Cuyuna is awesome. I am from up here, but lived in your 1.9% state for a few years, it sucked hard.

Open wild spaces are freeing, my state owns and manages so much land and water for me it is great. Sure, they make mistakes at times, but they do their best to ensure me and my fellow Minnesotans retain access to the lakes and land that make this place great.

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Pactimo brand ambassador, ask me about promo codes

Please, I’m curious, what exactly did that clarify for you? I found the segment to be tremendously misleading and it seemed like the intent was not so much to educate but to reinforce stereotypes and the preconceived notions of his viewers. I would genuinely like to know what you learned, specifically.

I feel really sorry for all those people who live east of the Rockies. They simply don't have the tremendous opportunities to enjoy the natural wonder of the world that we have out here in the west.

 

And why shouldn't these western states have a high percentage of federal land? They were 100% federal land before they became states (and 100% indian country before that).[/quote]
Great point! The original settlers received their land a from the Feds by way of the Homestead Act, and now many of their descendants cry foul that the Feds still hold land. I'm pretty sure if the Government wanted to reenact the Homestead Act to help populate the more of the west, they would cry that the liberals in Washington are creating another government giveaway, while sitting in their homes watching Hannity on their Federal Government issued land.

It clarified that the alarmist misinformation espoused by many including Patagonia are terribly incorrect.As mentioned in other articles, the secretary (Zinke) is an avid outdoorsman and it unlikely he would go against his interests in this matter. All to do about nothing......

Dumples wrote:

I feel really sorry for all those people who live east of the Rockies. They simply don't have the tremendous opportunities to enjoy the natural wonder of the world that we have out here in the west.

Clearly you've never been to upstate NY then or New England. Surprisingly no one has mentioned the Adirondacks, which is the largest public "park" in the nation - not Federally owned and has a ton of commercial activity, and somehow it is not an apocalyptic wasteland.

"Created in 1892 as one of the first Forever Wild Forest Preserves in the nation, the Adirondack Park is a unique wilderness area. At 6 million acres, it is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States. The state of New York owns approximately 2.6 million acres, while the remaining 3.4 million acres are devoted to forestry, agriculture and open space recreation. The Adirondack Park is not a National Park - there's no fee to enter and the park doesn't close at night, nor is it a state park, a common misconception. It's also the largest National Historic Landmark, covering an area larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier and the Great Smokies National Parks combined."

http://visitadirondacks.com/first-time-visitors/faqs

I think the discussion has gone a little off track - the point of the thread, I think, was to discourage Federal ownership of vast tracks of land, not discouraging public ownership AT ALL. Our country was founded as a constitutional republic with power mainly vested in the states with limited power assigned to the Federal Government - surely not as a landlord dictating what each local authority wants to do with the land. That's the beauty of local public ownership. If your state/city turns an area into a mining wasteland you are free to move to another state that respects the land, and your tax dollars with it.

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Strava

OK. So from that entire monologue the new clarity that you walked away with was that a hyperbolic ad intended to draw attention to an issue was perhaps not as literal as Rush Limbaugh would like and that Zinke loves public land and therefore would never do anything to harm it?

To your newfound clarity, here are the counterpoints

The permanent protections on the land that the Administration withdrew constitute a taking of sorts. The citizens of the United States had certain assurances with respect to those public lands which were withdrawn unilaterally and perhaps illegally by the administration. As simply as I can put it; The protected land was taken and replaced with unprotected land. To many people, and presumably including the folks at Patagonia, this unprotected land is of less valuable and so they/we lost something of value.

Really though, when Limbaugh singles out Patagonia “from New York to San Francisco” he’s just dog whistling to his fans and what he’s really saying is “look at these big city liberal elites trying to take your land and screw you over.” The whole thing plays right into his narrative of the simple folk in the heartland being relentlessly aggrieved by some coastal bogey man.

With respect to Zinke being an outdoorsman who wouldn’t act against his own interest. Do you think he might have an ulterior motive for wanting to depict himself that way? Shouldn’t you judge him on his actions not his words? In his “review” of Bears Ears the guy solicited input from natural resource extraction companies almost exclusively. He needed them to give him the plausible reasons to rescind the National Monument status. It took years and years of review from many stakeholders considering the biological and botanical, historical, archeological, tribal, and environmental and economic factors before Bears Ears received NM status—I know that doesn’t fit with the narrative of Obama’s slipping it in in the dead of night but thats the truth. Zinke determined that extraction industry interests held more weight than all of that and he did it in a matter of a few months. Despite evidence showing that economic, environmental and cultural benefits outweighed extraction industry benefits he went with the special interests who just happened to be the guys who financed the administration. Go figure.

What else you got? I thought there was a lot of stuff in there that was misleading, provided without context or outright false. I’m so confused that you thought Limbaugh provided clarity on any of the issues. What specific “alarmist misinformation” did it clarify for you?Since I’m probably someone you would categorize as an alarmist misinformer, It would be great to have the opportunity to explain where I’m coming from!

It's not Limbaugh. How closely did you actually watch if you couldn't pick that up?

