Practically every new infrastructure (dams, bridges, tunnels, highways, rail systems, etc.) project built since World War II cost more than we were initially told.  While we call this “cost overrun”, in fact it is almost always the result of sponsors “selling” “their” project in a disguise of mathematical guile.  Whether it is the forecasted commuter “use”, toll “revenues”, industrial “gains”, rail “ridership”, or other expected “benefits” from projects or simply the always “lowballed” cost of construction; the public is always upset with the resulting costs as opposed the quickly forgotten sponsors that sold the project originally. 

In the same way, planned operations and maintenance costs of such infrastructure projects are similarly far more than expected by the taxpayer.  As layer upon layer of “necessary” of “requirements” are added to annual operations over time like increasing environmental, educational, outreach, administration, retirement, etc., annual costs balloon to many times the original cost estimates. Available funds, as a result, go more and more to everything EXCEPT maintenance.  Thus do we find ourselves debating how to spend available government funding and what tax levels should be in these desperate days of political “gridlock” and a “decaying infrastructure?” 

Similarly, federal land-management agencies like the National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service have steadily and annually added large Units and acreages plus millions of acres of “Easements” to their land control and ownership portfolios.  Additionally, the Bureau of Land Management and the aforementioned agencies (like the infrastructure administrators mentioned above) have both accepted and created layer upon layer of “requirements” as mentioned in the infrastructure description above plus a grab-bag of goodies like “interpreters”, “partnerships”, “research”, “outreach” (i.e. indoctrination propaganda to schools), “native” this and that, anti-resource use, area closures, and stopping any local influences on their actions while eliminating any and all financial benefits to State and Local governments and communities from the federal lands.  Lest you think this a harsh or overblown description of what funding is spent on by these agencies, a recent year-end meeting of “accomplishments” was a steady litany of things like dam, pipeline, power line, irrigation, drilling, grazing, logging, hunting, road, fishing, development, sewer, etc. PROJECTS (both proposed and ongoing) STOPPED!  Thus, as with the infrastructure discussion above, the enormous (45-50% +/- of the entire nation) federal estate has foregone most maintenance for decades as they hired and used funding for destructive (to the nation and the estates) purposes.  In short, federal “maintenance backlogs” are always growing and never-ending. 

As a result, federal land-management agencies are currently as petrified as a kid when first told by older kids that there are monsters beneath his bed.  Only difference here being that the US House of Representatives has actually composed a budget that (GASP!) not only doesn’t give these agencies their annual increase as is their right since WWII PLUS money for their “backlogs”; they have actually proposed large decreases IN THE BASE!  The possibility of some such thing happening for the first time (ever?) is suddenly no longer just the dream of anti-government nuts living in paper shacks in remote rural precincts.  

Growing public outrage over not just the amount of the USA closed and unmanaged ( to say nothing of being converted into enormous fire pits, game-less former hunting areas, and revenue-losers as opposed revenue producers) voids; but also outrage over government perfidy such as the emerging true costs of touted imaginary benefits from government programs like wolves that really do carry and transmit many diseases, destroy big game herds, kill cattle and dogs, and generally endanger rural residents and their communities in direct contradiction to government wolf-introducer’s assurances is driving this critical look at these agencies’ budgets and size. 

The ongoing federal and state budget battles and shutdowns (Spending v. Tax Hikes “en garde”) are not going away any time soon.  For these agencies, reduced spending levels are unimaginable but in all honesty that discussion is way overdue.  Nowhere does it say the federal estate is created for the use of federal employees to STOP PROJECTS;  strangle state and local government revenue and benefits from uses on such lands; eliminate hunting, logging, etc.; clear rural areas; or close to all renewable natural resource management and use. 

Since it has become these things and more, careful consideration to the size of the federal Forests, Parks, Refuges, and BLM lands must be made.  These total holdings should be drastically reduced. Canada long ago turned “Crown Lands” (i.e. federal equivalents) over to the Provinces to both rural and national Canadian benefit.   To both eliminate the federal interventionist mischief cited above AND to bring the federal lands OWNED and EASED to roles WITHIN available future funding and personnel (i.e. Maintenance and Management for USE would be the primary and perhaps ONLY goals of federal land management); reduced size and defined management must be attained. 

When Canada cut “Natural Resources” almost 50% over a decade ago during a government spending crisis like the US faces today; according to a Canadian economist “the only ones that really noticed were those that lost their jobs while many other benefits from revenue generation to job creation throughout Canada as a whole resulted”.   

Just as the entire wolf debacle (I defy anyone to quantify ONE real benefit from the coercive government wolf-introduction & protection program  while I stand ready to list and quantify either in writing or verbally a List of COSTS from economic and Constitutional to cultural and sociological that will knock your socks off) was a “lowballed” justification from the “get-go” like the infrastructure projects cited above: so too are wolves as example being used for subversive purposes just like the federal estate manipulation by the same bureaucracies that measure “accomplishments” in how much American growth they STOP and how many Constitutional provisions and American communities they destroy.

 We expected the federal government to give us the moon, and all we got was a big piece of “green” (i.e. spoiled) cheese that has made us sick.  

Jim Beers

10 July 2011

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Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist,
Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC.  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands.  He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC.  He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades. 

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting at   jimbeers7@comcast.net