A Top Trump Interior Official Once Pushed To Privatize Wildlife

In the 1990s, Karen Budd-Falen challenged Wyoming’s authority to regulate hunting on behalf of ranchers.

In 1993, property rights attorney Karen Budd-Falen submitted a complaint to a federal judge in Wyoming with a novel argument: State ownership of wildlife violated the U.S. Constitution. And by limiting access to big game hunting permits, Wyoming had trampled the constitutional rights of her clients — a Texas oil magnate and a pair of ranching families, …