The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains | Hacker News Reader

The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains

bloomberg.com

233 pointspetethomas173 comments

This is a complicated topic. I used to own the lower part of a mountain valley (out west but not in Montana). There were two dirt "roads" into the valley, both immediately against the titled property; the rest of the valley was Federal (BLM) land encircled by mountains that were effectively impassable. Americans generally have a right to use and temporarily occupy these Federal lands without permission, so if I put up a gate/sign it would effectively be like owning the entire valley.

There are three big issues when you own land like this that people overlook, both of which can be described as "tragedy of a pseudo-commons":

- The Federal government likes to use these roads across private and public land but not only doesn't do maintenance but enforces a stack of regulations that actively prohibits others from doing repairs to damage caused by their traffic. Filling in a pothole requires environmental impact studies, archaeological assessments, thousands of dollars in fees, etc. The nice dirt roads you find up in ranch country in Federal wilderness areas are often maintained illegally by locals because the government won't do it and the cost of doing it legally is completely unjustifiable. For some people, it is easier to just disallow road access.

- Most ranchers do not own the mineral rights of the land, and mineral rights come with privileges that allow mineral exploration companies to abuse your land for the purpose of mineral extraction with little recourse. An effective strategy to prevent this is to actively prohibit the mineral exploration companies from trespassing to establish that there is mineral worth extracting. I've dealt with this twice. Among other things, it requires aggressive enforcement of a "no trespassing" policy that mineral companies will try to ignore or subvert.

- People thinking that the private land is Federal and acting under those assumptions, including vandalizing, stealing from, and generally trashing things as Federal agencies do very little to police this. Unfortunately, this is a really common problem in wilderness areas. They tend to avoid areas that look like they are actively managed lest a rancher show up -- well-maintained signs and gates are a good proxy.

How this plays out in practice when these issues become a big enough problem that the ranchers start putting up signs and gates everywhere, with the common understanding that these are not for the locals.

After years dealing with the above issues, we eventually did like everyone else and prohibited use of the roads (except for locals of course). I would say it was only marginally effective but it was better than the previous situation.

The whole "locals only" thing is just as bad. How do you communicate to the locals what is okay and what is not? How do you define locals? Is it just those that live on the same road, those that you run into at the store? It has to be all or nothing. That is really what sucks with the whole situation.

Yes, it does suck.

You are taking "locals" a bit too literally. It is just a social convention and these are small communities, it is generally understood that unless the property owner has socialized something different, those signs are for mining companies, yahoos from the city, etc. A lot of times if you are not from the area, you can often ask one of the local people the purpose of a sign in some area based on what you want to do. They'll often tell you that you can ignore it as long as you are just passing through. The signs are there to discourage people. In fact, they'll appreciate that you bothered to ask.

I grew up in a small rural area and learned very early that a no trespassing sign means that it is likely to get a warning shot sent your way if cross the line. The signs were not up to just discourage non-locals. I am sure some areas are different but that is my experience in Montana.

That's a fair point. There are some areas where "no trespassing" applies to everyone. A good example of this is in the Nevada gold fields. If you don't respect those signs, you'll be staring at the business end of a gun.

But again, if you talk to one of the locals they will tell you that. I always made a point of doing that, most people don't.

As someone who works in the Nevada gold fields, I can say this is blatantly untrue. This isn't the wild west, you won't find armed guards up here. In general the security is no higher than the average oil refinery.

Anyone with a to mind to could easily drive into an active mining area on BLM land

I'd share your frustrating with mining companies, but is "yahoos from the city" a bit unfair? Your country has brilliant appreciation of the outdoors, including city-dwellers who travel out on weekends or holidays. Signage that informs and guides them rather than bars them might help.

I imagine 99% of people just want to pass through carefully rather than dump trash or graffiti anything.

Guidance is really the job of the parks services. The problems come when the burdens get thrust upon the landowners.

Elsewhere in these comments are people saying that landowners will remove (public) signage(!), which might impact what the parks people can do?

Maybe a well-publicised term for a private easement that people recognise is treated in a particular way? I like that in the States, National Park means something, BLM means something, etc. Our designations in Australia don't seem as clear. We have Crown land, but I have no idea where to find out about it.

Private easement guides would be: You are a guest here on private land. Don't stray from the road, leave gates as you found them, livestock has right of way, no camping, etc.

Surely there's a balance in making reasonable land access available to people.

I agree as long as the rules are enforced and landowners aren't forced to deal with the consequences of people that break them.

Really this is called "sharing" and it's sad that it's causing so many problems.

Yes, "yahoos from the city" is a bit unfair. :-) I was living in the SF Bay Area at the time and most of the out-of-town traffic through the area of that property was also from the Bay Area. We made a point of getting to know the local ranchers early on and I had lived in the rural West as a kid, so I had a vague idea of the basic rules.

More often than not, it wasn't that people were trying to behave badly, they were just careless and exercised poor judgement. A recurring annoyance was someone in the Bay Area buying an SUV and deciding to take it off-roading deep into the wilderness with no prior experience and being completely unprepared. In addition to frequently damaging their vehicle beyond drivability or getting it hopelessly stuck far out of mobile phone range, they would tear up the roads and land joyriding, leave gates open, run into the cattle that live in the wilderness, etc. I probably personally rescued people a dozen times who had no business being out there in those vehicles (an SUV off the new car lot is not equipped for that environment), with that lack of preparation, with that little experience.

Not malicious most times, just ignorant and engaging in poor behavior without understanding that they shouldn't be doing those things.

Probably a "local" in this context is anyone who is close enough to jandrewrogers' circle that these things are communicated through the grapevine and tacit common understanding.

This isn't a local or non-locals issue, but it's just that due to the social dynamics of Montana it can get framed in those terms. But, really this is about public access to the public lands which should be sacred, constitutional even, like in Sweden.

