291 – Federal Lands in the US

The United States government has direct ownership of almost 650 million acres of land (2.63 million square kilometers) – nearly 30% of its total territory. These federal lands are used as military bases or testing grounds, nature parks and reserves and indian reservations, or are leased to the private sector for commercial exploitation (e.g. forestry, mining, agriculture). They are managed by different administrations, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Department of Defense, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Bureau of Reclamation or the Tennessee Valley Authority.

This map details the percentage of state territory owned by the federal government. The top 10 list of states with the highest percentage of federally owned land looks like this:

1. Nevada           84.5%
2. Alaska            69.1%
3. Utah               57.4%
4. Oregon           53.1%
5. Idaho              50.2%
6. Arizona           48.1%
7. California        45.3%
8. Wyoming         42.3%
9. New Mexico     41.8%
10. Colorado          36.6%

 Notable is that all these states are in the West (except Alaska, which strictly speaking is also a western state, albeit northwestern). Also notable is the contrast between the highest and the lowest percentages of federal land ownership. The US government owns a whopping 84.5% of Nevada, but only a puny 0.4% of Rhode Island and Connecticut. The lowest-percentage states are mainly in the East, but some are also in the Midwest and in the South:

1. Connecticut      0.4%
2. Rhode Island     0.4%
3. Iowa                  0.8%
4. New York          0.8%
5. Maine                1.1%
6. Kansas              1.2%
7. Nebraska           1.4%
8. Alabama            1.6%
9. Ohio                  1.7%
10. Illinois               1.8%

Even the 10^th place is still below the two percent mark. One territory is not specified on the map: Washington D.C. It could be argued that this is the only main administrative division of US territory to be fully owned by the federal government. It could, but that would be wrong – and upsetting to those private citizens who own part of the nation’s capital in the form of their real estate. It would be more correct to state that the District of Columbia by default falls under the direct tutelage of the Federal Government. 

Many thanks to Jonathan Leblang and Adam Hahn for signaling this map, which appeared as an illustration to ‘Can the West Lead Us To A Better Place?‘, an article in Stanford Magazine, a periodical for and about alumni from that university.

290 – A ‘Francophone Corridor’ to Link Brussels and Wallonia

An interesting proposal has surfaced to help resolve the intra-Belgian political stalemate between Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speakers, who prevail in Brussels and Wallonia: a couloir francophone (‘Francophone corridor’) that would link Wallonia to Brussels, thus ending the Belgian capital’s territorial isolation within Flanders.

Brussels is officially bilingual (Dutch and French) but is mainly French-speaking in practice. A ‘corridor’ would allow for territorial contiguity with Wallonia (officially French-speaking), thus facilitating the creation of a Brussels-Wallonia federation – a counterweight to the Flemish government, which already unites personal and territorial competences.*

The corridor would obviously have to be transferred from Flanders to Brussels (or Wallonia), possibly in exchange for a solution to the fiendishly complicated problem of B-H-V that would be favourable to the Flemish point of view.

B-H-V stands for Bruxelles-Hal-Vilvorde (in French) or Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde (in Dutch). It is an electoral district that covers both Brussels (officially bilingual) and part of Flemish Brabant (officially unilingual Dutch). Flemish political parties see B-H-V as an anachronism, as it allows French-speakers in that part of Flemish Brabant (ever more numerous, as Brussels expands) to vote for Francophone politicians (in Brussels), thus disincentivising them to integrate in Flanders and learn Dutch. All Flemish parties demand the split-up of B-H-V as a way of maintaining the territorial and linguistic integrity of Flanders.

Francophone political parties see B-H-V as an essential part of the ‘Belgian pact’, regard the proposals for its demise as an attempt to disenfranchise Francophones living in Flanders, have enlisted inspectors of the Council of Europe to find in their favour and fear that without B-H-V as a cornerstone, the split-up of Belgium would be one more step closer. Most Francophone parties would however consider splitting B-H-V in exchange for the territorial enlargement of Brussels with at least some of its mainly Francophone suburbs, and/or a territorial link to Wallonia.

The Francophone Brussels newspaper Le Soir last week published the outlines of a proposed corridor,supposedly on the table in current discussions behind closed doors aimed at resolving the ongoing crisis, that would provide a 2.5 km long link between Uccle (in Brussels) and Waterloo (in Wallonia) by transferring a narrow strip of the Zoniënwoud (Forêt de Soignes in French) from the Flemish to the Francophone side.

As with many things involving the language battles raging in Belgium, this proposal has a slightly surreal feel to it. The transfer of this nature reserve from Flanders to French-speaking Belgium would arguably change the linguistic status of its only permanent inhabitants from Dutch-speaking to French-speaking squirrels.

This map found here on this page of the Le Soir newspaper.

 

* presently, the Wallonian government has territorial competences in Wallonia only, and a Francophone government has personal competences concerning French-speakers in Brussels and Wallonia.