Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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Federal Land Policy and Management

Act of 1976

The Federal Lan d Policy and Management Act o f 1976 (FLPMA), sometimes

known as the Bureau of Land Management’s “Organic Act,” deﬁned the mission

of the BLM and established guidelines for the management of the public lands in

perpetuity.

For most of the 200 years prior to the passage of FLPMA, the federal

government pursued an aggressive policy of disposal. The General Land Ofﬁce,

the predecessor of t he BLM created in 1812, disposed over one billion acres of

public lands over a 134-year per iod under f ederal land laws—and sometimes

famously did so with incompetence, corruption, and the predisposition to develop-

ment over conservation.

The move to retain land in public trust began with the creation of Yellowstone

National Park in 1872 and forest reserves under the General Land Reform Act of

1891. The federal government also retained lands perceived to have little or no

value, which could not be disposed to states or private ownership. As it had done

in national parks and forest lands, Congress took a major step toward prov iding

administrative oversight of the range lands when, in 1934, it placed the range lands

in grazing districts under the management of the Grazing Service. In 1946, the

Grazing Service and GLO combined to form the Bureau of Land Management in

the Department of the Interior.

In its ﬁrst two decades, the BLM managed the public lands much like its prede-

cessor: with a single-minded devotion to the economic use of the land’s resources.

In the postwar era, however, a new land ethic began to emerge that placed value on

the public la nds beyond their economic uses. FLMPA, passe d by Congres s on

October 21, 1976 (Public Law 94-579), in response to recommendations of the

Public Land Law Review Commission, reﬂected the new emphasis on balancing

resource development with conservation and preservation. Essentially, the act

established guidelines and policies for management of the public lands—and

provided the teeth to enforce them. Notably, it stated that the public lands would

be managed by the federal government in perpetuity, unless “it is determined that

disposal of a particular parcel will serve the national interest.” The management of

the public lands would be based on principles of sustained yield, multiple use, and

conservation “in a manner that will protect the quality of scientiﬁc, scenic, histori-

cal, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archeo-

logical values.” The act called for periodic inventorying of the publ ic lands and

resources, planning coordination with other state and federal planning activities,

1089

and the role of Congress and the secretary of the interior in the designation of

public lands for speciﬁc purposes or administration of public land statutes. It also

established the PILT system (payment in lieu of taxes), which gave states money

they would have received in taxes had they owned the land.

FLPMA is p robably the sing le most hated federal land law in the West. Even

today, many westerners refer to it with disdain and, with the environmental

movement, the event that heightened conﬂicts between traditional resource devel-

opers and environmentalists on the public lands. Conversely, others consider the

act a landmark legislation that has shifted the management of the public la nds—

particularly those managed by the BLM—more in line with the prevailing values

and attitudes of the American people.

—Jedediah S. Rogers

Further Reading

Muhn, J., and H. R. Stuart. Opportunity and Challenge: The Story of BLM. Washington, DC:

U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce, 1988.

Public Land Law Review Commission. One Third of the Nation’s Land. Washington, DC:

U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce, 1970.

U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Ofﬁce of the Solicitor.

Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, As Amended. Washington, DC:

U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce, 2001.

Public Lands

The public lands, or public domain, are lands held in common by the federal

government for the beneﬁt of the American people. The United States owns and

manages about a third of the nation’s landmass, and more than 90 percent is found

in the 11 western states and Alaska. The percentage of public lands in the

continental western states is highest in Nevada, where 86 percent is owned by

the government, not including Indian tribal lands. The Bure au o f Land Manage-

ment (BLM) a nd U.S. Forest Service (USFS) manage the vast major ity of these

lands—40 percent, or 258 million acres, by the BLM alone. Not included in the

federal public lands system are about 45 million acres of “school trust” lands

owned and managed by the states.

The current size and administration of public lands in the United States devel-

oped piec emeal, since the original colonies ceded their western terr itories to the

new federal government beginning in 1780. The Land Ordinance of 1785 devel-

oped a uniform survey of lands into a grid system known as townships, which could

then be parceled and sold. The problem was that although rectangular surveys may

1090 Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981)

have worked in the low-lying, wooded East, they were ill suited in the more hetero-

geneous West. Likewise, federal land policies of disposal oft times neglected the

physical realities of the region. The Homestead Act of 1862 offered 160 acres of

“free” land to settlers wi lling to try their hand at farming, but the acreage was

hardly enough to create productive, self-sustaining farming in the arid West.