I am sympathetic to these problems. Do you think spot fixes could resolve it for good, e.g. sharing road maintenance with the Feds, or does a larger paradigm shift come to mind?

The upside of bureaucracies is that they are pretty consistent. The downside is that change is impossible.

Did you ever communicate your frustrations on that first point to your local representatives? Seems like there could be softened regulations for certain situations to ease maintenance - e.g., like-for-like maintenance. If there's a sealed road, you can re-seal potholes without any more than advance notice. If it's unsealed, you can regrade it. But if you want to adjust the route or seal an unsealed road, the process is a bit more involved?

You have some incredible wildlife and cultural history in America, so I can understand trying to protect it.

Local representatives don’t get to counter the almighty EPA, which writes and enforces all of the environmental regulations affecting this kind of thing.

Sure, but they have some influence with the EPA. They will at least be able to get a meeting with someone reasonably high up at the EPA and if that fails they can introduce legislation to force the EPA to change the regulations.

Rural Americans don't tend to think that the government is a functional entity and that going through that chain will net anything.

They may have a valid point since only money talks in government these days.

Money was the only thing that ever talked in government, the problem is that people have allowed the mandate to grow so outrageously that it's gotten out of hand. I love the original mission of the EPA, which was to do through regulation what was, owing to scale, not feasible in the courts: To assess tangible damage to the property of everyone downwind or downstream of you, and limit it at the source.

Every expansion of that mandate seriously perverts the whole institution, and allows them to justify basically any course of action through a vague mental framework, by means of a network of suggestible and mentally soft bureaucrats who want more than anything to keep their job, no matter how immoral the duties of their office are or have become.

A form of scope creep then, it seems?

Perhaps you are wondering why you are being down-voted, since your comment is well-meant and deserves a response. The problem is that arguments like yours are a bit of a fig-leaf covering a system that is designed to work around exactly the process you are talking about.

For the last seventy years or, western democracies have moved power away from traditional branches of government and into the hands of agencies, because political movements were fed up with the slowness, dark compromises and voter-oriented showmanship of traditional democratic machinery.

And indeed those systems really are slow, messy and give incomplete results. So when agencies do behave badly, it is not very helpful (or even true) to say that the tedious checks-and-balance systems that the agencies exist to work around are an effective recourse.

Thank you posting this. It really gives some context about how rural western folks think that I never really appreciated in past dealings.

Interesting topic. Could you talk a bit about the state laws that regulate incorporation? For instance, depending on the state, could you incorporate and then ask the state for assistance in requesting authority to maintain the federal roads? Also, how is federal ownership of the land different from if a private entity owned it? If the roads were privately owned, would you still run into the same issues?

This is very complicated and varies from State to State. Incorporation requires meeting some base criteria, such as sufficient population size in the proposed incorporated area (usually a few hundred people), and often requires an official act of an elected body. How responsibilities can get allocated technically (i.e. what is legally possible which includes some unusual arrangements in some States) and how those responsibilities get allocated in practice is equally complicated. Generally though, for Federal land, the State has limited authority. They do have indirect authority by virtue of the resources that they do control, such as water, that gives the States practical leverage. Federal land cannot be taxed by the State, so the Federal government subsidizes State property taxes in those States where most of the land is Federal because it is nearly impossible to build a property tax base when 90+% of land in a county is Federal. Not only is there not much property, the fragmentation of the land prevents it from achieving an economically productive critical mass.

Federal land has one important difference from private land or even State land: the regulations regarding management and use are pretty disconnected from the realities of the lands under management or the population that lives there, aggravated by the fact that these decisions are primarily made by people that have live very far away from where most Federal land is located and have no experience with those regions.

I live in the semi rural west and know many ranchers, family owns a few... i don't know of a single rancher who has been prevented from doing upkeep on roads across their own land that they allow easement to. only issues i know of are if you block a salmon stream, big no no in washington. also, people will vandalize just about anything, the assertion that they do it because its federal might be a bit off, IMO.

i had a run in with a rancher who pulled a gun on me for using public easement he was quickly visited by the local sheriff and had his ideals corrected.

I grew up in Livingston MT just a 20 min drive from the Crazies, I know these trails, and this is one if the saddest things I have ever read on HN. Now I live on the West coast but I miss Montana all the time and visit whenever I can. To be honest, I really can't fathom how terrible things have gotten politically with the likes of the despicably corrupt Zinke and Gioforte. Personally, I watched everything change so fast, 7 years maybe, it started with the spec houses and the big money from the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky. My father was a carpenter on a ugly 12 million dollar monstrosity, complete with a heated fucking driveway, cut out of what use to be public land, and used solely by Microsoft execs a for a few days a year. This big money then led to Bozeman blowing up with no smart growth plan, just all sprawl and box stores now. And already it has become the next Boulder, with it slew of bourgeoisie shops downtown, and yes, a great outdoorsy place to live, but only if you've got the Do Re Mi. Oracle is there in Bozeman now, and Google and FB are rumoured to be coming soon too...but tech per se isn't the main force killing MT, or the west, it's mostly our values that are. Perhaps, I can write a geat Montana story about a forrest service ranger, who leads a double life cutting fences, torching wasteful vacation mansions, and getting into conflicts with poachers, extractors, and rich asshole "ranchers" and developers. Maybe one day soon the beauty, majesty and stillness of MT will only be saved in stories, or maybe there is still a chance we can change out values and change our ways.

That story is called "Longmire" and its on netflix except it's WY not MT.

Cool, I will check it out.

You get some rich people from somewhere else who move in and throw all local culture and tradition away.

It's happening in Colorado. Every Fourteener (14,000+ foot mountains) used to be publicly accessible but we got some greedy folks who moved in and shut down that traditional access to at least five of them so far.

