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Public Lands Rebellion
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Geographer John Wright once wrote that land tenure in the American West is a Darwinian struggle, meaning that “places are best seen as shifting stages where the exercise of power and resistance to it vie for dominance. The matter of land tenure will always form the spatial musculature of this fractious region.”1 Land tenure conflicts take on a distinctive character in the West precisely because they often focus on public lands, and have coalesced periodically into collective challenges, or rebellions, against federal authority. Historian William Graf describes some of the most significant early rebellions. The first focused on the adequacy of land grant authorities and the need for irrigation, and it ended with the General Revision Act of 1891. The second dealt with forested lands, particularly after presidents in the 1890s and 1900s reserved millions of acres of what we now call national forests in the West, and it ended around the time of the Weeks Act of 1911. The third focused on grazing land and mineral rights, and it calmed considerably after the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.2 The last three rebellions—the Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1982), the War for the West (1990–1999), and what I’ll call the Patriot Rebellion (2009– 2016)—fit into the historical pattern of conflict, but they also reveal an important evolution in the political geography of public lands. Whereas the Sagebrush Rebellion was a regional conflict rooted in states’ rights and waged by those with material interests in public lands and resources, the Patriot Rebellion was a national challenge rooted in states’ rights, gun rights, private property rights, and even religious expression, waged by a broad, national coalition of conservatives. Through this evolution, conservative westerners have gained national support and resources to defend their interests, but it has come at a cost.
The Sagebrush Rebellion The Sagebrush Rebellion erupted in the late 1970s in response to the environmental movement and its expanding influence in public lands law and management.3 For example, in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), Congress declared for the first time that the
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