Tuesday, May 02, 2017

Ranchers applaud President Trump's review of 'massive federal land grab'

“Presidents Clinton and Obama used a statute meant to protect archaeological finds to lock up tens of millions of acres of federal land to prevent mining, ranching, oil and gas development, logging and even recreational activity,” William Perry Pendley, president of the Mountains States Legal Foundation, a non-profit public interest group, told Fox News. “Now, in those areas, almost nothing can take place. You can go in and take pictures and nothing else.”  He called what President Trump has done “courageous” and says this decision “broke the mold.”“I think there is enough land out there, and people are smart enough, that we can have multiple-use and still protect the land,” Karen Budd-Falen, a rancher and private property rights attorney in Wyoming, told Fox News. Budd-Falen has spent her career fighting for landowners, including ranchers, out West. She hopes the current administration will scale back the amount of land the last administrations have deemed protected. The federal government controls a lot of land -- 28 percent of the entire country and close to half of the West. Some believe when presidents declare large tracts of this land to be, in essence, untouchable, they are going against the spirit of the law, which declares the “parcels of land” reserved for national monuments be “confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”...more

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