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6/25/2005
Rapid City Journal - Op-Ed; We can create a land legacy
- Curt Johnson, director of On Hand Economic Development in Miller and former commissioner of South Dakota School & Public Lands

Imagine this: South Dakota being the first state in the entire USA to possess a nationally designated prairie grasslands wilderness area. How could this be?

The idea originated from the Bush administration three years ago when the U.S. Forest Service released its final grasslands management plan. They recommended two areas for wilderness designation within the already federally owned and administered Buffalo Gap National Grassland in southwestern South Dakota. Local citizens built upon this recommendation and developed the Cheyenne River Valley Grasslands Heritage Proposal to protect portions of this public land as wilderness. They knew it could be done without disrupting the traditional ranching lifestyle or economics of those who have and will retain grazing permits in these areas.

Having served for more than a decade as commissioner of your school and public lands (which total more than 800,000 acres), I am very keen on this proposal and what it could mean to our state and our economy if legislated by Congress.

A vital component of business economics is marketing, and one of the strongest marketing strategies is to create a category in which you are first. While other states contain prairie grasslands, none has taken the bold step to make sure this unique type of land is fully and permanently protected from uses that would alter its character. South Dakota would be the first to call it wilderness and create a one-of-a-kind attraction for the entire nation, much different in appeal than coastal, wetland, desert, mountain or forest wilderness.

The state, counties, cities, chambers of commerce, and recreation and tourism entrepreneurs of all kinds would have a new attraction like no other to market.

Prairie grassland wilderness would clearly augment the existing draw of the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Badlands, Prairie Pothole Region and Missouri River in South Dakota's refreshing, uncrowded simplicity. Even without descriptive marketing phrases, "prairie grassland wilderness" alone conjures images of peaceful solitude and a rich, natural landscape heritage.

One group sure to appreciate such a wilderness is hunters, who spend $194 million in South Dakota each year. These proposed wilderness areas contain rich opportunities to pursue deer, antelope and upland game birds in quiet, wide-open space. Most hunters value nothing more than solitude for a high-quality hunting experience, free of intrusive motorized noise and sightings of many other hunters, even from a distance. Prairie grassland wilderness would offer prime conditions for hunters. Outfitters would benefit by being able to provide a primitive environment for their clients.

Wildland economic research has shown that employment, income and population growth occurs near designated wilderness areas. The higher-quality lifestyle amenity factor of wilderness attracts businesses and residents and is considered an economic dividend.

A basic principle applied to this dividend is that a resource's value increases as its supply diminishes. Increased scarcity means increased value. Remote, rugged and undeveloped wild places are gifts of nature that cannot be reproduced.

However, our pioneers over a century ago unwittingly believed the prairie was so interminably vast it could be used according to any and all wants and needs without ever diminishing into scarcity. To them it seemed infinite. Today we know that is not the case. What's left can still be plowed under, chopped up, roaded, mined and drilled.

These activities are appropriate in the right places; but expanses of undisturbed, rolling grassland as a permanent commodity depend on our having the foresight to secure a few portions of it intact, now.

"What a country chooses to save is what a country chooses to say about itself," said Mollie Beatty, former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director.

The same is true for states. South Dakotans right now have the opportunity to say something about ourselves and our state's legacy, creating economic opportunity at the same time. Let's do it while the opportunity still exists.