[Editor's Note: This is part 5 of the Grant County Commission work session on June 22, 2021.]

By Mary Alice Murphy

The final presentation from Catron County Commissioner Haydn Forward at the Grant County Commission work session on June 22, 2021, concerns an executive order made by President Joe Biden on January 27, 2021. The order is "on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad." Forward said he would focus on the so-called 30X30 plan, because it proposes to spend $1 billion in funding from the Wyss Foundation to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030.

District 4 Commissioner Billy Billings said he sponsored the item after being contacted by constituents having concerns about the proposed 30X30 plan.

Forward lives just across the county line into Catron County. "If I lived 20 yards farther south, I would be a citizen of Grant County. That's how close my ties are to Grant County."

He said this is a relatively new presentation, with relatively new information, he said. "Please forgive me for any bumps in the road."

Forward noted that the executive order lists the items of concern as foreign policy and global impacts (G20), domestic clean energy in buildings and vehicles, oil and gas development, coal and power plants and the 30X30 plan. He said the list isn't prioritized. "I suggest you choose your own priorities and determine what the impact is going to be of the climate crisis. Where does the 30X30 plan fit in the impact?"

Section 216 of the executive order addresses the 30X30 plan. "I want to emphasize that you will have a seat at the table. The decisions will be dictated by local governments and stakeholders. So, your position is much more important than you think it might be. Section B(1) is interesting. In the 30X30 they are talking about protecting the land. But in this B(1) section, they are talking about forest management practices to decrease wildfire risk. That is obviously an important issue, particularly out west. When you talk about conservation and reducing wildfire risk, to me that means thinning, roads and possibly grazing. It could mean a lot of things. I will reference FLPMA, the Federal Lands Policy Management Act, later in the presentation."

What is the definition of the 30X30 plan. The Wyss Foundation has allocated $1 billion to achieve the foundation's goal which is to preserve 30 percent of the planet in a natural state by the year 2030, by creating and expanding protected areas, including land and waters. "Some conservation groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife, say that makes sense. We're struggling now with what does it mean to conserve."

Forward said the Sierra Club, in its 30X30 Activist Toolkit says that conserve means a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on public lands and preserving roadless forest lands. "That equates to wilderness. But now we're dancing with moratorium and protecting, instead of conserving. So, we're getting down to what the definition is of the 30X30 plan."

He said after spending time doing research by going to the gold standard, the Department of the Interior public land information, "what I could come up with is that currently the federal government owns 700 million acres and that is approximately 31 percent of the entire U.S. land base. In broad terms that means that all those federally owned acres would need to be protected from any development. "Obviously, they can't flip that into the 30X30 plan, with Washington D.C. or NASA. It's lands that are being used. I do want to point out that Defenders of Wildlife do say that wilderness and national parks meet the standards of the 30X30 Plan. "So basically, they are saying that 30X30 plan lands need to be wilderness or national parks. They are saying the multiple-land-use will not meet the standards. So again, what does it mean? How will the plan work? How will be achieve 700 acres? Certainly, we have a lot of federal land, particularly in national forests that could be manipulated into the 30X30 plan. But we have to be careful. The BLM (Bureau of Land Management) lands are protected by FLPMA, which dictates multiple land use, so they are out of the puzzle. So, we are dealing potentially with forest lands. You have heard the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the 2020 announcement of the Great American Outdoors Act, which allocated $900 million, almost $1 billion, to be spent annually on lot of different things, but 40 percent will be spent on federal land acquisition. You have to believe that part of the 30X30 will be acquiring new lands."

He then broke down the numbers "We know we will need about 700 million acres. Approximately 12 percent are being designated under preservation. To meet the 30 percent by 2030 will require about 616 million acres to be acquired. He said looking at the national map, it is clear that the vast majority of unprotected lands are in the 14 western states, and Alaska. What I did was take the 616 million and divide by 15, because clearly the 616 million aren't going to be taken from one or two states. That's 41 million acres per state in the western United States."

Forward said New Mexico is ranked No. 9 for the most public land, with 47.4 percent of the state being public land. With 33 counties, each county would have to come up with 1.2 million acres to put into the 30X30. "More than 50 percent of our lands are private lands. So, the truth is the allocation of 41 million acres will land on half our counties. I don't know what will happen in Grant County, but it is likely that the allocation will be more than 1.2 million acres. If you double that, that's 2.4 million acres which is almost the entire Gila National Forest. The Gila National Forest in most cases is falling under the multiple use law. So private property will have to be purchased at some point. The U.S. Mining Association isn't sure what to think of this, but they certainly don't like it. They know that private lands will have to be purchased, and that's taking future mining and future jobs out of their access. They are very concerned. I have no doubt that you in Grant County understand how much of your GDP is in mining. These are just some things that we need to consider. This is already happening in Jemez Springs, Sandoval County. The Land and Conservation Fund is in the process of purchasing 2100 acres of private land. It is coming right off the Sandoval County tax rolls. I don't know how much will be purchased in Grant County, but it will come off the tax rolls and will impact the gross receipts tax. There are some things we need to wrap our minds around with this 30X30 plan. "

He noted that the current maintenance backlog on public lands is $19.38 billion. The Great American Outdoors Act will use revenue from energy development to provide up to $1.9 billion a year to provide needed maintenance for critical facilities and infrastructure in the national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, recreation areas and American Indian schools. "If they buy more private land, that will need maintenance. There will be a perpetual increase in the maintenance deficit."