If I ever come into a sizable fortune my plan is to acquire these lands and turn them over to the public. I would be happy to legally harass these folks into selling as well, if that's what it took. Maybe buy up the land surrounding theirs and cut off public access.

I share your dream plan, but with the public lands transfer movement fear the Fed would one day soon turn around and sell the bequeathment for a song. It might not happen today or this decade, but public lands are not immutable.

So then I wonder if the best option is to set up some kind of management trust.

You're probably right considering that clown Zinke, who wasn't even born in Montana and doesn't appear to appreciate the real sentiments of many in the American West.

The research is clear that Community Land Trust work, for both land management and for affordable housing. We need more CLT's and Co-ops all over this country.

Just find the pharmaceuticals these greedy assholes are dependent on to stay alive, buy up the manufacturing rights, shut down production, and get rid of some of the world's problems. Could probably could get a kickstarter going, I'd donate.

I really have no expertise in this area but with the amount of lawsuits that occur these days it feels like as soon as someone was paralyzed or killed accessing this land you would be on the hook for not preventing them from accessing it. I would hope that this isn't the case but it just feels like the way thinks are going.

"They'll sue us if we're not assholes" is a common rationalization/excuse from assholes. Every time I've done a deep dive on one of these (only a few times, not a lawyer) I've found them to be a complete fabrication and on one occasion the actual inverse of the truth, in that the activity being rationalized was in fact illegal.

I'm sure there are plenty of cases where the claim is legitimate, but there are more than plenty where it's not.

That is a shame. I think Culebra Peak has always been private access. At least it when I was bagging them back in the 1990's. What are the other four that are problematic now?

Like to know too - considering I visited them all just this past summer.

"You get some rich people from somewhere else who move in and throw all local culture and tradition away."

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

There are many historical examples of cultures murdering and taking over areas from the traditional inhabitants. Even the current Native Americans apparently killed off/supplanted earlier peoples.

Anyways, the tradition of access to the open range extends back to the indigenous Americans who didn't necessarily possess the concept of owning land or fencing it, so I think that weakens that argument.

    It's happening in Colorado. Every Fourteener (14,000+ 
    foot mountains) used to be publicly accessible
    but we got some greedy folks who moved in and shut 
    down that traditional access to at least five of them so 
    far.

Which ones? I just did all the 14ers this year, and didn't have problems with access to any. (Culebra was one I paid for a reservation)

Culebra has always been the problematic one but I guess I am quite behind the times after I've checked the current situation. Culebra is only open one week a year from when I checked last year.

Lincoln, Bross, Democrat and Cameron had their access blocked in 2005 by people who acquired land via old mining claims. It appears a happy impasse has since been reached with the town of Alma leasing the land and taking on the risk of litigation, which is limited by the town's governmental immunity.

So it was only a temporary blocking, but I guess I'm still unhappy it occurred at all.

> Culebra is only open one week a year from when I checked last year

In 2017, it was open for dates in June and July you could reserve in June and July. Normally, it's also opened in August, but they've closed it for wildlife reasons. But this is a different situation than what the fine article is about - Culebra Peak isn't public land blocked by private land; it's just private land itself. It's been private land before the National Forest and the Dept. of the Interior were a thing.

Access to Mt. Democrat/etc has been open since 2012. Only Bross remains closed. The closure in total is a sign saying, "summit closed". Again, different from the article where private land is blocking public access.

Many other 14ers are actually on private land, but access is not limited. Lindsey is one example - it resides almost completely in the Trinchera Ranch, which was just sold. But there is a conservation easement to Colorado Open Lands as part of the sale of the ranch - you can't develop on the land, and access to the summit is allowed from the Huerfano Valley.

Mt. Shavano's summit is also on private land as well, but the mining claim was bought recently by the CFI, and will be transferred to the NF soon.

http://www.14ers.org/mount-shavano-private-lands-acquisition...

From my experiences, easy access of public land is actually really good in Colorado. I'm sure there are issues, but they seem at least to me minimal in most of the popular areas, like 14ers.

Have you heard of the Access Fund? They help work out access issues for climbers. They mainly deal with rock climbing issues but might do other stuff as well. They have been successful negotiating with property owners in the past. They sometimes even buy land to ensure access forever.

I live in CO and climb but don't do much mountaineering. Is anyone working on this issue? I'm shocked this has happened because climbing 14ers is one of the most authentically Coloradan things one can do.

>Perhaps, I can write a geat Montana story about a forrest service ranger, who leads a double life cutting fences, torching wasteful mansions and getting into conflicts with poachers, extractors, and rich asshole "rancher" and developers.

This brings to mind Edward Abbey's book The Monkey Wrench Gang. I can't recommend his books enough, especially Desert Solitaire.

Yeah, I've read and enjoyed both!

tech per se isn't the main force killing MT, or the west, it's mostly our values that are.

Which values? Can you expand a little? I have guesses, but would like to hear from you.

I'm actually working on a solar punk book about this topic too, hehe. It can be hard to articulate but the word that does it best is "wetiko". No book has impacted me more in my worldview in the last three years than, "Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism" by Jack D. Forbes, a native professor who started the first Native American Studies Program.

If you read only one single book this year, please read this small powerful book. On a personal note, my father didn't teach me much very much technically, or set the greatest example, but he did share his love of Montana, Flyfishing, the rivers and the mountains with me when I was young and I'm forever be grateful to him for that (even if he kind of an asshole). He taught me to respect nature, and leave no trace, values that he learned from my grandfather when they went on Sierra Club trips together. I spent 17 amazing years in Montana, some of the very best of my life and I hear it calling me back. I'm getting a bit emotional as I type this, but even if it takes humanity a while to articulate it exactly, and much will be left unspoken, we know what is missing, we feel it deep down, and no amount of tech or money will ever fill that void. We need to move in harmony with the natural world and each other "be in right relations" as many first nations people call it. It will take time, be more than anything it will take some soul searching and courage.

