This land is whose land? Nevada ranch standoff reveals bigger fight over federally owned land

By  Valerie Richardson

The Washington Times

Behind the hoopla surrounding Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the Bureau of Land Management is a growing resentment over the federal government’s status as the largest landowner in the West. “This is so much bigger than one rancher in Nevada,” Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, who heads the American Lands Council, said in an April 23 online debate sponsored by The Salt Lake Tribune. How much land does the federal government own? A 2012 Congressional Research Survey said the federal government owns about 640 million acres, or 28 percent of the nation’s land mass. Roughly 90 percent of that property is in the West. Put another way, one out of every two acres in the West is federally owned. In Nevada, the federal ownership figure is 81.1 percent; in Alaska, 61.8 percent; in Utah, 66.5 percent; in Oregon, 53 percent. In Connecticut and Iowa, the federal government owns 0.3 percent of the land. “The federal estate is larger than France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom combined,” said Robert Gordon, a senior adviser for the Heritage Foundation. “It is too big and was never intended to be preserved as one big park, but the left is strangling use of it and with it, rural America.” Many states added to the union during the 1800s were largely federally owned, but the government was actively trying to give land to homesteaders and settlers. By the early 1900s, when Western states were still new to the union, the focus began to shift to conservation of public lands.  In 1976, Congress touched off the first Sagebrush Rebellion by approving the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which declared that federal land within state borders would remain under federal control until further notice. Advocates on both sides have been arguing over the legalities ever since. Advocates of federal land insist that the issue is settled, but critics call for Congress to treat Western states the same as other states. “You don’t change these solemn compacts of statehood as the Supreme Court unanimously said in 2009 by a unilateral policy from Congress,” Mr. Ivory said at the debate...more