Forward said that the law does not say that purchases of private land must be discussed with the state or local governments. "Will there be hunting and fishing allowed on these public lands? We don't know. That's the struggle we're facing. Who defines what conservation is? There is too much yet to be established. We have six counties in New Mexico that have passed resolutions against the 30X30 plan. By the end of July, we will certainly see those numbers double. I hope Grant County will oppose the 30X30 plan, not because you oppose the idea, but because we need to know the risks associated with it before you can support a plan. We need to make sure that seat at the table is guaranteed."

He said he had a letter from the Farm and Livestock Bureau opposing the 30X30 plan that they wanted him to share with the commissioners. Forward also said that in the past week, the Heritage Waters Coalition, of which he is a founding member, "we have gone to some community events and have gathered well over 200 signatures to oppose the 30X30 plan until more information is gathered."

District 5 Commissioner Harry Browne said he had a few questions. "Will all the people that signed the petition acknowledge later that they signed it?"

"That's not a question I asked, commissioner," Forward said. "I hope they will."

Browne said they had that issue earlier with a petition from Heritage Waters. "There were a number of people who said they had not signed anything against Wild and Scenic."

Forward said that had been a membership action and "we did a forensic analysis on what happened. They did sign up under Facebook and we dropped the signatures into the Heritage Waters membership action, and it was five specific people. In the meantime, they had deleted their sign up on Facebook, so it was a strategic plan to show there was an issue with our membership. I can tell you that we have more than 4,000 members of Heritage Waters, including 12 resolutions. There is a lot of activity going on with Heritage Waters. And we had that issue with those five people on one occasion."

Browne said he hadn't seen the presentation, so hadn't had time to go over it. "I did ask county staff to print out the 24 pages of Biden's guidance that came out recently. One discrepancy I note is that much of our presentation focused on that there would need to be acquisition of land. Can you acknowledge that that is not the case?"

Forward said he could acknowledge that "we don't know what the case will be."

Browne alleged Forward made a lot of assertions as if they were facts, and among those are that "we would have to acquire some 600 odd million acres. I think that's wildly untrue."

Forward said if he gave the wrong impression, "I apologize. I'm not saying we need to acquire 600 million acres. I'm saying we need to manipulate that number of acres. I know a lot of Congressional activity wants an expansion of wilderness. Will some of that go into the 30X30 plan? I hope it does. I will change the word from acquire to manipulate."

Browne said he was glad that Forward would change the word, "because it's a scary word. It brings images of eminent domain. And that is absolutely not part of Biden's plan unless he is baldface lying. Biden and USDA Secretary Vilack have said that eminent domain is absolutely off the table. So that scare tactic needs to go away."

"I take issue with scare tactic," Forward said, and Browne rebutted that it was clearly a scare tactic.

Browne also said Forward had used the scare tactic of taking property off of tax rolls. "Are you aware that very little county revenue comes from much of the private land? A huge percentage is taxed at the grazing price."

Forward said he was aware—2 cents an acre.

"Very little tax revenue comes into the county from that vast majority of county land," Browne said. "So, when you say it comes off the tax rolls and have to rely on PILT, we probably agree completely on the unreliability of PILT, but not losing much unless the land that comes off the rolls is high value, and that is not likely."

Forward said it does remain to be seen. "The only example we have is the Jemez Ranch. I don't know if it's 2 cents an acre or $50 an acre. I appreciate your saying you don't know either. These very valuable lands that are adjacent to forest lands will be involved or not."

Browne said: "You're mixing two things. They are very expensive on the market. If they were valued at market value, that would be a true statement. There are ranches that sell for millions of dollars and pay only a few thousand dollars in taxes, almost nothing. Whereas the rest of us who don't have grazing, we pay the actual mill rate."

"I appreciate your position," Forward said. "I know of many. I'm exposed to some myself. My neighbors who have valuable land adjacent to the forest that are not being grazed and they are paying their fair share of property taxes."

Browne said he liked the idea of conservation easements, but "we don't know what that's going to look like. Right now, it's managed by a state agency, yet we're here talking about a federal program. I agree we need the answers to these questions. I believe that your asking us to pass a resolution opposing the idea is putting the cart before the horse. Why not just wait until we see what's going to happen? I would much rather watch the information come out and offer input into the process to see if we can form partnerships and end up with a win-win."

The next item was commissioner reports. Billings had no comments. Browne said he would be remote for the meetings in July and will hope to be able to call in.

The next work session is July 6 and the regular meeting July 8.