I'll be reading this book, thanks for the recommendation.

I grew up in central Montana but now live on the west coast too, and I’m astonished at how quickly it’s changing. The bellwether for me is the fact that stream access law* is being challenged (most notably by Gianforte and other wealthy, often absentee landowners). If public stream access is lost, I’ll know the state and it’s civic makeup has changed irreversibly. *Everything below the high water mark is publicly accessible per Montana state law.

Gianforte is the best example of wealthy land owners blocking access. He came from out of state, got luck with his tech company when Oracle came knocking, and now he wants to pretend he is the embodiment of Montana. All the while he is more than happy to block access to others whenever he can.

Forget about being an absentee wealthy landowner. The dude chokeslammed a Guardian journalist for having the audacity to try to get him to answer some questions. Then he got elected to Congress!

This is very true, changing that law would be totally catastrophic!

> Everything below the high water mark is publicly accessible per Montana state law

Huh, does that mean you can legally travel through someone's private property by walking/wading the length of a stream that passes through it? (i.e. the stream is effectively a public footpath?)

I'm not from MT but I believe that is the correct interpretation, similiar to the laws surrounding California coastline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana_Stream_Access_Law

This concept gets a fascinating and thorough exploration in the form of post-icecap-melt “intertidal” zones in KSR’s epic _NY 2140_. Picture lower Manhattan submerged at high tide. A highly recommended read.

It certainly does. You just have to enter from a public access point. This point could be as formal as a maintained fishing access or as informal as any bridge on a public thoroughfare.

I spent a few years in West Yellowstone before also ending up on the west coast. I miss the area dearly, and the idea of being able to find a good tech gig in Bozeman seems to be more real every year. But then I feel like I'd only contribute to the erosion of what makes it a great... At least I've been able to fly directly into West Yellowstone now?

I've lived in Livingston for nearly 20 years and I know Alex, and his kids are classmates of mine. This has been big news locally for a while but interesting to see it hit the national wires.

However, I grew up in Scotland where we have a somewhat longer history of dealing with access to land and rich people ;) The solution there is that there is a legal right to access wild land. Note this doesn't just apply to "public land" but all land public or private.

http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/access/full%20code.p...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

One of the rights lost when folks moved to "the land of the free", it seems.

Same in Scandinavia

OT, but I have to imagine (as someone who has visited Livingston) that you might well be the only person to ever grow up in Scotland and live in Livingston for 20 years. Kinda interesting.

Turns out not. There are at least two true Scottish people in the Livingston area. I haven't met either one yet but I have chatted with the guy at the special order doors/windows desk in Lowes in Bozeman. He's from East Kilbride.

That solution seems so obvious, I was thinking that the whole time I read the article:

Why allow people to so zealously defend their property rights on a huge plot of land that's hundreds of acres big? It's not like you're standing in their living room.

OTOH maybe that's just my European perspective where we're used to living 'cramped' (as opposed to the vastness of the Americas).

In some cases you have to "follow the money" to understand it : the land owners are trying to make money by running a business taking people onto the public land to hunt etc. Rent Seeking.

Yes, I do a lot of walking in Scotland and its easy forget how great it is to be able to wander about pretty much wherever you want - the only restrictions being pretty sensible anyway.

As a research geologist, working in the western US has generally been great because of so much easy access to a large amount of public land. But, over the last 5 years or so, I have noticed more ranchers gating off roads going through their land. This is especially annoying when they have a small in-holding in a national forest or BLM land and the road that has been used for over 100 years is now blocked. Most times there is a new (closed, but not locked(that would be illegal)) gate and a big sign that says no trespassing.

One can legally open the gate and use the road and it won't be trespassing, but most people won't know this. Even if you think you are in the right in going onto someones land, confronting an armed rancher is something most people will not risk doing. I generally don't. It would be nice if there were signs that made it clear that it is legal to pass through such gates, but I imagine they would be removed by the ranchers immediately. I'm glad at least some forest service employees are pushing back on this practice.

Should it be illegal to put up 'no trespassing' signs when there is clearly a longstanding public easement?

I think it should be illegal. At the same time, it would be nice if the Forest Service would place signs on these trails clarifying that access is allowed and list the contact information for the proper authorities. That would, however, be expensive and the land owners would no doubt remove the signs.

Removing the signs would be theft of government property, and is punishable by up to one year in jail.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/641

Edit: I'm happy to hang out in an old pickup truck with a coffee and a shotgun and wait for someone to steal the signs. Just point me in the right direction and give me a number to call with the forestry service, national parks, or the bureau of land management when someone snags a sign.

That implies enforcement, which is mostly right back to where we are now. I really wish it were so simple.

You would really need a camera to watch the sign. Solar powered with satellite up-link. Then a camera to watch the camera. So, not really practical when there is nobody around 99.99% of the time.

they cant even catch people breaking into hundreds of cars a year at popular trail heads... under staffing is a PITA.

I don't have much hope for that if there's not even anything done for people effectively doing the same on land they do not own [0].

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/02/california-w...

I imagine it is, but they put up the signs on the fences on both sides of the road, which is their property and it is illegal to trespass. IANAL, but on undeveloped land in the US you have to put up 'no trespassing' signs generally before enforcing people not to trespass on your land.

I reality the ranchers(in reality they are usually rich sport ranchers that live in a city and recently bought the property) don't even need the closed gate in most cases. If you are in the middle of nowhere going down a dirt road and you come up to a fence that crosses the road with a cattle guard and on both sides of the road it say no trespassing, what do you do?

Interestingly, some states don't require signs - purple paint will do.

http://ijr.com/2016/02/535003-purple-paint-texas/

Assuming a 'no trespassing sign.'

Closed gate with no lock, can't pass.

Closed gate with locked lock, can't pass.

Closed gate with unlocked lock, can pass.

