Editorial: Public Land Access Vital to N.M., Country

Bad enough not to be able to access public land.

Worse yet not to even know which land is public.

Yet that is the predicament New Mexico and U.S. taxpayers are in, owners of tens of millions of acres of public lands that aren’t accessible, and because they aren’t cataloged, aren’t on a bureaucrat’s priority list to be made accessible.

That’s why you can’t get to the 16,030 acres of the Sabinoso Wilderness. The private landowners whose property surrounds the federal wilderness area can, in effect expanding their very own personal hunting/fishing/camping/hiking heavens.

But you, John and Jane Q. Public, who actually own the land, can’t get there from here. Or anywhere.

Jeremy Vesbach, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, says “New Mexico is the poster child for this because we have so much public land.” Oscar Simpson, chairman of the New Mexico chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, says “Big landowners have come in and bought big parcels of land that we’ve had access to for 50 years, and they shut it down.”

In response, Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M, has proposed the HUNT Act (Hunt Unrestricted on National Treasures Act) to increase access. It would address both the problem of cataloging and access by requiring federal land management agencies to actually start managing public lands by:

♦ Preparing and annually updating a list of all parcels of public land larger than 640 acres that have no, or very limited, public access;

♦ Identifying those that could reasonably be accessed and are valuable for outdoor activity;

♦ Developing plans for obtaining acceptable public access — be it via foot or horse trails, all-terrain vehicle paths or roads; and

♦ Providing 1.5 percent of the Land and Water Conservation Fund — around $12 million a year — to purchase easements and rights of way from willing owners.

But an important issue not mentioned in the proposed legislation is having authorities also ensure current access is not lost. That’s what happened with Sabinoso — surrounding land was slowly sold off to private interests until the wilderness was landlocked by private holdings. And it also should apply to future acquisitions. Bureaucrats can’t assume existing access will always be there. They need to ensure it will be before making the investment.

Heinrich’s legislation needs to make it through the House Agriculture and Natural Resources committees and through the House and Senate. If it doesn’t, many of New Mexico’s and the country’s most amazing public lands will remain inaccessible to the public and out of the economy.

And that means they might as well be on the moon.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.