American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
earthhope.substack.com
earthhope.substack.com
(i work with a land conservation trust in the midwest)
It became a niche segment in the real estate. The idea is you find land that is cheap, but you have a feeling it has mineral wealth. You buy it cheap, get the survey done, and show that it was really worth a lot more. But instead of building a mine/oil well, you declare the land undeveloped for perpetuity. The tax benefit you receive is commensurate to the (now highly increased) value of the land.
You make a profit this way, and the environment benefits.
It's a very risky part of real estate. There are lots of environmental groups who closely monitor the land, and will file a lawsuit if they suspect you are developing on the land. Fighting lawsuits is part of the risk.
Anyway, the person who did the presentation showed some interesting statistics. Supposedly, for every 10 acres of land that is developed in a given year, roughly 9 acres are declared undevelopable for perpetuity. That's really significant (if true).
It used to be unthinkable that the US government would outright cancel such things... with the current administration, legislation and justice system, it's not just not unthinkable but expected.
In theory it's possible to reverse but in practice it requires something like standing on one foot, holding your breath, and reciting the entire bible.
People desperately need housing and even in bum fuck nowhere where I live they are desperate to build a little homestead just so they can have something, and then you have this insanity with people creating covenants that basically have dead people in their graves reaching out to smite living people.
C.f. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities
Mega-corps building cookie cutter subdivisions or commercial space obviously pay less because they're vertically integrated and highly streamlined.
Some small scale 1-4 unit stuff (single structure here and there) is exempted, unless it's too close to water of course.
The only way I can think of to preserve the wilderness without any isolated homes for the wealthy is for the government to buy up the land. I'd probably support that, if we could get it done, but it does mean that if the money for it comes out of the general fund, then you probably have average people paying for more of it, instead of mostly the wealthy.
This is also a massive problem in BC; the ALR exists to do exactly this. There's lots of land available, it's just illegal to build anything other than a farm on it, and the real estate market is as a consequence as usurious as you'd expect it to be.
Of course, none of this is new. Enclosure predates the Romans.
You don't even have to be particularly rich, you just have to be willing to live in the country.
I was moderately interested in a property in the middle of nowhere that had about 8 acres buildable (with two structures on it already) and about 220 acres of forest and a lake under a very strict conservation easement. It would have been the only property of that size and type I could even dream of affording. It was still expensive, but less than a million dollars where if that 230 acres had not been under conservation easement in the same area it'd have sold for over 10.
And it's not like indefinite means forever forever. If the next generation 4 generations from now decides these easements are not in their best interest they will be repealed. It's just a piece of paper in the end.
> One example: the former Millstone Golf Course outside of Greenville, South Carolina. Closed back in 2006, it sat vacant for a decade. Abandoned irrigation equipment sat on the driving range. Overgrowth shrouded rusting food and beverage kiosks. The land’s proximity to a trailer park depressed its value. In 2015, the owner put the property up for sale, asking $5.8 million. When there were no takers, he cut the price to $5.4 million in 2016.
> Later in 2016, however, a pair of promoters appeared. They gathered investors who purchased the same parcel at the market price and, with the help of a private appraiser, declared it to be worth $41 million, nearly eight times its purchase price. Why? Because with that new valuation and a bit of paperwork, the investors were suddenly able to claim a tax deduction of $4 for each $1 they invested.
- https://www.propublica.org/article/conservation-easements-th...
I think the law is still a good idea, but like many things it has been ruined by the rich and will need to be reformed or eliminated.
They just bought the land for $5.4 million, that was clearly the actual value.
Isn't this "undeveloped in perpetuity" status an application, so that you have to request an agreement to your valuation and the government has to approve it, meaning that the burden of proof goes the other way from your comment? At least, for my personal residence where I have the opposite incentive, it's not that I can go to the local government with a valuation of $3.50 for my house and they have to prove it's not; I can object to their valuation and try to prove my case, but the burden is on me, not on them.
Yes, I do know about the potential for fraud. Ultimately, this sounds more like a problem with the government not doing their due diligence as opposed to a problem with the idea itself.
And yes, this is fundamentally something only rich people can make use of. The average Joe doesn't have over $100K sitting around to buy a piece of land only to intentionally lower its value!
The example of the golf course they give is weird. You're not allowed to do it to a property that has a structure on it (at least not one with utility connections). Nor can it have paved roads. What kind of golf course was this?
Still, thanks for the article. It provides a more down to earth context.
