around the Southlands: The point of public lands
Economy v. ecology
For people who nerd out about public land, big news hit this month: “The U.S. just changed how it manages a tenth of its land,” as the Washington Post phrased its headline.
All we really need for this newsletter is the tl;dr, which is that the Bureau of Land Management has released a new rule allowing the agency to lease its lands to groups who want to conserve or restore the land. Federal lands are officially managed for “multiple uses,” and the government currently leases land to companies who want to extract oil and other minerals. The idea of the new rule is meant to make conservation a “use” of equal stature. That’s caused a bit of controversy out west—where, as the Post puts it, some Republicans see it as a “land grab.”1
The whole kerfuffle will have little impact in the South, since while the BLM manages a tenth of America’s landmass, almost none of its land is in the South.2 The federal government has almost no land down here, because the South was sold off to private owners before we decided land was worth saving as empty and wild.
But I’ve found that all most all the controversies that simmer in lands out west have their analog here in the South, too. Most of our public lands are national forests—often bought back from private owners who had razed them to nearly nothing. So the extraction we do is not about minerals, but about the trees themselves. Timber is perhaps the foremost crop of the South, and it’s harvested on both private and public land.
The U.S. Forest Service set a national “timber target” for how much wood will come out of its forests, which is then apportioned across the agency’s various regions. Some environmentalists believe this commitment to logging has overshadowed ecological priorities. And they’re suing: The Southern Environmental Law Center is the lead plaintiff in a case claiming these targets fail to consider the cumulative impacts of logging.3
The case focuses on, among other sites, the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina—which is becoming something of a hotspot for such legislation, targeted in two other similar suits, as the Carolina Public Press reports. Among the evidence that the SELC cites is an email the nonprofit found, through public records requests, in which a USFS biologist writes to a silviculturist
indicating a timber harvest project paid for with Forest Service funds to improve wildlife habitat had “no benefit to wildlife.” Instead, the project was implemented “to meet timber targets.”
It’s a damning statement, but we’ll have to watch and see whether the courts see the timber targets as a violation of law.
🏞 Imperiled Southern rivers
While I tend to think that American Rivers’s annual list of “endangered rivers” is mostly a savvy attempt to garner press coverage, it’s nonetheless an interesting overview of the state of our waterways. So it’s notable that four of ten rivers on this year’s list are in Southern states, including the perpetually threatened Yazoo and Sunflower rivers.
🐺 Margaritaville v. the last of the red wolves
There is something distinctly American about wild critters being sacrificed to make way for cheeseburgers in paradise. [Texas Monthly]
🚀 The Texas land swaps
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has plans to give 43 acres of a state park along its coastline to SpaceX—in the chance to get 477 acres that SpaceX hasn’t yet purchased but says it will. As the Texas Observer reports, giving up or giving away land
is nothing new for the state’s park commissioners. Over the last 25 years, commission members have agreed to swap, lease, give up, or give away thousands of acres of public lands, according to records and news accounts.
And this despite the fact that Texas voters recently approved of a billion-dollar endowment meant to expand state parks.
🚧 The cicadas are coming
At some point in the next few days, the New York Times tells us, a great horde of cicadas will
use their forelegs to tunnel out from the earth, their beady red eyes looking for a spot where they can peacefully finish maturing. A few days after they emerge and molt, the males will start buzzing in an effort to find a mate, a slow-building crescendo of noise that as a chorus can be louder than a plane.
What’s special this year is that for the first time since Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, an Illinois brood (which appears every 17 years) and the “Great Southern Brood” (13 years) will coincide. So across a swath of the Southeast, expect to see buzzing for the next six weeks or so. (And if you have precious plants, you might want to wrap them in netting.) (But if you’re hungry: here’s some cicada snacks.)
✨ In other insect news
The lottery to see the annual synchronous firefly display in Great Smoky National Park opened on Friday. Viewings—if there are any left now—will be held from June 3 to June 10.
Quick links
Biden commits to wetlands
Corals are bleaching—again
Deepwater Horizon, still a disaster
Death and the Alabama coal mine
An alligator musuem in New Orleans
Flamingos make their Everglades return
One Florida tuna, 888 pounds
Bikepacking East Texas
To understand why it’s controversial, see my recent profile in Mother Jones of the American Stewards of Liberty, the nonprofit think tank that’s leading the charge. I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned the piece in this newsletter, since they have little presence in the South, but it’s useful background for understanding the tensions around public lands.
Thanks for the Texas links! I've been tracking that Galveston one for a few months now and have been meaning to write a bit about it whenever I get to my Galveston essay(s).