A resolution in the Wyoming Senate that would have asked Congress to turn over nearly all federal land in the state is now dead.
If the resolution’s sponsors had their way, over 30 million acres — about half of Wyoming’s total area including Grand Teton National Park and the Bridger-Teton National Forest — would have been transferred to the state.
The resoulution made headlines, but Aaron Weiss, the Deputy Director at the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation advocacy group, says it was never likely to change policy.
KHOL’s Dante Filpula Ankney spoke with Weiss, who says it’s likely not the last time a similar resolution will be up for debate, especially with Trump in office, and the message it sends is threatening to public lands across the West.
Editors Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.
DFA: I wonder if you could describe, what is this resolution?
AW: It is the same standard land grab nonsense that we have seen from any number of states and antigovernment extremists over the years, basically denying the federal government’s authority to own and manage the national public lands that all Americans love. And as I understand it, in Wyoming, in this case, they’re going after everything except for Yellowstone. So even like Grand Teton National Park, they think should belong just to Wyoming, and that’s just bonkers.
DFA: And if it made its way through the House and the Senate, if it was passed by both and signed by the Governor. What would it what would it actually do?
AW: Absolutely nothing. It’s a resolution. It’s basically like me standing up at the top of the Grand Teton and saying, “this mountain belongs to me now.” It would carry the same legal weight. It’s absolutely meaningless. So all this is a messaging bill. But the message is really disturbing when you get into what they would like to do or what the implications would be if anyone took them seriously.
DFA: You talk about the message here. The resolution “demands equal footing.” Is this a phrase you’ve heard before?
AW: It’s a phrase that anti-public lands folks like to point to, that they claim means something. There is a doctrine. It’s not even written into the Constitution, but there’s a doctrine known as the ‘equal footing doctrine’ that says that when states are admitted to the union, they’re admitted on the same legal grounds. It has nothing to do with public lands. The equal footing doctrine does not apply to public lands. It has never been applied to public lands. But these antigovernment extremists just go in and say, well, we think it should apply to public lands in a way that we’re going to invent or define here, but there is no legal meaning.
DFA: How legitimate is this resolution?
AW: It’s completely illegitimate. It’s based on a bizarre reading of the Constitution that has been challenged in court over and over and over again, going back literally to the Civil War era. Folks have challenged this clause in the Constitution and they’ve lost every single time. We’ve gone to court over and over again. And the courts up and down, including the Supreme Court, have said Congress is the ultimate arbiter when it comes to public lands. Article IV, Section 3 says exactly what it says, and anyone trying to read something else into it can go take a hike. So that’s what the legislature is trying to do here saying, “well, we disagree with 150-plus years of Supreme Court precedent, so please take us seriously this time.”
DFA: You mentioned 100 years and this resolution has been challenged several times. Why do you think the Wyoming legislature is challenging it now? Is this something you’re seeing in other places as well?
AW: Well, we’ve seen various attempts over the years, most recently in Utah, where they passed a transfer of Public Lands Act back in 2014, demanding the same thing. And Utah has gone on to burn a pile of taxpayer money, several million dollars over the years on pointless legal arguments trying to accomplish the same thing. And the Supreme Court once again just tossed out Utah’s lawsuit where Utah was demanding ownership and management of millions of acres of public land within the state. And the Supreme Court didn’t even comment on it. They just told the state of Utah to take a hike. So it’s in that same vein. If Wyoming legislators were foolish enough to try to follow Utah down that same lawsuit road, they would burn a similar pile of money, but not get any further.
DFA: I’m just thinking about all the headlines I’ve seen since this resolution was introduced. And, it sounds big. It sounds huge, right? Hand Grand Teton National Park to the state of Wyoming. It’s been catching people’s attention, including mine. But I wonder, what you think people should take away from this resolution?
AW: I think they need to take away what the threat is and really understand that this fight that happened over the Kelly Parcel, which was 640 acres of land at risk of having trophy homes for billionaires on the edge of one of our national treasures. And it took everything that the last legislature had in order to get that over the finish line and to protect just that single parcel from trophy homes. And if this legislature got its way, well, all of that is gone. The Kelly Parcel belongs to the state again. All of Grand Teton belongs to the state again. None of that is protected. And the state of Wyoming could not afford to manage and protect those lands. All of a sudden, the state of Wyoming is on the hook for all of the mine cleanup costs. All of a sudden, Wyoming taxpayers are on the hook for fighting every single acre of wildfire in the state. One bad wildfire would bankrupt the state of Wyoming. And these legislators know that. They know that the inevitable outcome here is that Wyoming would have to sell off these lands to millionaires and billionaires in order to even afford to manage what was left. And that’s the end game. It’s not land protection, It’s land sell-off. That’s where this would go if, for some horrible reason, they would succeed. So while the resolution itself may be silly or pointless, the threat that it poses and the implications there truly are dire.
