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The Star - Tribune

Setting the stage for a giveaway?

By BRODIE FARQUHAR Star-Tribune staff writer

The Wyoming Bureau of Land Management and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are
negotiating over a lease mechanism that could set the stage for the church to ultimately own Martin's
Cove.

Seattle-based Western Land Exchange Project, a conservation group that serves as a national
watchdog over federal land leases and sales, warns that a Recreation and Public Purpose lease could
easily be amended by future acts of Congress, giving Martin's Cove to the Mormon Church.

"The LDS Church can take control over Martin's Cove, without looking like it," said Janine Blaeloch,
executive director of the Western Land Exchange project. Citing a previous example in Utah,
Blaeloch said a subsequent Congress could introduce and pass a bill that looked fairly technical and
harmless, but could change a lease to whatever status is sought.

The LDS has long sought to purchase Bureau of Land Management land in southwestern Natrona
County where many Mormon pioneers perished from cold and hunger during a blizzard in 1856. After
purchasing the adjacent Sun Ranch, Mormon volunteers built and now operate a museum focused on
the Mormon Trail and handcart pioneer tragedy.

Congress passed the Recreation and Public Purposes Act in 1954. The act authorizes the sale or lease
of public lands for recreational or public purposes to state and local governments and to qualified
nonprofit organizations. Examples of typical uses under the act are historic monument sites,
campgrounds, schools, fire houses, law enforcement facilities, municipal facilities, landfills, hospitals,
parks and fairgrounds.

Lloyd Larsen, LDS stake president in Riverton, and two lawyers met with Lander and Cheyenne
BLM officials on April 28. Larsen said he was considering a Recreation and Public Purposes lease
offered by the BLM, and had sent lease language back to the BLM's Lander office. "We have some
concerns about the length of the lease -- about 20 years -- as well as the time needed to get through
the FLPMA and NEPA processes," Larsen said.

FLPMA, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, and NEPA, the National
Environmental Policy Act of 1969, would require public hearings about the lease or sale of BLM
lands under the Recreation and Public Purposes Act.

As an example of a federal lease gone awry, Western Land Exchange's Blaeloch said H.R. 2862 in the
106th Congress was crafted by then-U.S. Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah. The bill released the
reversionary interests held by the federal government on 98 acres provided to Utah, for inclusion in a
state park in Washington County. "Rather than have ownership revert back to the federal government,
this switched ownership to the state," she said, for a land exchange and ultimately private
development.

To forestall anything like that with Martin's Cove, Blaeloch said, careful attention should be paid to
any agreement hammered out between the BLM and LDS.

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Barbara Dobos, a Casper-based critic of transferring ownership of Martin's Cove to the LDS, said the
negotiating team for the LDS has shifted from Wyoming Mormons and Farm Management Company
officers -- the real estate arm of the church -- to Larson and a couple of prominent lawyers. Working
with Larsen are Cheyenne attorney Brent Kunz and Salt Lake City-based Clint Ensign, an attorney for
Sinclair Oil, Little America and Snowbasin Ski Area, Utah -- all owned by multimillionaire R. Earl
Holding.

According to an award-winning series -- "Trading Away the West" -- published by the Seattle Times,
Holding benefited greatly from a land exchange in the late 1990s. Buried in the Omnibus Parks and
Public Lands Management Act of 1996 was a land exchange that brought over 1,000 acres of Forest
Service land to Holding, which he later developed as part of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

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