"Closed gate with unlocked lock, can pass." Never seen one of those.

Usually a cattle guard means no gate at all.

Something being blatantly illegal never stopped anybody from taking from the public easement. There's a pretty infamous little county road that the locals stole near Silicon Valley.

http://blog.sfgate.com/bicycle/2016/03/22/road-thieves-of-th...

Thanks for that link. I'm just starting to explore the biking roads around here and the history is interesting.

Nice to know that you protect public way just by enjoying it!

Some of these are intentionally deemed "not easements" by the government because it would make them responsible for maintenance.

I once called the Bureau of Land Management about repairing a dirt roads they liked to use that crossed private land. They made it crystal clear that it was an "abandoned mining trail" and not actually a road or easement, which in their mind relieved them of any obligation.

That just means that a private mining company built the road to access a mining claim. Once the claim is abandoned, no one has the obligation to maintain it.

If you used it to access your land, you could start maintaining it.

Probably, but I've seen a few signs that we're polite and clear about what was public and what was private.

this is my understanding of easements and closed roads too... a rancher bought some land near my home that has a trail crossing it to public lands that are encompassed by private land. he pulled a weapon on me and was investigated for brandishing and was set straight about his approach to dealing with people using public access, since it was there when he bought the land and it was well known.

ranchers can carry guns, but so can just about anyone else out west.

some folks i know just take the misleading no trespassing signs down. i've also seen where people attach them to trees surrounding good public hunting too, to prevent others from getting their trophies.

I feel pretty passionately about protecting national land. Are there any recommendations on how to best support it? I don't live near any federal lands and I'm generally don't trust lobbyist groups. Should I be donating to the Sierra Club? Or are there other alternatives?

https://www.nature.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_Conservancy

Not Federal and I am going to just quietly link to an option.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Trust_Alliance

Definitely. We have a lot of different alliances around Montana.

http://www.montanalandtrusts.org/memberdirectory/

One of the great benefits about living where I do (Maine) is that so much land is open for public use. I don't want to derail the thread so I will simply point out that it is really easy to cede your land to a trust, in many areas where that's actually beneficial. Some trusts are set up to accept donations in cash, as well. So, either way helps preserve land for public access in perpetuity.

I don't really know either.

For clothing you were going to buy anyway, you can spend money with Patagonia & company, who are wading into the fray.

You can try to connect with sportsmen's groups and donate or get involved; I'm not a sportsman, but they have been the most effective political force defending public land this year.

There is a great episode of How I Built This about the cofounder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, and his values. http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=504852483:505017995

Other than using the federal lands more _and_ contacting your representatives (via phone!!) to express your support for keeping public federal lands, yes, donate.

While your money probably won't be ill-spent with your run-of-the-mill environmental groups, I'd really recommend searching out right-leaning groups that support public federal lands, like the American Conservation Coalition (https://acc.eco).

Sadly, the right has—for a variety of reasons—all but abandoned environmentalism and that's been a major hurdle for those of us who want to protect the environment. Eco-right groups have a _much_ better shot at changing the opinions of right-leaning folk than progressive groups like the Sierra Club do.

Full disclosure: I'm one of ACC's 42 unpaid volunteers.

Why do you recommend seeking out right-leaning groups?

Lots of environmental issues get tied up in a debate that usually goes like:

    Left: "Issue X is a problem"
    Right: "No it's not"
    Left: " ... "

...and repeats ad nauseam. If the right was more open to solving environmental issues, we wouldn't have these issues and the debate could be about policy, not the existence of the issue itself.

Right-leaning groups already have an "in" with the right and will naturally be better at educating and convincing the right than left-leaning groups.

I would recommend right-leaning groups as well, but that's mostly because of the hunting communities are usually associated with the actual 'use' of public lands, and have been supporting most of the ecological/wildlife research. There's recently been a big push towards historically sustainable wildlife systems, and that's a topic that resonates with most of the more conservative hunting communities.

Yup. A lot of people don't want to admit that hunters were the original conservationists. And also, a lot of non-hunters don't support hunting-oriented conservation methods. For instance, just because you buy a duck stamp it doesn't mean you have to go duck hunting. Duck stamps support the preservation of duck habitat and other wetlands. Buying a duck stamp is an easy way to directly contribute targetted money to wetlands preservation. Just for an example.

Yea this is exactly what I was talking about. Buying a fishing tag or a hunting tag is also an excellent way to get money directly into the hands of those who work in environmental conservation

hunters originally only wanted to 'preserve' what they wanted to kill... otherwise we'd still have wolves, grizzlies, and other predators of all sizes, at their historic populations. likewise, certain hunters favorites wouldn't be dealing with population issues now. the ranchers have done the most harm though, they seem to want to kill everything, imo.

Ironically one of the consequences of strict laws protecting endangered species is it actually leads to more destruction not less. A rancher notices a protected animal on his land and gets rid of it to avoid getting harangued by the government. "Shoot, Shovel and Shutup"

Not entirely. In practice, the net result is that hunters want to preserve habitat. The large predator species that you mention require a huge range. It is the fragmentation of habitat that has done them in as much as anything else.

Because they are a bit of an untapped resource. The right are more likely to be open to conservation efforts rather than traditional crunchy environmental efforts, but they too often feel driven out.

The right controls the government today. The right listens to right-leaning hunting groups a lot more than left-leaning conservation groups. See Chaffetz's rescinded bill from earlier this year.

warning - generalizations ahead

Progressives tend to already support/buy in to conservation issues, so reaching and tapping In to the political right is where you can get the most bang for your buck.

The obvious question is why can’t other groups reach the conservative environmentalists? Some progressive leaning environmentalist groups embrace ideals which can be at odds with conservative views, while only being tangential to important things like wilderness conservation. Some progressive leaning environmental groups use ‘evil conservatives’ as a fund raising meme. Some simply identify as progressive and don’t leave any room for conservatives.

