Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How much land do the feds own in your state?

Precisely why I own in north Idaho.

It looks like Idaho is giving them the finger.

Park Service is a whole 'nother critter. We need to be vigilant against them gobbling up public lands administered by USFS and BLM.

^^^^ THIS ^^^^

But poorly managed by the dozens of Federal bureaucracies that are supposed to be the stewards of those lands.

Take the BLM for example. They have proven themselves to be totally gutless by letting people like Cliven Bundy steal from all of us when they allowed Bundy to be over $1,000,000 in arrears in paying his BLM grazing fees. I'm hoping that the Trump DOJ will be much more aggressive in their litigation to collect all those overdue accounts.

Hell with the feds, have your state own your own state's lands.

MO has close to a million acres of state managed conservation land.

Purchased over the last 30 years with funds from the Missouri conservation tax.

1/8 cent sales tax statewide.

Can ONLY be used for conservation and acquisition of state lands for public outdoor use.

http://wildmissouri.blogspot.com/p/missouri-design-for-conservation-sales.html

Seems like this could be a help to states like TX, where access is limited, according to TX fire members.

I am curious how the Sturgeon win at the SCOTUS will affect that case... something should have happened by now I would think...

The money was raised, the land was bought and paid for and restrictions were placed on management for conservation. If the states ponied up and bought all this federal land, then they may have an argument. Federal lands have already been bought and or paid for with the federal taxpayers money and blood. And now some want the federal government to just.....hand it over.

There's ghetto freebies, and then there's the western, free rugged individualist freebies.


Casey

Idaho has over 30x the amount of your state land and only 1/5 of the population. There's no way that we could manage that much land properly. It wouldn't be long before the state would have to sell off a large part of it to be able to manage the rest.

You are most likely correct, and that would apply to every western state and Alaska.

Did you mean 30% more rather than 30x more?

Casey

Oregon is in the process of selling the 85,000 acre Elliot State Forest. The forest was established to provide funds to schools and has generated about $285 million for schools since the mid 1950's. But to make money, trees need to be harvested and with the ESA listing of the spotted owl - harvesting essentially stopped. The revenue is now less than the cost of managing the forest. The state recently put the forest up for sale and a group comprised of one local timber company, two local Indian tribes (both with casinos) and a national conservation group (The Conservation Fund) were the only bidders and they bid the appraised price ($223,000,000).

It is easy to predict that lawsuits will soon be filed.

When it snows in hell.

To answer OP's title, last time I checked it was about 83%.
A downside is a ton of 'better have the right permit' Indian land as well as no taxes generated to help the other expenses of having people present.

And limited access- like no shooting- in a lot of gov't land.

Bad idea. If that happened we would be awash in California refugees much worse than we are now. They would be up to the gunwales!

Idaho is 70.4% public land
Texas 4.2

http://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111

65% of Idaho is open to hunt
Texas is 1%

http://www.backcountrychronicles.com/public-hunting-land/

In Arizona, we're holding our breaths. Mr. Obama is considering lumping much of the national forest and BLM lands north of the Grand Canyon into a huge national monument as he walks out the door.

Bill Quimby

You got that right!!

30X. The post said MO has nearly 1 mill acres. ID has 35 mill.
We here in ID LOVE our federal lands, as do many thousands of non-Idahoans who visit every year.

Beaucoup...

Don't have to let them over the gunwales!

here in Florida, about 13% is Federal controlled land. More than that is owned by State Government. There is also a huge chunk owned by local government. I think the total of government controlled land is well over 30%.
What I find most aggravating, is the State and Local land grabs. They pull the land off the tax rolls, but the amount of money they need does not lessen. They just raise taxes on the Citizens.