I think that there are probably tens of thousands of small land-locked parcels of BLM property that could be sold without causing any negative impact to other American Citizens.
In the 1980's the Reagan/Watt/Hodel Triad declared they were going to do just that. They ostensibly said that certain parcels of inaccessible lands could be sold or traded for other private lands to consolidate NF lands with small private inholdings within the NF.
They started with USFS lands. Each National Forest created a citizen group who were instructed to create a list of parcels of NF properties that were landlocked or "flagpoled" into private lands, or otherwise inaccessible for public use.
My father was on the citizen's committee for the Uncompahgre National Forest.
The committee my father was on spent over a year, meeting once or twice a month to identify these lands and create the list. Then handed it over to the Forest Service, where it made it's way back to Washington to the Dept of Agriculture. The list recommended 102 parcels of land to be sold or traded.
A year later the "revised" list came back from the Dept Of Ag. Of the 102 parcels the Uncompahgre committee recommended, only THREE of the original parcels were on the list. The rest of the parcels recommended were prime water, private access, and energy/mining parcels.
The same thing was happening with all the other committees across the west.
The [bleep] hit the fan, and the Reagan administration dropped the whole scam.
Today, in polysci 101 in colleges here in the west, this is often used as an example of how Washington can sometimes work.
Casey
