Why give PRSC the Virtue Flat Shooting Range?

Our reasons:

1 - PRSC has earned it. PRSC was marginally oppressed by the BLM machine. In response, PRSC appealed to IBLA (a big job), and also created the fixBLM platform to help Americans reign in abuse of Administrative power. We have earned it.

2 - PRSC should already own it, because that has always been the purpose of an R&PP lease.

3 - BLM doesn't want it back. It is a tiny piece of high-desert, low-grade sagebrush pasture with no water and extensive excavations. Military, law enforcement, and civilian users have used the range for 55 years. PRSC net assets are about $30,000, not enough to undo half the excavation, much less "restore" anything else. The range is sandwiched between two other BLM recreational facilities on a busy highway. No amount of "restoration" will "mitigate" the ecological impact of the highway and the other two recreational facilities. The clear best option is to find a way for PRSC to operate the shooting range indefinitely.

4 - Baker County is 50% public land. If people no longer have a shooting range, they will go shoot all over public land.

5 - BLM manages 245 million acres. The shooting range is 325 acres. That's one ten-thousandth of one percent. No one will miss it. The shooting range is located in a patchwork of BLM and private land. Giving PRSC the shooting range land will not break up any significant parcel of public land.

6 - Giving PRSC the land is a win-win. No incremental harm will occur to flora, fauna, soil, water, or people. It won't cost anything because PRSC will pay the survey costs. It's been done before. The overall outcome will be a reduction in the federal cost of managing public land, accompanied by a 0.0001% reduction in BLM-managed public land mass, on land that no one ever visits because it has no significant scenic or scientific or cultural or mineral value.  

7 - Nonprofit shooting range clubs cannot obtain improvement grants if they don't own the land. If PRSC were to own the land, PRSC would become eligible for improvement grants which would allow PRSC to materially improve the range for the benefit of the community.

8 - The conveyance of patent is accompanied by a reversion clause, wherein ownership of the land reverts back to the public if the land ever becomes used for something other than approved public purposes. There is no downside.

9 - The shooting range sits within grazing allotments. PRSC has coexisted with the grazing lessee for decades. PRSC has already initiated contact with said lessee to state in unequivocal terms that prior to or upon conveyance, PRSC will contractually agree to continuance of grazing lessee's rights in perpetuity, including assigns and heirs. PRSC also informed grazing lessee that upon conveyance, PRSC will contribute to development of nearby water sources in benefit of lessee's livestock. 

Win-win.