gets trickier when you have to graze everything to the bare ground, cut most of the forests to generate capital, lease landscapes for exclusive hunting for outfitters, close most roads reduce road maintenance, etc to make it "like a business"?

Non-binary thinking certainly isn't for everyone.

 

[nrpate05]

Since when is the point of federal lands or the federal government in general to turn a profit? The federal government isn't a private business and was never intended to be run as such. I understand the need for efficiency and limiting truly wasteful spending, but creating a bunch of new Yellowstone clubs just to increase profitability at the expense of 99.999999% of the public? Ridiculous.

 

[The_Jim]

@Big Fin You should write a rebuttal letter!

What a narrow-minded individual that must look at public lands solely through the lens of profit and loss.

I think we end up in an echo chamber on these forums. If you put it up for a vote I am not sure 50% of Americans would choose public lands…if your hobbies don’t involve the outdoors it’s probably not as easy to see the non-monetary value of those lands.

For many just driving the highways of Colorado and stopping at a few pullouts for pictures is an outdoor experience. They don’t care if that land is public or private. I don’t think it’s narrow minded. They just don’t know.

 

[Irrelevant]

Interesting that I've never seen anyone attempt to quantify the value of a public land user day, which is a benefit, and just like any good business/businessman you must factor in your actual benefits. I get more mental and physical health value out of a 2 hr hike on public land than I would a 2 hr therapist session, which would cost me ~$300-400/hr (plus an hr at the gym, but that's a negligible cost). There doesn't appear to be any decent stats compiling user days on all public lands, but if I take a small sample, Mt. Rainier NP, which had ~ 2 million users in 2024, and extrapolate that out across WA, I think you could assume an easy 10 million user visitations to public lands in WA (WAG), at $500 of value provided per visit, we get $5 billion in just WA alone, multiply that 25 states (assuming some have more visitations and others have less, and being conservative that 1/2 have zero visitations), we get ~$125 billion in value (though @kwyeewyk should check my math). That already provided a better than expected ROI.

Then let's factor in that we're talking about real estate, and everyone loves to include land appreciation when discussion the ROI for real estate. Public land increases in value at the same rate or more of nearby adjacent private land. So we seen another 5-10% increase in our base land value annually.

I seems to me, we're making out like bandits.

The only leg public land divesture is supported by is individual greed.