My bad. Since I rarely watch them don’t know what any of those guys look like. I did watch that video though and I’m prepared to discuss the issues with you. Please replace “Limbaugh” in my post with “Glen Beck” if that helps. The incorrect name doesn’t change anything about my post.

Here's a New York Times article on land ownership. It seems that a lot of the noise over fed ownership is overblown by people who just plain "hate the guberm'nt" And as it pointed out by the article it would cost the states a ton of money to take over management.why-the-government-owns-so-much-land-in-the-west.html

Well Slowman has clarified that he doesn't really care which government entity - Fed, state, or local - regulates the land. Just that the protections for public benefit are in place and stable.



One of those powers assigned to the Federal government was regulation of Federal land. Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2: "The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States..." So until the Federal government actually sells the land, it's clearly Constitutionally empowered to do what it wants with the land, pursuant to laws passed by Congress (like the Antiquities Act of 1906). Doesn't matter what state the land is in. It's Federal land.




Eff that. I'd prefer to use my legal right to vote, lobby, sue, or whine on the Internet to effect political change to either reverse that situation or prevent it in the first place. Dealing with crown jewels of U.S. territory like you're choosing between Arby's and Denny's isn't appropriate in my mind.

I understand that it's constitutional. I'm just arguing that they should return the land to the states/cities.



What do you think is more effective - attending local council meetings and/or bringing local litigation to effect change, or trying to influence the fate of the parks on a national level? I would argue that your voice is insignificant in the latter and is subject to the whims of the executive branch.

I provided evidence that a blend of local public and private ownership can effectively protect the largest wilderness reserve in the U.S (Adirondacks). I haven't seen any evidence that this couldn't work elsewhere.

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Strava

I would argue that they should auction off the "grazing" land to private buyers (who would pay what it is worth) and those buyers then can lease the land to the farmers. Why are our tax dollars going to administration costs for land no one wants? Leave the "conservation" land alone, if that is what residents want, but having the federal government act as a landlord for grazing cattle is ridiculous.

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Strava

trail wrote:

Return? I think you mean relinquish/sell, since I believe in most cases the Federal government was the original owner. Louisiana purchase, war spoils from Mexico, etc. Of course it did a bunch of this through the homesteading acts, and mostly just kept the bits no one wanted at the time.

Semantics much? Fine, they should relinquish it to the states.

Quote:

I provided evidence that a blend of local public and private ownership can effectively protect the largest wilderness reserve in the U.S (Adirondacks). I haven't seen any evidence that this couldn't work elsewhere.

I explicitly said I was against the FEDERAL government holding land. Nothing in your statement above approaches that argument.



Is [sic] *is* adorable what you West Coast folks call a "park" (" [The Adirondacks are] also the largest National Historic Landmark, covering an area larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier and the Great Smokies National Parks combined.")

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Strava

Bzzzzzzzttt! Not true. And it's not even second. It just barely makes the podium.


See that little word "contiguous"? In this context, it means what Alaskans call the Lower 48, where even the largest of your puny little parks is less than half the size of our largest. Wrangell-Saint Elias for the win! :-)

Dan, I'm about as Libertarian as they come and I still support the preservation of our parks and monuments. Not only because I enjoy SBR through them.

The question really becomes who the best steward of the land is, and will continue to provide us access to "roam". My argument is that this steward is not the Federal Govt. When you give one man, or one small body, the power to create and destroy landmarks and parks with the stroke of a pen, you don't encourage sustainability.

My solution would be to make it economically unattractive for drilling/mining/forestry/whatever to occur on the land. Pool resources and allow a non-profit with a Harvard-sized endowment run the parks (probably, more efficiently) with some local zoning regulations. I provided an example of the Adirondacks which is a mix of private and public land with some regulation (and had a few strawman arguments thrown my way in the process). I'm sure 99% of the people here will disagree with me and reply with some nightmarish, dystopian scenario that could theoretical occur if we don't have the Fed babysitting the land but there ARE examples where humans have collectively decided to preserve the land without some authoritative body pulling the strings.

I do agree that my comment was a bit of a strawman so I will take it back and offer the above as a possible solution. But not to worry - it will probably never come to fruition - instead, you're going to see a continual flip-flop of positions over the next few decades depending on who inhabits Washington.

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Strava

Fine - you got me there. I concede to your tangential argument. Now back to the actual point of the discussion.

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Strava

i would argue that the right to roam, and being libertarian, is easy to reconcile. they both fit nicely under the heading of freedom.

i might agree with you in theory as to whom is the better steward (between natl govt, public-private partnership, local govt), i just know that in *practice* the natl govt system has worked very well. is your problem with the federal govt's ownership a point of principle? or is it that you think it's shown to be a bad or failed system in practice? because, i live right next door to a national forest, which i enjoy almost daily. i haven't seen any practical problem. i'm 60 years old, and i'm still awaiting the collapse of the natl park or natl forest system. it still seems fine to me. it's not that i think it's the only workable system. but i haven't experienced any evidence of problems.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I was trying to be a bit humorous - sorry if that escaped you.

But if you think that getting basic facts correct is "tangential" then you are just plain wrong. Any discussion of federal land ownership that ignores Alaska is woefully incomplete.