Judging by the millions of RVs and vehicles from all over the nation, including the east coast, southeast, Midwest that descend on the western states year round and throng to Forest Service, BLM, National Parks…folks all over this country are big fans of federal public lands.
I have faith in the citizens of Wyo.You have more faith in politicians than I do buddy.
Same with Montana. BLM keeps buying more property.
If states were given the land they would manage it how they do other state assets, ostensibly for the benefit of there residents. Benefit includes selling the lands to make a profit, leasing lands to private parties for various uses hunting, recreation, OG, minerals, high speed train experiments (Colorado), etc. Some might be open for public access but with different rules than they have today.
Maybe the citizens of WY could agree on the legality of corner crossing so more of these lands could be accessed?
I have faith in SOME of the citizens in Wyoming.
I’m not a fan of the land transfer idea, but i do agree that the state typically manages it better than the feds. Case in point is here in Montana last year the state had a larger budget for 36,000 acres of weed spraying than the Custer-Gallatin had for 1.8 million acres. On the surface it seems simple, the feds are under funded, but that’s not the whole story. The feds have so much waste in their proposals that their budgets don’t go nearly as far. For example…last year I sprayed 604 acres for the state for 1/3 of the price that another contractor sprayed 570 on adjacent forest service. Same chemicals, mapping, equipment. The feds suck to work for and contractors charge much higher prices.
In my neck of the woods, and my industry (civil engineering), you can see this play out at lower levels of gov't as well. They State has a giant set of specifications that are true for every project, even if they're not immediately applicable. The intent is to remove all liability and risk from the public agency and place all of that on the Contractor. It's a great idea, but often there wasn't much risk to begin with, and the extra costs you pay during the bid process ends up being more than the potential change order would have been if your risk came to fruition. We see less of that at the County level, and significantly less at the either very small muni or private level. The project costs reflect the increased risk exposure. Sure there's a place for reducing the public risk exposure, but at a certain point you're tits deep into the land of astronomically diminishing returns wondering why your project costs are 3-10x the going rates.
No but in Wisconsin a vast majority of camping occurs on the state land with very little on the federal land. So you just made my point. You need to open your mind and consider how someone from here actually views the federal lands close to their home