> To be eligible for a deduction, land needs to meet at least one of four broadly defined “conservation purposes.” These include protecting “relatively natural” habitats; historic sites or buildings; land for public recreation or education; and open space (including farms, ranches and forests).
My guess is that since the golf course was primarily for public recreation (or could be), and was mostly "natural" open space (grass), they argued it qualified. Probably not hard it claim it as historic as well.
Unless you intend to develop the land the risk seems pretty acceptable.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/worlds-largest-wildlife-bridge...
It has public rights of way (if on foot, horse or bicycle) crossing the whole country. You can walk from one end of Britain to the other without trespassing, and without using roads (much). Many of these paths are very, very old, in a few cases Roman or pre-Roman, although more are medieval. Until recently, they were based on common law rights, although they're now in statute. The situation is a happy hangover of the medieval approach to property rights, which is based on custom and usage and negotiation instead of strict statute. The American eighteenth-century enlightenment approach is an attempt to make everything tidy: it's based on the rationalist idea that a thing is its definition and nothing more. So private property is private, that means nobody else can use it: case closed.
The medievals also held in theory (not always in practice, hahaha) that one had a moral duty to use wealth for the public benefit, and that not doing so was theft. So buying up land and kicking everybody off was not only frowned upon, but could also get you into legal trouble, and possibly into trouble with the Church.
EDIT:
A few points since I didn't mean this to be a controversial comment but it seems to have started an argument:
- I should have mentioned the vast public lands in the western US, since they provide a counterpoint.
- The liability issue in the US obviously affects access to land, but could be ameliorated in principle (I would think).
- My comment is not a general defense of British land usage approach. There are huge problems, including but not limited to the tiny number of big landowners. I should have prefaced my first paragraph with "in some respects". Similarly, it is not a general defense of the medieval approach, and certainly not of serfdom.
- The UK's problem with vast landowners got worse in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteen centuries, with the Dissolution, the enclosure acts and clearances. Land becomes far more concentrated at this time, and the social distance between landlord and tenant much greater. Older lords' houses tend to be built very near roads where anyone can talk to them (whether to beg or to threaten), whereas the eighteenth century ones, as well as being much bigger, are far from the road in huge parks, guarded by layers of servants. The historian E.P. Thompson talks about the "triumph of law over custom" -- in other words, "what you and your ancestors have agreed with us and our ancestors up until this time doesn't matter, we've managed to get this law written down that gets you off the land, now get lost".
I just wanted to point out that it seems that the sensitivity for what is ban-able has been turned up
https://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/projects/wilder-blean
https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/why-rewild/reintroductio...
This is mirrored by reintroduction schemes of red kites and beavers in the UK, as well as similar projects with bison, wolves and other species on the European mainland.
That's not to mention deer, which are both wild and doing really well - partly because of the lack of wolves, ironically!
The continental US (i.e. excluding alaska) has some 20+ mil wild deer, 200k bison, 1 mil bears, 3-4 mil coyotes, 13,000 wolves, 5 mil alligators, 10k+ mountain lions, etc, etc. Yes, most are in the vast western states. But deer and bears are common even in areas a just a couple hour drive outside of NYC. Thankfully no gators near NYC (except in the sewers, of course :-)
Depends on the state. In Texas using deadly force is permissible to stop crimes like robbery. https://legalclarity.org/in-texas-can-you-shoot-someone-on-y...
And there was a case where it wasn't even the homeowner, it was the neighbor who shot the burgulars
US has similar laws that you talk about where you have to give easement or right of way.
The UK is a small, densely populated country without large areas of true wilderness. Over 90% of the country's land is private. The one area of the UK where there are large expanses of land without many inhabitants is Scotland (due to the Clearances), but the land there is still mostly owned by large land barons, and so Scotland has a more permissive law that allows non-destructive access to almost all private land (Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003).
The US is almost half public land, it's absolutely gigantic, and it has numerous areas where you can be hundreds of miles away from the closest real settlement. We don't need traditional paths and easements and whatever when we have millions of acres of National Forest and BLM land that you can access freely. There are land barons in the US, but by absolute area, they did a fairly poor job of buying up the country's land before the federal government could protect it.
First, why would it hurt to codify land access in a clearer way. And second. There are continuous battles with private landowners of where and how to access the public lands that you claim mean we don't need traditional paths or easements. See the recent Wyoming corning crossing case.
There are some public lands within a 5 minute walk of my house that I cannot access because rich landowners have intentionally cordoned them off. They're beautiful areas that should remain public. Why should you be able to effectively buy public land by restricting access to it maliciously? Why shouldn't Americans take seriously access to our shared land resources?