Since the nation’s founding, the government has disposed of over a billion acres of

public lands, primarily in the eastern United States. The government also disposed

millions of acres in the West, but there, where the lands were less fertile and more

hostile to settlement, millions of acres remained in public ownership, either because

settlers found them undesirable or because the government set them aside for protec-

tion. Congress created national parks, but the Antiquities Act of 1906 gave the

president executive power to set aside national monuments without congressional

approval. Established in 1916, the National Park Service manages the parks and the

majority of the nation’s monuments. The USFS, created in 1902, is in charge of the

nation’s forested lands, and the BLM, the successor to the General Land Ofﬁce, man-

ages the nation’s range lands. The Wilderness Act of 1964 gives Congress the author-

ity to set aside “roadless” areas that would be managed “in such manner as will leave

them unimpaired for future use as wilderness.” In 1976, after nearly 200 years of pol-

icies designed to dispose of the public lands, Congress passed the Federal Land Pol-

icy and Management Act, which v irtually reversed the l ong-standing policy of

disposal and stated that the public domain would remain public in perpetuity.

People past and present value the public lands for wealth, work, spiritual

renewal, and play. Because different people value the public lands for different

reasons, questions will continue to be raised about how government can best nego-

tiate competing demands for resources and accommodate priorities and alloca-

tions based on changing societal values and needs.

—Rolando Avila

Further Reading

Carstensen, Vernon, ed. The Public Domain: Studies in the History of the Public Domain.

Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963.

McKinney, Matthew, and William Harmon. The Western Conﬂuence: A Guide to Gov-

erning Natural Resources. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004.

Reagan, Ronald (1911–2004)

Republican preside nt Ronald Wilson Reaga n (1981–1989) was an optimist

with a great faith in the American spirit of freedom. Reagan believed that

America’s best days were still ahead if the federal government would reduce

Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981) 1091

restrictions on states, businesses, and the environment. A couple of weeks after

Reagan’s presidential election in 1980, the L eague for the Advancement of

States’ Equal Rights (LASER) sponsored a three-day conference intended to

drum up support for the Sagebrush Rebellion, and President-elect Reagan sent

a telegram to the conferenc e announcing his w illingness to ﬁnd a “Sage brush

solution.”

The Sagebrush Rebels wanted states to take over federally owned land within

their boarders and utilize it for their own beneﬁt. The Rebels, who had been active

since 1975, reveled in Reagan, their new ally. John L. Harmer, lieutenant governor

of California un der Reagan and the head of LASER, told reporters that Reagan’s

endorsement meant that he was now sure to get better results. While the rebels

rejoiced, environmentalists trembled when they heard the news. They feared the

worst. They beli eved that federally protected western lands in 12 s tates were in

danger of being destroyed.

However, Reagan failed to see a cause for alarm. After all, he thought that he

had left a good record on the environmentasgovernorofCalifornia.Infact,

Reagan consider ed himself a conservationist. He loved the outdoors. In spite of

his age, his favorite activities were to c lear brush, chop ﬁrewood, and go horse-

back riding on his 688-acre ranch. Reagan did not, however, consider himself a

preservationist. He believed that nature was there to be used for the beneﬁt of peo-

ple now living.

Reagan knew that, even though many people supported environmental causes,

most people set a higher priority on jobs and economic growth. He was convinced

that his resounding election and reelection gave him the peoples’ mandate for the

development of the sagebrush lands. In other words, Reagan supported the use of

land more than he supported the rebels. For example, in 1982, Reagan angered

rebels when he proposed selling 35 million acres of sagebrush land to the highest

bidder to raise money to reduce the national debt.

While critics accused Reagan of being naı

ve about environme ntal issues, he

accused environmentalists of being elitists who cared more about trees a nd ani-

mals than human life and American progress. He refused to set any limits, even

environmental, on America’s future. He ignored warnings of environmental

doom, because he believed that, if people were just allowed to be free, American

innovation would solve any problems that would arise. Throughout his

administration, Rea gan was able to defuse the movement for state ownership of

federal lands by signiﬁcantly reducing federal government restrictions and

allowing the use of these and other public lands for private oil drilling, timber,

grazing, and mining.

—Rolando Avila

1092 Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981)

Further Reading

Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion & Envi-

ronmental Politics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

Short, C. Brant. Ronald Reagan and the Public Lands: America’s Conservation Debates,

1979–1984. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989.