Truth is, in a huge chunk of this great nation, the people that enjoy, visit, and use national wilderness the most are conservative. They’re hunters and multi-generation farmers and ranchers. Sure, one of them might leave a beer bottle on the ground behind their skyjacked F250, but if they caught you poaching a doe out of season there’d be hell to pay.

Interesting. What kinds of things has your group accomplished?

I'm not a conservative, but the Sierra Club will never see a dime from me until they lay off mountain bikers. It seems so stupid to antagonize a group that could share about 99% of what they want to accomplish.

We have a few different ways we're approaching this. In no particular order we:

1) Work with college republicans to introduce them to environmentalism. We saw lots of success here during National Clean Energy Week where we held events and had 20 CR chairs sign on to our clean energy pledge (https://www.acc.eco/cr-clean-energy-coalition) and we have 25 pilot campuses we're partnering with. We hope to more than double that number next year.

2) Are growing the climate solutions caucus. We've met with members of congress and support those who are pro-environment.

3) Have a policy newsletter with policy research

4) Work with city and county county officials to assist with their environmental policy. (This one has been my favorite to watch take off.)

and plenty more.

> 4) Work with city and county county officials to assist with their environmental policy. (This one has been my favorite to watch take off.)

This one is so ripe for bipartisanship:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-regula...

It's been so awesome to local politicians from across the political spectrum message us and say, "Hey, what we're doing isn't working, do you have advice?"

People are so much more invested in their own community and open to tangible solutions.

Are you familiar with Strong Towns?

https://www.strongtowns.org/

They're good people, non-partisan, and also very much in line with "something isn't working":

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...

I personally am not, but will definitely run it by some people. At first blush this looks really neat. Thanks for sharing!

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the Sierra Club only opposed mtn biking in designated Wilderness Areas, which only make up 36M out of 192M NFS acerage.[0] (That's 145,000 km^2 out of 780,000 km^2)

Those areas really should just be left alone as much as possible. The White Mountain National Forest doesn't even like expanding or maintaining the leantos in much of their Wilderness Areas, so it's not like Mtn biking is singled out in my area. FWIW I love mountain biking and helping to build singletrack as much as possible, but I also like visiting the sublimely quiet wilderness areas with only my own two feet as my way into those natural cathedrals.

[0]https://www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/lar/LAR2011/LAR2011_Book_A5...

They've been pretty consistently anti MTB over the years.

There are absolutely wilderness areas where there should not be bikes, but it should be decided locally, just as certain trails outside of wilderness areas are, justly, hiker only.

For instance, this is a Wilderness area east of Bend, Oregon. It is not, however a "wilderness" - indeed many of the trails are former jeep roads:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.0008533,-121.0058259,13154m/...

And don't forget: you can legally ride a string of horses into a Wilderness area, shoot an elk with a rifle and pack it out. To my way of thinking, riding a bike around is not nearly so impactful.

Give me bikes over horses every day. Not sure exactly why hiking in a bit of horseshit, here and there, bothers me so much. I think it mostly is that I imagine that when you are on a horse you are much higher off the trail and don't have to deal with the stink your horse created.

I'm happy to share, and happy for local decision makers to decide which users should get access to which trails. There are some that even hikers damage, let alone adding bikes and horses. Others are fine for everyone. Some places (not in Wilderness areas) should have some room for ATV people and so on.

I guess besides being a housing YIMBY, I'm a trail YIMBY too.

The shit is the least of it, as horses will pound a trail to dust. How anyone argues with a straight face that MTBs are more impactful than horses is beyond my comprehension.

Yes. If you are hiking behind someone, lots of dust. Horse shit in the dust. Not very pleasant. In conditions like that I hope for a little rain.

The Oregon Badlands Wilderness you have pointed out seems very much wild to me. As a counterpoint, much of the WMNF in NH/ME was formerly logged, and there are remnant logging tracks (as opposed to jeep roads) scattered throughout, including in the wilderness areas. Eventually those jeep tracks will be just as unrecognizable as our logging tracks.

There are so many other places to ride and build trail, maybe we should just leave the wilderness areas alone.

The whole point of the wilderness areas is to halt further development in them. Those jeep roads were probably there before the area was "designated wilderness", as was the custom of horseback riding and hunting. Mountain biking wasn't a thing yet.

Oregon Badlands brochure for those interested:

https://www.blm.gov/or/districts/prineville/recreation/files...

Honestly most of that place seems really sandy, which isn't conducive to mountain biking in my mind.

One more thing. Many of these policies of no MTB were put in place before the advent of more sustainable trailbuilding practices were developed. Get out there and advocate for hardened, twisty, flowy, long-lasting singletrack!

That Badlands place would certainly not the best riding around (it'd maybe be good in the winter), but it's really not 'wild' feeling at all and is a good example of Wilderness != wilderness.

> maybe we should just leave the wilderness areas alone.

Except that brings into conflict mountain bikers with the idea of expanding wilderness areas. Wouldn't we rather have more areas protected like that? As it stands, mountain bikers who are environmentalists face an agonizing choice between protecting the land in that way, and their access to trails.

That's not hypothetical, either:

https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-news/oregon-crater-lak...

See also the Boulder-White Clouds wilderness in Idaho that closed a bunch of trails that mountain bikers were already riding.

What doesn't feel wild about it? 29,000 acres seem like a big enough place to get lost in and feel wild. For example, I've camped in the Presidential-Dry River Wilderness (also 29,000 acres) in the WMNF, and I have to say, even camping a half mile inside the area I felt like I could have been hundreds of miles from the nearest person. Being up over 4000 feet probably helps too...

