"Public lands in Arkansas are the great equalizer. A place where a millionaire and a poor man can share a cup of coffee, a tree, and a conversation. They're a place where all the gadgets money can buy can't replace the knowledge gained by hard work and patience."
-- Morgan Harris, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers
[linespace]
Question: When is public land no longer public?
Answer: When it's been sold into private ownership.
Q: Are there legitimate reasons for selling public land or using it for different purposes than its original intent and declared use?
A: Maybe. Maybe not.
Q: Who should decide?
A: The owners (the public) or their representatives.
Q: When does this process fail?
A: When a tossed salad of legal minutia and layers of bureaucracy shut the public out of the public's business.
We in Northwest Arkansas have our own problems, but an issue in northeast Arkansas about public land near Colt, located between Wynne and Forest City, could happen anywhere in the state or country.
Part of the lands in the Pine Tree Research Station, owned by the University of Arkansas and deemed "surplus," have been for sale for a year. Of approximately 11,300 acres the university's Agriculture Division owns there, 6,300 acres are not being used for active research projects for row crops, forestry and wildlife. The university wants the almost $18 million of sale revenue for other uses, and has executed a contract with Lobo Farms LLC (or the investors behind the LLC) for that amount. But this saga isn't over. ("Keep University of Arkansas Pine Tree WDA Public" is on Facebook.)
At the March 2020 Zoom meeting of the U of A's Board of Trustees, their vote to sell zoomed under the radar of the press, and even worse, past the legislators from that northeast Arkansas neck of the woods. Sometime in July, when a hunter was denied his usual permit, feathers hit the fan in the flatland. Told the land was being sold so his permit wouldn't matter, that one fellow woke up state legislators and the entire neighborhood of northeastern Arkansas' hunters and fishermen. It was then the entanglement of who's-really-in-charge of public land sales began. Now at least 3 bills spawned from this issue are in the legislature, SB538, HB1694, and SB447.
Considering the public outcry to this proposed sale, perhaps the agri educators should reconsider their touted forestry, waterfowl and wetland management, and wildlife education programs as perfect for the Pine Tree location. In addition, they are sitting on thousands of acres of the very kind of land our country needs to be preserving for regenerative environmental defense against climate change. "Kiss the Ground" (on Netflix) clearly illustrates how "smart" farming sequesters carbon. Dumb farming releases carbon. It makes no sense at this point in our global dilemma to lose control of vital land functions and acreage to the whims of private dealings.
We, the public, have no way of knowing or controlling what smart or dumb private landowners will do to that land, nor to whom they will sell it next, or if it will be divided into thousands of little pieces. Having any say about most land use means first we must own the land. Probably most of northeast Arkansas residents thought the state's citizens already did own it because their taxpayer-supported state university had held it for 61 years. Generations have grown up hunting game there to help feed their families in a county where almost a third of the population is below the poverty level.
The major sticking point is that when the university bought the land from the U.S. Forest Service in 1960, there was a deed restriction stating, "the land shall be used for public purposes, and if at any time said land ceases to be so used, the estate conveyed shall immediately revert to and become revested to the grantor." It takes an act of Congress to change that unless (the big "unless") there is a waiver of that restriction. Our state's Congressional delegation must hear, "No waivers!" from us, and our state legislators must hear that although the university was not required to hold public hearings, they still should have heard from the state's citizens, a situation Senate Bill 358 by Sen. Ronald Caldwell of Wynne is designed to correct. In it is the statement, "transparency in the actions of state entities is necessary to preserve the trust of the citizens and preserve the public peace."
Amen to that!