CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Gov. Matt Mead and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a deal Monday under which the Interior Department would buy a square mile of state land inside Grand Teton National Park for $46 million, a big step toward ensuring the pristine property remains in public hands.
Under the deal, Congress would appropriate $23 million toward the purchase price. The Grand Teton National Park Foundation and National Park Foundation would provide the rest and have raised $5 million toward that goal, according to Interior.
The sagebrush-covered property in Jackson Hole, owned by Wyoming since statehood, offers a wide view of the iconic Teton Range. The land never became part of the busy park in western Wyoming despite being surrounded by park land on all sides.
The sale, along with the potential sale of one other square-mile piece of state land in the park, would need to be completed by the end of this year. Otherwise the state could put the land up for sale at a public auction.
“I am not alone in the belief that commercial development of these lands is inconsistent with the natural values of the area,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a release.
A growing movement in Western states including Wyoming seeks to wrest control of federal lands from the federal government, not the other way around.
But Wyoming for years has wanted the Interior Department to buy or trade for its land in Grand Teton. The problem: While Wyoming could, and did, lease the land for cattle grazing, the revenue was a pittance compared to the land’s value.
Revenue from the land and other school-trust parcels in Wyoming go to public education. “We have a duty to realize the greatest benefit from state lands for Wyoming schools - we aren’t currently doing that with these tracts. This sale would be good for Wyoming,” Mead said in a release.
In 2010, Gov. Dave Freudenthal went so far as to threaten to sell to the highest bidder. Federal officials within months agreed to a $107 million deal under which Interior would buy all state land within the park, totaling more than two square miles, in four phases over three years.
The first two sales of inconsequential mineral rights for $2,000 in 2012, and 86 acres of state land for $16 million later that year, went through as planned. Federal officials in 2014 missed a deadline to buy the section covered by Monday’s announcement.
Instead, federal and state officials began negotiating a possible swap for federal land elsewhere in the state.
This latest agreement also could apply to a remaining square-mile piece of state land on the eastern boundary of Grand Teton. Interior originally agreed to buy that property for $46 million by the end of 2015.
State land inholdings are just one of Grand Teton’s unusual legal features. The compromise legislation that established Grand Teton to its modern boundaries in 1950 also allows cattle grazing and an annual public elk hunt.
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