Watt, James G. (1938–)

When Ronald Reagan staged his successful 1980 presidential campaign, he built

his candi dacy on both conservative, small-government politics and an image as a

rough-and-tumbl e Western cowboy—the m odel of individualism. These two

aspects of his campaign gave h eart to the Sagebrush Rebels, raising hopes that

their goal of ending federal ownership over Western lands had found an ally. When

Reagan won the election, his ﬁrst steps seemed to indicate support for the rebels’

agenda. He appointed two people with known afﬁliations and sympathies for the

Rebel s to high positions: Anne Gorsuch Burford to head the Environme ntal Pro-

tection Agency, and perhaps his most controversial appointment: James G. Watt

to become secretary of the interior.

Watt had long been a supporter of the Sagebrush Rebellion, having built a

career as a staunch supporter of Western development. In 1969, he became deputy

assistant secretary of water and power development at the Department of the

Interior (DOI), and in 1976, he started his own group, the Mountain State s Legal

Foundation, to lend legal assistance to those attempting to assert individual or state

ownership over federal lands in the West, mostly oil, timber, and mineral develop-

ment companies. In 1980, when Watt became secretary of the interior, it was clear

that although he might not be able to change large, long-standing federal policies

that favored environmental protecti on, he would be able to interpret federal stat-

utes and rules in a much more sympathetic way toward those advocating for

greater Western development.

Environmentalists did not take Watt’s appointment lying down. Noting the con-

ﬂict of interest inherent in placing a pro-development advocate at the head of the

segment of the federal government changed with protecting the environment,

groups such as the Sierra Club and others started a “ Dump Watt” petition drive

aimed at ousting the new secretary. Watt responded by slashing funds for programs

that protected endangered species. The mission of the DOI changed from protec-

tion and conservation of resources to fast-tracking the expansion of development

of fe deral lands, with Watt going so far as to suggest the op ening of all f ederal

lands to resource extraction leases by the year 2000.

Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981) 1093

In the end, it was Watt’s inability to control what he said that forced him to re-

“a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple,” pressure mounted on the Reagan

administration to do something about Watt, with the Senate even drafting a resolu-

tion calling for his ﬁring. Although George W. Bush appointed Watt prote

Gale

Norton to head the DOI, Watt’s tenure as secretary has to be seen as a te mporary

interruption in the momentum supporting greater environmental protection.

—Steven L. Danver

Further Reading

Bratton, S. P. “The Ecotheology of James Watt.” Environmental Ethics 5 (Fall 1983):

225–236.

Cawley,R.McGreggor,Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and

Environmental Politics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

1094 Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981)

Los Angeles Uprising (1992)

Two events triggered the combination of uprising, protest s, indiscriminate

violence, and generalized looting that struck Los Angeles between April 29 and

May 4 , 1992. One was the beating and arrest of Rodney King on March 2, 1991.

The other was the trial of f our of the 20 or so police ofﬁcers present. Like all

real-life incidents, the arrest and trial were more complex than any viewpoint in

the political debate surrounding them.

King was driving under the inﬂuence of alcohol at least 80 miles per hour,

ignored direction to pull over, and led police on a chase. Few have questioned that

there were grounds for a trafﬁc stop, or an arrest. A portion of the stop was

recorded on videotape by a man who lived about 90 feet away. Almost every one

who saw the tape—civilians, news reporters, police supervisors in and out of Los

Angeles—foun d the beat ing viewed on tape reprehensible and unjustiﬁed. The

four ofﬁcers charged with criminal misconduct testiﬁed that the tape only showed

part of what they had to deal with.

By all accounts, Kin g was intoxicated, but there is little testimony that he was

violent. He danced around, rolled on the ground, did not respond quickly to orders.

State patrol ofﬁcer Melanie Singer, who initiated the chase, testiﬁed at the trial that

she was shocked by the way Los Angeles city ofﬁcers, after joining the chase when

King left the freeway, beat King into submission. Stacey Koon, the L.A. police ser-

geant who took charge, said he was professionally disgusted that Singer drew her

pistol, when initially demandi ng that King lie down on the ground . Koon consid-

ered that dangerous and unnecessary.

The largest number of baton blows directed at King came from Ofﬁcer

Laurence Powell, who at the beginning of his shift had failed a test for proper

delivery of power strokes. By all accounts, he did a lot of damage to King without

securing compliance. While Powell says he responded in fear for his life when

King charged at him, King testiﬁed that he ran toward Powell with his hands up,

to show he had no gun. Most of the tape showed King lying on the ground, appa-

rently dod ging blows from the baton and occasional kic ks. King himself testiﬁed

that he wondered, “What did I do to deserve this?” and that when it ended, he “felt

like a crushed can.”

