States protect the environment at a better cost to citizens. State land managers fulfill all the same environmental laws a federal land manager would. State land managers do all the same work and economically out-perform federal land managers when it…
An argument could be made that federal ownership of major swaths of 12 Western states effectively deprives them of the same sovereignty as the remaining 38 states, he said. “Why are we inferior because we chose to live in the…
State-held lands tend to be managed more for resource extraction and economic development than federal lands, for historical, legal, and political reasons, says Eric Biber, a law professor and director of environmental and energy law programs at the University of…
H.R. 1547 rectifies a longstanding, unfulfilled agreement from 1989 between the City of Tucson, Arizona (City) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The deal gave the City clear title of Udall Park by removing BLM’s reversionary interest in exchange…
This most recent part of the process began in 2015 when Montana gave the BLM a wish list identifying more parcels than was necessary to satisfy the debt, roughly 16,000 acres spread across Chouteau, Custer, Fallon, Hill, Prairie, Richland and…
“Sadly, these bills are necessary because the federal government has not recently been that good neighbor, and ideological zealots in our land management agencies have been obstructing vital local infrastructure projects and running roughshod over the wishes and jurisdictions of…
Public land ranchers won't have to worry about their grazing fees skyrocketing or their allotments being sold to developers — if and when Utah gains title to millions of public acres from the U.S. government. Brian Maffly Salt Lake Tribune…
“Disarm the National Park Service,” the recalcitrant cowboy cried in a video played in court recently, during the ongoing trial against six people charged as gunmen in the 2014 standoff in Bunkerville. A witness testified about the “unreasonable” nature of…
...the governor won’t be hurt. The Legislature won’t be hurt. The congressional delegation won’t be hurt. In fact, they’ll be liberated. No longer will they have to tiptoe around, worrying about offending these tender souls who can’t win politically or…
Wilson and other rural Republicans pointed out that their districts are overwhelmingly composed of federal land. They said cutbacks in logging due to overregulation had limited their counties' ability to fund basic services or protect against catastrophic wildfires. “We used to have…