Arizona opinion: The Grand Canyon is not for sale

For decades, Arizonans have enjoyed open access to hunting, fishing, camping and the great outdoors. This outdoor access has rarely come into question, except for a few extreme challenges from those looking to gain private profits from lands that belong to all of us.

Unfortunately, the extreme opposition to public ownership of public lands is back, this time emboldened by a legal challenge the state of Utah has brought to the United States Supreme Court (which the Supreme Court justices denied to hear on Jan. 13).

The Utah lawsuit explicitly aimed to “dispose” of federal public lands, leaving them open to privatization and industrial development and a number of Arizona County Boards of Supervisors have signed on to this effort: Gila, Graham, Cochise, Apache and Navajo. The Arizona Legislature also signed on to support Utah’s lawsuit — a position on which voters across the state had no opportunity to express an opinion and that the majority have previously strongly opposed.

Public lands in every one of these counties and across Arizona are at great risk of privatization due to the actions of these Counties’ Boards and the State legislature. Further, for those of us who enjoy public lands elsewhere, a ruling to dispose of public lands in Utah would create a precedent for the same thing to happen across the country.

Federal public lands — National Forests, Bureau of Land Management lands — are where Arizonans go to hunt, to ride ATVs, to hike, to camp, to target shoot, to picnic, to watch wildlife, to seek solace, to find renewal. Every one of us has our reasons and our need for public land access. These activities are the drivers of a $12 billion per year outdoor recreation industry in Arizona that supports more than 100,000 jobs (more than the aerospace and tech sectors combined).

If Arizona takes control of federal public lands, Arizona takes the management burdens as well as the benefits. Wildfire management alone costs the United States Departments of Interior and Agriculture approximately $6 million per year in Arizona. In a bad fire year, those costs can easily exceed hundreds of millions of dollars. Just ask Governor Newsom. This is one reason that former Governor Hull vetoed a bill seeking to take over federal public lands, writing, “...I believe there is a significant and unaccounted for fiscal impact associated [with taking federal public lands, including the] potential liability cost the state could be assuming”.

We’ve seen this land grab attempt before in Arizona, and Arizonans have been clear and consistent that we like our public lands. In 2012, Arizonans rejected this idea at the ballot box by a 68% margin. Former Governors Ducey and Hull both vetoed similar ill-conceived bills from the state legislature. But some Arizona legislators and County Supervisors refuse to accept the will of the people. It’s time–again–to remind them that we cherish our public lands and outdoor access in Arizona; we want to preserve that access for future generations, and we want them to stop with this silliness and get on with real work benefiting the people of Arizona rather than special interests.