Something there is about selling off public lands in the West that throws environmental groups into a panic.

They invariably prefer the devil they know, which is the perpetual mismanagement of millions of acres by federal agencies who always complain about underfunding.

But instead of resisting private sales, they should be invited to get in on them. If political influence corresponds to wealth - and it clearly does - environmentalists individually and collectively could and would outbid the mining, timber and grazing interests for much of the acreage. Then they could manage it the way they want. There would be no more conflicting "multiple use" mandates to worry about.

And they wouldn't have to spend millions on lobbying and related nonproductive activities.

The environmental community's biggest current concern is a proposal by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., to lift a decade-old moratorium on the patenting of claims under the Mining Law of 1872. Designed to revive the moribund hard-rock mining business, it's buried in the pending House budget reconciliation bill.

Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee, would raise the price to $1,000 an acre or fair market value, whichever is higher, compared to the $2.50 an acre under the 1872 law. At least as important, the buyer would end up with surface as well as mineral rights. That's good, because if you're going to carry the land as an asset, you'll have to manage it well as long as you own it. You can no longer cut and run after extracting the minerals and leave the mess to the feds.

It's important to keep the mining law alive in some form because it's the only weapon left to get any of the federal government's 654 million acres into private hands for better management.

But Pombo's proposal is under attack by critics who claim it would open up 350 million acres of public land for sale, instead of a modest 360,000 acres. And buyers would still have to mine their land, not immediately turn it into golf courses or condos, as critics suggest.

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo recently took time out from his immigration activities to introduce a bill calling for the sale of 15 percent of low-use Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management property. He would use the proceeds for natural disaster or terrorist attack relief.

The federal government is cash-poor but land-rich, he said at the time. "Not only would a land sale provide a one-time cash infusion for the Katrina catastrophe, but it would also establish long term property and sales tax revenue streams." He predicted the sales would net at least $19 billion, perhaps up to $148 billion.

Of course, the competitive-bid sales would be open to environmental as well as industry interests. "My bill would give environmentalists an excellent opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and buy up federal land for conservation," Tancredo said.

Perhaps Pombo could win support for his mining proposal by twinning it with something like Tancredo's bill, which would put environmentalists on an equal footing with other bidders.

R.J. Smith, an advocate of private environmentalism in Washington, says it's so important to get land out from under federal mismanagement that he would donate a tract of designated wilderness to, say, the Wilderness Society or a related group and let it manage the land the way it wants. It would bear all the costs and keep any income. That might give the green community a taste of how much better it can manage land than the federal government. All it can do now is carp about the latter.

Or Smith would set up a pilot project involving various wildlife refuges of a similar size. One would be run by the federal agency, another perhaps by the Audubon Society and a third by Ducks Unlimited. After a few years their relative effectiveness could be compared. Smith has little doubt that the private groups would do a better job protecting the birds.

What would happen if the public lands were put up at competitive sales?

"There's plenty of reason to think that environmentalists will more often than not find themselves on the winning side of most auctions," says a handbook on public lands put out by the Cato Institute of Washington. "When resource extraction industries have competed with conservationists in the private marketplace, they have discovered that the conservationists can usually marshal more dollars for attractive lands than the industries themselves can."

It's ironic, says Cato, that "resource users and conservationists alike fear that, were federal resources put up for grabs in the marketplace, the other side would emerge with more resources than at present. But both can't be right."

The only way to find out is to hold some sample auctions.

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute recommends that the federal government establish many pilot projects to see which method is most effective in selling off land. How large should the tracts be? Should they vary in size depending on the nature of the land? Should some federal land be turned over instead to state or local governments, which often have a better record of land management than Washington?

He doesn't go so far as to recommend that the national parks, say, be sold, but much of the Forest Service and BLM land could be and would be better managed for it.

Some federal lands are so badly mismanaged that if they were in private hands already the owner would be prosecuted, he said. "The environmental quality of the West would be improved drastically if it could be privatized."

blakep@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5119.