OPINION/COMMENTARY

WESTWATCHING

There is something of great importance emerging from the Northern and Southern Rocky Mountain states today that all Americans need to keep an eye on. The past thirty years have seen the passage of increasingly harsh and harmful Federal environmental laws and regulations. This has led to Federal agencies closing Federal lands and declaring rights for plants and animals that supercede the rights of citizens to their property and their traditions and cultures. This has decimated rural economies, rural communities, and the ranches, farms, and activities that have made Americans the envy of the world. Nowhere have these harms to citizens from Federal laws been as numerous or egregious as in the West. Because they are at the forefront of these harms, westerners have been forced to try and protect their interests and rights. The alternatives are to lose those rights such as use of their own property, or access to public property that goes unmanaged more every year, to even being able to access their own property by road. What have they found?....