Again, over 90% of UK land is private, and large land barons control the vast majority of that. We just don't have a similarly widespread issue with land access in the US.
Or maybe we could build suburbs with these sorts of walking-paths baked in from the beginning. Mine was laid down in the 70s, so too late for that now...
Don't get me wrong - I love my neighbors, and I find that most people are amenable to reasonable requests, without needing the law to lean on them, but it would be nice to codify this a bit.
If enough people cross their land over a long enough period of time (varies by jurisdiction) without permission, that creates a "prescriptive easement," which is essentially what you're asking for. Some decent info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement#By_prescription
We can. They exist. I've been in some of them.
The interesting part is that the agreement is that the county will be buying about 400 contiguous acres and then the housing clusters will be placed in 500 of the remaining 600 acres, with the 100 acres weaving in and out donated once they do the platting. They’re pretty far along in the process, with zoning and approvals in place. There are still a few unresolved technical issues that could derail the whole thing, yet we are less than one month away from signing the agreement that will irrevocably force them to sell the 400 acres. I’m excited to reach that milestone and after that won’t care at all if the project falls through (the remaining land revert to agriculture zoning and a future developer has to start over from the very beginning).
What is lacking is places you would actually walk to. There are numerous parks and a pool. But that's it. Don't get me wrong, it's great if you have a dog or enjoy running or walking. But I still have to drive everywhere.
Almost all of the US’s public lands are west of the Rockies. If you live in Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington then you can basically throw a rock and hit some public lands. East of the Rockies, you can go your entire life without ever even seeing public lands.
https://www.backpacker.com/stories/issues/environment/americ...
50+yr ago they were far more utilized (per capita) because they weren't closed to motorized recreation and hunting and fishing hadn't yet been regulated with intent to discourage participation.
But yes, the vast BLM lands out west have no analogue in the east.
But the comparison between West and East gets crazier. In the West, people'll drive for an entire day just to get to one specific remote area. Whereas in the East, some untouched forest could be an hour and a half away and "that's too far." You could walk through a forest which is actually 3 different forests in a half hour, whereas out West it's just miles and miles of the same desert or mountain.
We don't really know how to appreciate nature unless it's a majestic overlook.
For example compare their map of Massachusetts with this map from the state: https://www.mass.gov/how-to/masswildlife-lands-viewer
Depends on your definition of large. You'd probably be shocked at just how much wilderness is in the UK.
Don't get me wrong, just about every farmable piece of land is growing food. However, you might be shocked at the presence of forests and camping grounds still to this day.
Either way, the right to roam in the UK is something I wish we had in the US. There are more than a few lakes, for example, that can no longer be accessed because they've been encircled by private land owners turning the lakes effectively private. Cutting off access to waterways and forests to turn them into playgrounds for the rich is gross.
Well, as I was walking, I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing"
But on the other side it didn't say nothing
That side was made for you and me!You're right. I was shocked at just how little there is. If one's definition of large is more than a few square km, there's virtually none, for any sensible definition of wilderness, at least south of the Cairngorns.
And indeed in Northern Ireland, which has the most restrictive laws in the U.K. in this respect, even more restrictive than the current situation in England and Wales.
Maybe the Nordics should set aside more public land and catch up to the United States?
Sometimes Europeans are so convinced that their way of life is better or their policies are the best they forget that sometimes their policies solve problems that don't exist in other countries. There's no need to have a right to roam in America. There's nowhere to roam to, and the places that you would roam to are already owned by the public where you have... the right to roam! Though we are much more strict about natural preservation in those parks which sometimes conflicts with the desires of some to go "off trail", but that's a separate issue.
The UK might be a little different, granted, but the no-true-scotsman approach to someone suggesting they enjoy the UK's right to roam but they can't because the Nordic countries are so much better in this regard is annoying, to say the least.
You come across very Italian, for sure. I guess? :)
You may be unaware, but the American legal system allows for property owners to be held civilly responsible for the actions of uninvited individuals, including criminals with intent beyond simple trepass, that harm themselves on said private property, unless the owner has taken many somewhat onerous steps to post No Trespassing signs often with requirements of details on the signs and posted in short intervals.
So why would a property owner want to allow random individuals to cross their land if it may mean someone can sue them for damages because they tripped and broke an arm, etc.?
Good thing you IANL'd that because this is very much a state by state thing, not an "american" thing.
