From The Colorado Springs Gazette (Ryan Maye Handy):
For many westerners, concerns over the future of water are as important as the economy and unemployment, according to results from Colorado College’s 2016 Conservation in the West poll.
The sixth annual State of the Rockies Project poll of thousands of residents in seven western states shows many people fear for the future of water in the West. The sentiment might come from a change in national economics and a rash of news about drought, said Eric Perramond, the director of CC’s State of the Rockies.
“I would say that the concerns for water use now equal and just barely exceed concern about unemployment. And that’s not unexpected given the economic recovery,” Perramond said. “(And) like most Americans, we tend to pay more attention when something is in our face.”
Conducted through phone calls to 2,800 people, the poll also gauged public opinion on federal public lands, another hot topic in the West where a Sagebrush-style rebellion in Oregon broke out in protest of federal ownership. The poll indicated public opinion seems to favor certain public lands remaining under federal oversight.
The State of the Rockies poll tends to cut through the political rhetoric, said Brendan Boepple, the project’s assistant director. When it comes to public lands and resources, people seem to be more willing to cooperate than political agendas would lead them to believe, he said.
“I think our polling shows that a lot of people want to come together on these issues,” Boepple said.
More than 80 percent – and in some cases 90 percent – of those polled in southwest states rated low river level as having high importance.
While concerns from Colorado residents weren’t as high as those of New Mexicans, Colorado recently completed its first statewide water plan, an answer to concerns that Colorado is unprepared to meet a future with more people and less water. Coloradans are also more willing to reduce water consumption than residents of other states, the poll found.
The Colorado water plan, released in December, offered many solutions to state water shortages – among them building more storage, taking water from agriculture and conservation. But if anything, the poll suggests that the days of public support for dams are over. Those polled staunchly favored conservation as the best way to handle shortage, and were opposed to diversions and reservoirs.
“That should be encouraging, at least to state water planners,” Perramond said. “In some ways it echoes what we have seen in the past 30 to 40 years. Any new facilities are hugely controversial and really difficult to get any support for.”
This year the poll expanded its scope. It added Nevada and new questions, including those about federal ownership of public lands. Republican pollster Lori Weigel of Public Opinion Strategies and Democratic pollster Dave Metz of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates conducted the poll. The poll typically costs $150,000 to $200,000 to conduct, Boepple said.
The years of poll data will provide fodder for undergraduate researchers at CC, Perramond said.
“It’s a great set of data for anybody out there who wants to actually understand how westerners think about public lands and natural resources,” he said.
From The Denver Post (Joey Bunch):
A Colorado College poll released Monday indicates a majority of Westerners don’t support the mission championed by the Oregon militia led by Ammon Bundy, said Ken Salazar, the former U.S. senator for Colorado who served four years as President Obama’s interior secretary.
The State of the Rockies Project’s Conservation in the West Poll of voters in seven Mountain West states indicated 58 percent oppose turning over lands currently under federal control to state governments, and 60 percent oppose selling pieces of public lands to reduce the federal budget deficit.In the Bundy family’s home state of Nevada, only 30 percent of respondents said they supported the family’s mission to have the federal government cede authority to states. Ammon Bundy is leading the Oregon protesters who are occupying government buildings at a remote wildlife reserve. His father, Cliven Bundy, led a standoff in Nevada with federal agents over the Bundys unpaid grazing fees with federal authorities in April 2014.
“This research couldn’t come at a more important time, when the nation’s eyes are focused on the West,” Salazar said Monday of the new poll and the Bundy-led protest.
Colorado is among the states where some Republicans have explored the idea of state and local governments taking control of federal lands. An unsuccessful bill in last legislative session would have set up a Colorado committee of local officials to study the possibility.
“This shows us the Bundy family and the politicians who side with them are out of step with Westerners’ views,” Salazar said in a conference call with reporters about the Colorado College poll.
From The Missoulian (Rob Chaney):
Just 33 percent of registered voters in seven states favored states taking over management of federal lands, compared with 58 percent opposed. The split was 31 percent in favor and 59 percent opposed in Montana. Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming respondents all preferred retaining federal management of public lands by at least 52 percent. Utah voters split with 41 percent in favor of state control and 47 percent opposed.
