The Sagebrush Rebellion is set to return.
For anyone who has forgotten, the Sagebrush Rebellion grew out of long-simmering animosity in the US West over what tends to be seen there as federal oppression through land control.
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 galvanized the sentiment by asserting that the federal government holds public land in perpetual trust.
Westerners see that as perpetual poverty because federal land management has evolved into a tool for resisting activities, including resource development, essential to economic growth.
The Sagebrush Rebellion peaked in 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president. It faded in 1983 with the resignation of controversial Interior Sec. James Watt.
Since then, the Sagebrush Rebellion has given way to the "wise-use movement," which focuses on property rights and sounds less like a range war.
The movement lost national attention in 1996 after a district court ruled that the federal government, not the state of Nevada, owns and controls the 93% of 18,000-sq-mile Nye County not owned by individuals.
But the issue remains fresh in the West, where the federal government owns more than half the land of Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Alaska and great portions of Wyoming and Colorado.
Because much pressure to blockade development comes from liberal politicians in the East, where federal landholdings are negligible, the conflict always has had a hard regional edge.
On Feb. 5, in a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that edge got harder.
The subject was the nomination by President George W. Bush of William G. Myers III, now Interior Department solicitor, to fill a vacancy on a notoriously liberal federal court in San Francisco.
In the hearing, opponents slammed the nominee's private-practice career representing western-state cattle ranchers and miners in issues involving federal land.
"He has dedicated most of his career to advocating for mining and cattle industry interests that opposed laws protecting the environment," said one prominent Democrat.
A smoldering rebellion might flare anew as westerners learn that the committee member disparaging their livelihoods in this manner is none other than Sen. Edward Kennedy of privately owned Massachusetts.
(Online Feb. 6, 2004; author's e-mail: [email protected])
