“This research shows how the land transfer movement would both send our state’s economy into a tailspin by driving up grazing costs 1,600%, harming our $5.4 billion recreation tourism economy and adding a conservatively estimated $8 billion burden on local taxpayers. The impacts would be unsustainable and lead to the inevitable: Montana’s cherished public lands would be sold off to private interests.”

A new report released today documents the financial implications of transferring federal public lands to state control as “staggering and disproportionately impactful for a rural state with large swaths of national public lands.” The report by John Tubbs was released in conjunction with a diverse group of public lands advocacy organizations outlines the impacts of a federal land transfer with the staggering analysis that Montana taxpayers could face a conservatively estimated $7.9 billion hit over the next 20 years.’’ John Tubbs has decades of experience in land management at the state and federal level as former DNRC Water Resources Administrator, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, with the U.S. Department of the Interior, and former DNRC Director for Montana.