Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Sale of public lands and drilling everywhere

Well, maybe if you get on a high spot, with good binoculars, you might ever be able to see this land that is our heritage, economy and so forth.

Thats about as close as you are gonna get most times anyway.

I certainly don't want to see public lands sold, but according to that article linked, the sales would have been of parcels that aren't useful. Fact or fiction? Is the opposition to this sale rooted in a knee-jerk fear of slippery slope or were there parcels that see heavy public use for hunting, etc. involved. I'd like to see those who oppose this sale post up something specific. I agree that staying vigilant against the sale of public land is a good idea but if it isn't being used because it is landlocked, etc., why oppose it?

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.

For example, my MIL owns a ranch in Colorado that has two land-locked pieces of BLM land within its boundaries. One is a whole section, 640 acres, and the other is approximately 67 acres. She leases the grazing rights for almost nothing, but would be happy to pay fair market value for those 707+/- acres just to be rid of the aggravation of dealing with the leases and to have the opportunity to improve that land. I'm reasonably sure that a majority of ranch owners who are in similar situations would also like to buy their land-locked leases.

Exactly

Being a former Utahn, they want ALL federal,lands . What they can't mine or drill for oil will be sold. We need to drive a stake in this. Utah has many what they call cwmu- Cooperative wildlife management units. You pay to play on those. They get extended seasons. The cooperative part is that they give the state some portion of the bull/buck tags to the state, and more of the antlerless tags. I would bet that much of this land would end up in cwmu

As guy who has supported Trump virtually from the beginning, my biggest reservation I have about him is the management of federal lands here in the west.

Our problem is most of the senators and congressman we send to Washington are in the pockets of the traditional resource extraction industries, and most of the Republicans who come kfrom outside of the interior west have this Hollywood view of limitless tracts of land that can never be "used up".

It all begins and ends with habitat. Without functioning, unfragmented habitat, there is no wildlife, without wildlife there is no hunting. Despite most Republicans who claim to support hunting, they are usually entirely unable to connect those three, simple dots.

What's worse is most of the critical habitat (read: winter habitat) occurs at lower elevations on BLM and private land. BLM is the most resource extraction oriented federal land agency of all. And this is where most energy extraction occurs.

Chaffetz bill is something he introduces practically every year since he has been in Congress and is considered a "message bill". Even though he has withdrawn it, it may well pop up again in some form. And given the current environment in Washington it does cause me concern.

Although it completely belies the stereotyping on places like the 'Fire, sportsman's groups and environmental groups have partnered up to preserve/protect public lands in the past, and I am aware of a LOT of conversation going on between sportsman's and environmental groups currently because of what they have seen since Trump's election.

Employees in the Interior Dept resource agencies I have talked to are generally pleased (relieved) with the choice of Zinke for Secretary, but nobody in the Dept of Ag (USFS) knows a thing about Perdue. And I got a feeling Perdue probably doesn't know a thing about NF management issues.

Here in Colorado I'm not too worried about transfer of federal lands. One of the very few good things about the three million immigrants into my state over the last 25 years is most of them have moved here for the "Outdoor Lifestyle" and a lot of them have money and connections. Transfer of federal lands probably ain't gonna happen in Colorado. Gov Hickenlooper is already on record as opposing it.

If tomorrow we had state by state ballot initiatives in the interior west and the west coast concerning the transfer of public lands, the vote would be an overwhelming "NO".

Casey

And as 4ager mentioned, the word on the grapevine is Don and Eric Trump do understand a bit about wildlife conservation and are pro federal lands.

Casey

Good post Brad, I figured you would be in the know.....


Casey

Or...if your MIL were to be put up the ranch for sale eventually, BLM or another agency could purchase it and open a nice size chunk up to the public. Doesnt it work both ways? I know that how most of the state forest and game lands were procured where Im from.

All the rifles in the world are no good to me without game and country to roam. Game needs habitat, the population is growing, growing population needs a place to live, shop, haul there garbage to, etc. The more land set aside for Game, the better. This is why I am much more generous to wildlife based sportsman organizations than just gun/2nd amendment organizations. Both have there places, but one has seen a surge, not so much for the other.

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

We need to be informed, vigilant and ready to fight when needed. Our hunting heritage is at stake here. I think this forum excels when there is a good exchange of information and little in the way of piss wars. We have bigger issues that will affect all of us regardless of our political views.

As I posted before this will come up again. Let's be ready.

David Boston

I don't want our public lands sold. But I do want them open to drill and mine. Sell mineral leases. Set standards and enforce the standards. The people enjoy a new revenue stream and good jobs. And it is done where there was no economic production of relevance before.
On the federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The operator of the lease pays a lease fee determined by highest bidder then 12 % of the production. With some exceptions for royalty relief on marginal prospects. Under the Rockies are some huge prospects for oil and gas that would make a difference for our National economy, likewise in Alaska. The Oceans off the east coast are untapped. If done responsibly, everybody wins.

Years ago, I saw them use a helicopter to haze some big bulls away from moving onto public land, from one of these ranches.

Some WYO hunters were salivating, waiting by a Wyo reservoir for a rogue bull to get there.
The helicopter was moving elk, already crossing into public lands, back onto the ranch.

The LDS Church and Ted Turner are the two largest landowners in Nebraska. I don't think either allows any recreational trespassing on their properties.

But hazing with a helicopter on public land, to get elk back onto private land should be illegal......I would hope anyways.

Takes some big money to use helicopters to patrol a private ranch.
Deseret ranch must be making some big money there.

What is wrong with selling public land that no one can access?

Why not trade inaccessible land acre-for-acre for accessible?

The sale of public lands has been advocated by a number of conservative Republicans for years; maybe it will happen under a Trump Administration.

You have to find someone to trade with you. Not sure why someone would trade the 'public' land that only they have access to for land that anyone can have access to.

Ya have to factor in that it was all government land at one time. Some other governments, that the land owners got to keep title to when governments changed. Lots of what is now private land, our government gave to the railroads, for building them, plus money too. In other words, the government selling land is not new, or trading it for something they wanted. miles