“The bottom line is that Montanans are adamantly opposed to any efforts to weaken our public lands,” Business for Montana’s Outdoors director Marne Hayes said of the results. “Our public land and water in Montana, and our access to them, is a powerful economic advantage. We are proud of the results of this poll, which suggest that any plan to transfer control of our public lands or sell them off is a non-starter.”
Overall, the poll found that 73 percent of voters believed having federal public lands helped the local economy, while 19 percent thought it had little economic impact and 6 percent said federal lands hurt the economy.
In state-specific questions, the poll found that 77 percent of Montanans support presidential authority for designating national monuments, with 58 percent of them saying the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument has been a “good thing” (11 percent said it was a “bad thing”). The seven-state average in favor of presidential monument authority was 80 percent. Utah voters had the lowest support, at 66 percent in favor of monument authority.
From Hola! Arkansas:
Looking ahead to the upcoming elections, 84 percent of Latinos consider issues involving public lands, waters, and wildlife as an important factor as other issues like the economy, health care and education when deciding whether to support an elected public official. Even so, 61 percent of Latinos think that most presidential candidates don’t understand issues involving public lands, waters and wildlife. Comparatively, 56 percent of Latinos think Congressional candidates are just as uninformed.
“Hispanics view the protection of our public lands as a moral obligation. It’s natural that this community would be drawn to candidates who support conservation,” said Maite Arce, president and CEO of the Hispanic Access Foundation. “With the tremendous growth of the Latino voter bloc, especially in the Western states, we’re going to see engagement in environmental policy and advocacy for our public lands at levels we’ve never seen before.”
From The Deseret News (Amy Joi O’Donoghue):
Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the Bundys, who are at the center of a 10-day siege of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon, don’t represent the views of Western residents and are merely jockeying for attention.
“The Bundys and those who sympathize with them are far out of touch with most folks living in the West. By and large Westerners do not agree with the policies or sentiments being advocated in Oregon,” Salazar said in a Monday teleconference. “Bundy and his ilk are just squeaky wheels getting the grease.”
[…]
“What Westerners are actually concerned about is drought and water scarcity, our dependence on foreign oil, climate change and the outdoor recreation economy. Westerners want our public lands to stay public,” he said. “We may not all agree precisely on how to strike the right balance between conservation and development, but anyone who tells us we should hand our American lands over to private owners and to the states are telling us a story that will not stand the test of time.”
Interestingly, Utah residents — more than those in any other state involved in the poll — are likely to disagree with Salazar on that point.
When asked if they support or oppose turning national public lands over to the control of the state, only a slight plurality of Utahns said they opposed the move, 47 percent to the 41 percent who said they were in favor of the transfer. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent and involved 400 residents who were close to evenly split among those who identified themselves as Republican and those who said they were “Independent.” Fourteen percent said they were Democrat…
Utah residents, specifically, said they are in favor of the creation of the Bears Ears National Monument, with 66 percent who signed off on the idea.
Of those residents who took part in the poll, a significant majority said they lived in a big city or the suburbs — 63 percent — compared with 12 percent of those who said they lived in a rural area.
Poll results also indicate that the angst over the 1996 designation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has tempered, with only 25 percent of Utah residents who insist it was a “bad thing,” in contrast to 45 percent who say it was a good thing. Another 30 percent remain undecided.
Mark Ward, senior policy analyst with the Utah Association of Counties, said rural voters and urban voters differ distinctly when it comes public lands, something that should be kept in mind with this poll’s findings.
“If you don’t live in rural Utah you are prone to think of public lands as totally iconic, these vertical up and down, spectacular-every-acre view,” he said. “But the reality is while all of Utah is beautiful, the vast majority of the acreage is quite ordinary by everyday standards. It is rangeland, it is desert and it is slopes.”
They survey also shows that the majority of Western voters, 52 percent, indicate they support continued oil and natural gas production on public lands, but want stronger safeguards to protect water and the land.
Water, in fact, resonated with Utah voters, with 88 percent of those polled indicating drought is a serious issue and 75 percent who felt conservation should have higher priority than diversion of water of water from rivers in less populated areas.
Another 56 percent of Utah voters said they would be “very willing” to make changes in their household use of water to reduce water by 20 percent, while 35 percent said they would be somewhat willing.