Alaska Cub nailed it spot on. BHA wants, in the end, exclusive use of as much land as possible for those who think hiking or horsing in is the only acceptable recreational use, or land management means. It's all about keeping public lands open ONLY to a select group of "hunters and anglers." I won't say sportsmen because sportsmen believe in honesty and fair play. And of course Buzz, the federal agency employee, would weigh in here that the Mulitple Use Act is honored by hike-in only on every possible acre. Certainly, MUSYA was not about maximum use of every possible acre, but it was intended to OPTIMIZE both economic and recreational outputs from public federal lands, an all-options approach. The idea was a productive, attractive landscape, PLUS prosperous local communities. As for the "locked up" public lands in Wyoming, that's 150 year old Union Pacific checkerboard, railroad land grants. It is still checkerboard because the adjacent sections were too bony to homestead, even too expensive to buy outright when the GLO was still selling land. Further, for a long time there was pretty much open access across all of it for grazing, hunting, mineral development and exploration -- nobody felt it really necessary to either buy out UP and/or swap out lands and block up ownerships, it was everyone's empire and that was a good, even wonderful thing. While it's been a long, long time since my last adventure in the Red Desert, it was wonderful, and multiple use. Things are, of course, different now. Union Pacific probably doesn't like public trespass and damage, so they are exercising their rights.
The friend of mine who is a BHA zealot (and I say that intentionally) always uses the line that about "my public lands". I think he gets it from BHA talking points. When he says this to me, I ask him where "his" public land ends and the guy who wants to snowmobile or ATV on that land begins. And, as always, it becomes a rant about how public lands are only to be used for certain purposes and in certain ways, which is where he loses me. I know what they are doing when they claim that they are "our" or "my" public lands, but then qualify that by excluding so many potential uses of the lands. It''s not about the public at all.
Eliminate qualified immunity and you'll eliminate cops who act like they are above the law.