All ofﬁcers denied racial bias in their treatment of King. King’s attorney, Steven

Lerman, initially agreed, saying the beating was an extreme example of the use of

1095

force after a high-speed chase. Later examination of Powell’s police communica-

tions raised some question. He had described intervention in a large party as “right

out of Gorillas in the Mist,” to which another ofﬁcer replied “Let me guess who be

the parties.” Koon, however, was liked and respected by African American ofﬁ-

cers, and there was no evidence of racial bias by Powell’s trainee, Timothy Wind.

Theodore Briseno, the fourth ofﬁcer charged, had bee n suspended in 1987 for

using force on a handcuffed child abuse suspect, but was critical of the treatment

of King even before it was known that the beating had been taped. The jury arrived

at one conclusion; almost everyone else, on the street or in public ofﬁce, expected

another.

Nobody in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992, was prepared for all four police ofﬁ-

cers facing criminal charges in the beating o f Rodney King to wal k o ut with no

convictions. The po lice department was not prepared for it; neither were the bit-

terly d ivided ethnic communities in Los Angeles, civil rights and community

organizations, the news media, the state of California, or the public across the

United States. Everyone had seen a videotape of police beating King on March 2,

1991, played on TVover and over, for a year before the trial. Everyone expected at

least some ofﬁcers would be convicted of at least some charges. The trial had been

moved to suburban Simi Valley, but even there, many people expected convictions.

1096 Los Angeles Uprising (1992)

People examine the smoldering aftermath of the Los Angeles Riots in South Central Los

Angeles. (Ted Soqui/Corbis)

When the news came that Koon, Wind, and Briseno had been found not guilty

on all charges, while the jury had been unable to agree on a verdict for one charge

against Powell, the respon se was unorganized, spontaneous, and outrag ed. Initial

police response was disorganized and, in many respects, nonexistent. Two imme-

diate centers of loud, angry, but relatively peaceful protests drew ethnically diverse

crowds, gathering spontaneously on April 29: the site at Hansen Dam Park where

King had been be aten and arre sted, and the Parker Center, downtown police

headquarters.

Protesters at Parker Center introduced the slogan “No Justice, No Peace” for

which the entire uprising is remembered. Eventually, someone set ﬁre to a kiosk,

motivating police to move their line pushing protesters away. Some moved west

toward City Hall and the Los Angeles Times building, breaking windows along

the way; others set ﬁre to palm trees along the Hollywood freeway. The same eve-

ning, over 2,000 people came to a protest meeting at First African Methodist

Episcopal Church. All these protests were soon submerged in news of more lurid

and violent events in South Central, Hoover Connection, Compton, and Pico-Union.

Along Normandie Avenue, honking horns up and down the street, shouting out-

side a police station, gave rise to incidents of men with baseball bats smashing

windows of passing cars, then crowds on corners throwing rocks. A little after

4:00 p.m., at Florence and Dalton, several me n walked out of a corner store with

bottles of beer, swinging one at the head of the storeowner trying to stop them,

remarking, “This is for Rodney King.” Responding to reports of motorists attacked

and ofﬁcers needing backup at the corner of Florence and Normandie, 30 to 35

ofﬁcers f aced a rock-throwing crowd of more than 200, when police lieutenant

Michael Moulin ordered evacuation of the area. Several ofﬁcers said afterward

that they disagreed with the order.

The police department’s Metropolitan division, the usual backup for a situation

out of control, had 233 ofﬁcers, 76 of them off duty at 6:00 p.m. Of the remaining

157, 46 were in the San Fernando Valley, far from the scene, and another 29 were

at the Parker Center downtown. This left 82 for deployment in South Central. No

contingency plans had been made for any outbreak. Police chief Daryl Gates spent

the evening at a fundraiser advocating a “no” vote on Proposition F, a ballot mea-

sure to reform the police department. Nobody in any police chain of command

took initiative to block off either streets becoming dangerous for motorists or free-

way exits; the state highway patrol belatedly blocked some exits.

Outside Los Angeles, the iconic image of the uprising was another videotape:

several young men at the corner of Florence and Normandie, pulling Reginald

Denny from the cab of his concrete truck and beating him with ﬁsts, kicks, and a

cinderblock until he was rescued by four residents in the area. That video was

taken from a news helicopter overhead, where Bob and Marika Tur urgently

Los Angeles Uprising (1992) 1097