I've never considered that wilderness areas were even being expanded on such a scale, let alone that it would be an issue. I will have to think about it now...I feel like if I could triple the amount of area that would be let to go wild, but lose mountain biking access in the process, that I'd be willing to accept the gain in wilderness with a loss in biking. I've done very little biking on any federal land to begin with. Most has either been on private land or town-organized easements.

To be fair, anywhere I've mountain-biked is nowhere close to being as remote as places out West. Maybe there is enough wilderness area in the West, but not enough here in the Northeast. That may be my perspective.

Yeah, this is an actual wild Wilderness with lots of high, remote places, and 10X the area of the other one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_Wilderness

Plenty of trails are also not suitable, nor maybe even really feasible for bikes.

They have a different definition of environmentalism

“True environmentalism, from my perspective, is using natural resources that God has blessed us with,” Pruitt told the Heritage Foundation last week.

Thankfully Mr. Pruitt does not speak for the ACC. Our view on public lands:

    In order to protect America’s natural resources and wildlife, the federal
    government ought to retain ownership of the majority of its federal lands.
    Preventing the sale of federal lands to interests contrary to their
    preservation requires citizens to hold officials accountable at every level
    of government.

I don't think 'the right' (whatever that means) has abandoned the environment.

At least libertarians have not.

Check out www.perc.org, these are free market people who are extremely passionate about the environment and they are quite popular and have made great inroads to provide an alternative way of thinking about the environment compared to the leftist big government bureaucracy style of protecting it.

They support great projects like Oregon Water Trust, The Nature Conservancy and do research on how to think in an economically sensible way about these questions.

Here some cool videos, Terry Anderson about Wildlife in Yellow-Stone and about the history of property rights in Montana.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBcpal2le2Y

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPrzUwl0suM

We at ACC like PERC :-) And we do partner with other eco-right groups: https://www.acc.eco/founding-coalition/

Obviously I'm generalizing a bit, but I don't think it's unfair to say the right has lagged far behind on environmental issues since at least the '80s.

I'm kind of late to the game, but what do you think about RepublicEn[0]?

[0] www.republicen.org

They're great! And Bob was one of our first supporters.

[0] https://twitter.com/republicEn/status/918153164146266112

[1] https://www.acc.eco/endorsements/

PERC is partly the subject of the article:

PERC’s affiliation with politically connected outfitters that stand to profit if trails are closed bolsters the sense, to Wilson and others confronting locked gates, that a void in coherent policy about public land management is being filled by cronyism that rewards wealth and connections above all else. Another co-owner of the Wonder Ranch, Frank-Paul King, a friend and former student of Anderson’s, served on PERC’s board. Hudson, the man who got Representative Sessions involved, is King’s brother-in-law, and he’s also a board member and the former president of the Dallas Safari Club, a group that made national headlines in 2014 when it auctioned off a trip to Africa to hunt an endangered rhinoceros.

I read the article. I just wanted to show that they do more then just what is in the article, because the article points them in a pretty particular way, whatever your opinion of the article is.

Phoning your government officials works well.

This website takes an address, and returns names and phone numbers belonging to your government representatives. I don't use my home address. There's a grocery store a couple blocks away whose address I use:

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/take-action/contact-your-...

Tell them your name and what city you live in. This is so they can decide whether or not to write you off; if you're not a resident in the district which they were elected to represent, your opinion really doesn't matter.

Tell them specifically, in plain english what it is that you are FOR or AGAINST. All they want to know is "When I am asked to vote 'yes' or 'no' on this issue, which binary response will get me more approval from my constituents?" So all you have to say is:

  "My name is <NAME>. I live in <TOWN>. I am <FOR>|<AGAINST> <ISSUE>."

If you're unsure what language to use, or what legislation is related to your cause, try visiting university campuses, national parks, or local conservation groups. Attending meetings and talking to professionals in the field is a good way to get informed about what you care about.

Here is another one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trust_for_Public_Land I am having a hard time determining the difference between these organizations. There seems to be plenty of advocacy. I am particularly interested in organizations that pool money from donations, buy land from these private ranchers, and then turn around and donate it back to the public.

I don't live in the USA, so I don't really have skin in the game on this issue. I did however want to point out that the Sierra Club has long held a strong anti-mountain biking advocacy position.

To each their own of course, but I'd rather support more inclusive groups.

> Are there any recommendations on how to best support it?

If you want a fun project, you can grab a kayak and a GoPro in order to prove that a river is navigable, which enables legal access up to the ordinary high water mark.

There are lots of groups specific to regions and activities, so a bit of searching about specific activities/places you enjoy should yield some good organizations.

For example https://www.accessfund.org/ does a great job of representing rock climbers.

https://gorgefriends.org/ are a group representing the Columbia River Gorge along the Oregon/Washington border.

The "Friends of the Gorge" are no friend you'd want. Every interaction I had with them was NIMBY, how dare you not smother the small towns along the gorge to death BS. Most of 'em would see to it that the Gorge goes back to having no wind mills, roads or dams unless its directly used by them for wind surfing or skiing.

Bunch of rich, elitist assholes who've come in from Portland and Seattle to fuck up the Gorge IMO.

NIMBYism is a little different when your backyard is a protected National Scenic Area. Stopping development is pretty much the whole point.

Check out backcountry Hunters & Anglers: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/

They fight to preserve and add to the existing lands.

You can support the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, both of which are heavily involved in issues of access for all types of backcountry users. RMEF especially specializes in purchasing land rights which unlock thousands and thousands of acres of public land that was previously inaccessible. I don't think any organizations are doing more to promote access on public lands. From their website: "Since 1984, RMEF has opened, secured or improved public access to more than 1.1 million acres of elk habitat across the country for hunters, hikers, anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts to enjoy."

By coincidence, "Freedom to Roam" came up in a recent HN thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

the general public's right to access certain public or privately owned land for recreation and exercise. The right is sometimes called the right of public access to the wilderness or the "right to roam".