For example, if people openly hike through part of a private property for 5 years (in CA), and the owner knows this and does nothing, then after 5 years there will be a public easement for the public to continue using that part of the land as a hiking trail and the owner can no longer prevent that. OTOH, if he puts up signs on the 12th month of the 4th year, saying "Hiking permitted by owner", then no public easement is created, and the owner can subsequently close off public access at any point.
Every state I’ve lived in has landowner indemnification for trails. In Colorado, the landowner must put up signs for hazards, though a local group always exists to help with this. In my experience, the rationale for such a trail to be closed always comes down to a single person ruining it for everyone else.
The second you charge money (for hunting, usually), all that protection goes away.
It's also worth noting how integral Monasteries were to society and provided many of the essential services (from medicine, education, diplomacy etc down to beer and bread). So the "getting in trouble with the church" was actually a stronger mechanism than you would think as they had a large presence and were prescient to common life.
And even if you never set foot on other's people property, I think it's fair of the government, which ultimately enforces land owners' property rights, to say that they won't support you excluding other people from natural land.
I have to say that according to this PDF I found [1], a lot more US families do own forested land, but it's still a minority.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20250420022718/http://www.family...
Fun to read about the other systems and considerations in this thread.
There's something uniquely evil about locking the public out of public lands.
I'm looking at you, too, Vinod Khosla.
I'm not sure that it created any sort of ground easement.
It basically allows you to 'hop' from one quadrant to the cross quadrant without touching the other two quadrants of the corner. The guy in that case used a ladder to do that IIRC so he only violated their 'airspace' up until that ruling.
If I recall correctly it was either basically just a low hanging chain or low fence, but it's awhile since I read it.
Judges are normally loathe to consider much more than the narrowest reading required, so I would be shocked if they considered the possibility of touching the fence or a fence high enough to make a ladder impractical.
owns 6000 acres of checkerboard land that’s effectively 20,000 acres with a notorious ranch manager.
Lost his case in Fed courts in Wyoming and on appeal, trying to do Supreme Court now.
Wyofile has consistently good coverage on this.
> locked out of ONE OF THE ONLY western access roads
So not locked out. And accessible from all 4 orientations.
(edit: lol, break the rules and downvote all you want. this site loves dishonest journalism if it confirms their wrong biases)
Anyways, yes, only locked out of the road, not the land.
IDK anything about Montana, but that feels inexpensive.
~1500/acre is very normal for Montana farm/pasture land.
It is undisclosed how much American Prairie paid, it will be interesting to see if that ever gets disclosed.
People that own undeveloped land purely for the reason of blocking someone else do not have any place in the capitalist system. It is nice someone is working on undoing that, through the mechanisms they have available.
For the many downvoters do this thought experiment: the neighbor country attacks and takes over your country. What is your ownership title worth? Exactly 0. Hence it was not yours to begin with.
To the conqueror your paper means nothing.
What do you own that cannot be taken by force in some way or another?
Some non-physical stuff like happiness or sadness, maybe, except that if you were killed you wouldn't have those either.
Therefore, when I encounter individuals in my generation who haven’t participated in any wars and assert that they own their land, not the state, I can’t help but believe they require a reality check.
I think you need to remember that Lock and Smith were writing in a century when "they're not using it (by our definition), so we can just go take it" was the legal underpinning by which the english colonies mostly justified forcing the natives off their land and that sort of interpretive creativity had been used for hundreds of years by the various parties in England seeking to get one over on each other.
Now, there's a lot to be said for "default" public access to/through un-posted, unimproved land and there's an even stronger argument in favor of landowners (public included) being required to have some legal access to land they own but the american system where the land owner has fairly unlimited right to kick other people off his property (of course the .gov excepts themselves) arises out of the disputes that the historical english doctrine (there's a word for it but escapes me) causes.
I think people buying up land strategically to block access to other land is obviously bad and the whole corner crossing thing should have been a joke, but this is a very thorny and complex problem.
What happened in parts of New England was people were expanding into native territory, the natives would show up appeal to these people's governments "hey, one of your assholes built a farm where I hunt, tell that guy to GTFO" and sometimes they'd win but usually the .gov would say basically "you weren't using it in any way we recognize, piss off", basically using the historical doctrine they got from England (which you can't really fault them for in the absence of other doctrine, though clearly their strategic vision was lacking), until eventually, farm by farm and pasture by pasture so much had been taken that the natives were so squeezed a lot of them cast their lot in with King Phillip. And after that the various lawmaking bodies started saying things like "hey maybe that weird Roger guy was onto something with his whole 'they're using it their own way, we oughta pay em for it' schtick" and writing protections for dis-used property into law and restricting what we now call adverse possession so as to reduce/prevent such disputes from reaching a boiling point going forward.
