After the botched attempted sale of the Christmas Mountains ranch in far West Texas by the Texas General Land Office, preservation groups hoped to find a public owner. Now the National Park Service has asked Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson to delay the sale, and he seems to be doing the policy equivalent of muttering about cold, dead hands.
Initially, Patterson represented the issue as being that the NPS had declined the land, whereas the reality is that the cash-strapped agency didn’t have the money (same reason the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department didn’t add it to the adjoining Big Bend State Park) or the legislative approval (due to the size of the site) to take it. Now the NPS has contacted Patterson again, asking him to delay the sale so that they can find a way to take the land off his hands. But he won’t.
One of Patterson’s main arguments against keeping the Christmas Mountains in state hands is that it’s basically unreachable and therefore not publicly accessible. But apparently turning it over to private hands will make it more open to the public. The gun-wielding public, that is.
Patterson said he is not dogmatically opposed to NPS owning the mountains. Which is true, except that he is, because (bar a few exceptional tracts of land) they don’t allow public hunting in their parks. Patterson likes guns and likes hunting, so much so that, back in 1995 when he was still a state senator, he sponsored the concealed firearms law. Now the second-amendment fan is refusing to allow the sale to the NPS, because they wouldn’t allow hunting on there, and so will press on with the sale to private bidders, several of whom are suggesting they would allow some form of hunting, if only for population control.
This article appears in October 12 • 2007.