In Scotland, the Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the Central European countries of Austria, Czech Republic and Switzerland, the freedom to roam takes the form of general public rights which are sometimes codified in law. The access is ancient in parts of Northern Europe and has been regarded as sufficiently basic that it was not formalised in law until modern times. However, the right usually does not include any substantial economic exploitation, such as hunting or logging, or disruptive activities, such as making fires and driving offroad vehicles.

New Hampshire also has a pretty unique culture regarding hunting on others' and public land:

"Based on long-standing tradition, nearly all lands in the state of New Hampshire are open to hunting. The "rule of thumb" in New Hampshire is: all state, federal, municipal, county and private land is open to hunting unless it is posted against hunting."

http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/hunting/where-hunt.html

This was the default rule for most of the frontier states. The east coast states (early states) adopted a default rule of no trespassing while the frontier states had such huge expanses of land privately owned that no trespassing as the default was impractical. Instead, the default was trespassing was allowed unless otherwise posted (hence the plethora of no trespassing signs in the Western states).

I know that it is the same in Maine (or it was), and I believe Vermont. It's generally considered common courtesy to get permission from the landowner first.

It's one of those situations where a few yahoos can ruin it for everybody else. Or on the other hand, the influx of people "from away" who are ignorant of or opposed to the mostly unspoken way of doing things.

Not sure if this is how it works in NH. But, IMHO private land owners should pay more taxes for their land if they post against roaming. Or the reverse, pay less land taxes if they allow roaming.

Yeah, there could be a good idea there! Things have to happen at the cultural level too, but I'm all for experiments!

That is already the case in NH.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_use

I used to do a fair bit of hiking and mountaineering in Scotland and England and the only time I was ever challenged by a landowner (while eating my picnic lunch) was in Somerset where he claimed that I might spread Swine Fever to his pigs from the Pork Pie I was eating.

I live in Bozeman and have made many trips to the Crazy Mountains over the years and can say that this article hits the nail on the head. This isn't just an issue in the Crazies either. Almost every mountain range in the region has some sort of land access issue. In the Bridger Range, just west of the Crazies, the Forest Service choose to reroute a trail to avoid a legal battle. Other examples include places that the trail cuts across the corner of someones land for 10 to 20 feet, yet the land owner gates off access. It is a shame that wealthy land owners are able to buy their way into closing these trails through the threat of expensive litigation.

Are there places they can't reroute the trail? That seems like the natural solution.

If you look at the map in the article, you will see the checker boarding. That usually means that if you move a trail off of one section, it ends up on another section. Sometimes it is a matter of the length of trail that needs to be rerouted. The example I gave in my previous comment was a short section of road and it was a reasonable solution.[1] In the situation in the Crazies, most of the range is surrounded by private land. It is a unique situation.

[1] https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/environment/fores...

Wow. I'm pretty sure the idea of public rights of way as a legal right of access across private property predates the entire US. That's a hell of a thing for the government to try and eradicate for the benefit of private landowners.

It just wasn't ever well established in the US. States generally give themselves the right to build roads though.

This is very similar to Vinod Khosla locking off Martins Beach in Half Moon Bay. California state law (California Coastal Act) vs federal law (dunno the law) but otherwise very similar.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/18/sheriff-martins-beach-...

This oddly shaped trail just outside of Bend does so to skirt a chunk of private land in the Deschutes National Forest:

https://bendtrails.org/trail/sector-16/

If you own land and let people traverse it without any control, it does eventually become a public right of way. The government has pushed this, effectively taking control of private land.

The only sane response is to exercise control of your land by putting up signs, fences, etc.

can you cite any sources of where control of large tracts of land were seized simply due to a road or trail crossing them? i would be interested to read the cases.

It's always funny reading this stories when you remember all the land was stolen from the natives. One thief bickering with the other.

In addition to calling your representatives, the [1]Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and [2]Backcountry Hunters and Anglers are great organizations to support.

[1] http://www.trcp.org/

[2] https://www.backcountryhunters.org/

I submit that there was a time and place for these landowners to consider the public access issue on their land - when they bought the land! I would assume they would have done their research and such factors would have played into the price they paid. To change this now is disingenuous.

For those interested in calling their own believes and get a market perspective on public land and private ownership, I highly recommend PERC, The Property and Environment Research Center [1].

They are not evil capitalist but rather passionate environmentalist with a head quarter in Bozeman Montana.

This podcast is quite good with one of the main people from there: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/08/terry_anderson.html

[1] https://www.perc.org/

seems to me like eminent domain might work. It's my property and I do not want you to pass through it, seems kinda simple. And the law backs it.

Now the Gov can catch them breaking a law or five in Fed land and make deals for access but that's not scalable.

So, go to court and force them to sell a 20 yard strip of land to be used as a road to the Fed property. Or offer them 10x in fed land on the other side of their property.

Business idea: Charge a fare to take people into the federal land via helicopter loudly flying over private land.

Its too expensive and you can't land in designated wilderness areas. Also, if the area is a patchwork of public and private land you can't move around once you land, you'd just have to keep flying from public spot to public spot.

Probably cheaper to try and quietly buy just enough blocking land to create a road in, and then bequeath it to a foundation.

The inverse concept (helicopter over public land to access a private inholding) has been tried by the Sievers :

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/lawsuit-seeks-to-build...

Lately just about every single Bloomberg article I've tried to read has been behind a paywall. Any way around it?

It's not the answer you want to hear, but you could pay for access.

We do, it's called taxes. The noble economist Elinor Olstrom refuted the Tragedy of Commons by showing that the communities who are the most dependent on a resource are best folks to manage it. We need more local advocates engaged, and more pushback, we need to shame these fuckers and I hope this article gets people angry.

If you read the comment above it was referring to paying for the article on Bloomberg and not for access to public land, although, the confusion is understandable.

From what I’ve seen it’s not a paywall but you do have to register.

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