And TBH I think legally things would have gone that way anyway. The sort of adverse possession laws that make sense in a country of mostly landless peasants who have rights and permissions but don't actually have final say because they don't own the land are going to be very different than the sort of adverse possession laws in an agrarian society where most people own the land they work (i.e. the US 1700-1870ish).
> “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor.”
Adam Smith inferred that strict property rights were overall good for law and order and developing society, but that in the long run they would lead to inequality (which in his views was an acceptable tradeoff if the overall lot of the poor was improved).
More to your point, Adam Smith was skeptical of commons. The experience in England at the time was that commonly owned land was abused and neglected.
> “It is in the interest of every proprietor to cultivate that, which belongs to himself, and to neglect that, which belongs to all.”
There's really nothing about "capitalism" as a system that is mutually exclusive with also preserving nature. It just needs to be tied into an ownership structure (private or public) that is incentivized to preserve it.
I find it quite amusing how many conservatives ignore basic reality.
You should read about the history of Yellowstone and its creation :) You'll end up with an opinion that probably matches your current opinion, but at least you'll understand where it all comes from.
Conservation is fine. But perpetual free locking away of land is total bullshit. The highly performative yelling of "we are IN A CRISIS!" while actively promoting said crisis is getting old. I've had enough of it.
This land is only preserved from development because people are willing to pay taxes for the government to monitor and fence the land, and pay higher property values because there's less land for development.
If you want people to be OK with those costs, it really helps for them to be able to actually go and see the beautiful land that they are preserving. It's not reasonable to expect people to care about nature of you don't let them experience it.
Really we should designate more areas as wilderness. i.e. no machinery. Humans can still enjoy the land without roaring across them in 4x4s.
To clarify: In your view, someone using a vehicle to access a remote area is not "enjoying the land"?
Perhaps you mean that the presence of a motorized vehicle reduces your own enjoyment.
(Personal bias: I am an avid mountain biker, occasional dirt bike rider, and feel the wilderness designation is harsh and used excessively).
That reminds me, I still have to put up the explanation at oneoftheonly.com for why this phrase doesn't make sense and is the new "could care less".
In fact it's even more vacuous ("nothingburger") because sometimes it's not even clear which way the person means it; if I say "I'm one of the only people to do a handstand on a Thursday morning", do I imagine that I'm in a large group or a small one?
[Edit: this paragraph added to respond to post below saying I'm not going to win, which was edited out and I couldn't respond to for some reason.] I'm not trying to "win" any more than I would try to tell people that literally isn't a synonym for figuratively; I know that ship has sailed. That doesn't mean I'm not allowed to say it doesn't make sense, and I'm very aware that people get extremely angry about it for some reason, as if it's a personal affront. Not everyone has to buy into the cargo cult of descriptivism (particularly in the face of absurdity), differences of opinion are still allowed :)
(edit - for the record, this was in response to the first paragraph only, as the others were edited in afterwards)
The grains of sand example should make it clear: it is not true that this grain is one of few at the beach, but it is true that it's one of the only. This makes it a poor expression for scarcity, and while obviously we know what was actually intended (as with "could care less"), that doesn't really make it any better.
BTW thanks for the hot tip regarding the posting delay feature! Lord knows I need it, nothing induces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier like hitting that reply button :"D
FYI for anyone reading this (not directed at you specifically): the 'delay' option in profile setting adds a delay before your comments appear publicly, giving you a buffer for edits and deletions before it goes out to the world.
Personally it helps a lot with ensuring I'm happy with the comments I make, and it helps avoid situations like this where multiple layers of retroactive changes make the conversation hard to follow.
Definition 3 from Merriam-Webster[1] of "only": FEW
I can say "one of the few", or "one of the only", and they both make perfect sense (and have the same meaning). You're being blindly prescriptive without even doing the legwork.
Also it's difficult not to call out the hypocrisy of descriptivists simultaneously saying that basically anything goes, but my preferred use of language in particular is wrong and I need to listen to what they prescribe :P
For example: Alaska and Hawaii are the only non-contiguous U.S. states. Alaska is one of the only non-contiguous states.
The 'only' is part of the group definition, implying the individual 'one' is part of a small subset of some sort.
This is in contrast to people mistaking one word for another.