Can someone please explain the rationale or historical reasons for why the US government divided up public and private lands into a literal checkerboard like that? Not only does it create legal headaches as in this case, but from a nature conservation point of view it's terrible because it breaks up habitat into little islands with a lot of edges, that invasive species tend to prefer over native species, and makes it difficult for animals to move from one island to another if most of the private plots are deforested or fenced.
Hi! As the federal government pushed westward expansion, in several areas it divided federal public land into blocks and granted every other lot to private interests, generally railroad companies. The idea was to use the private development to drive up the price of the retained federal land and then sell that too, but it didn't generally work out that way out west. This report from the Center for Western Priorities linked below goes over the basics of that history, but if you want to go deep, you should check out the book "Our Common Ground" by John Leshy.
The Iron Bar case is another gross example of a landowner attempting to privatize Mother Nature for profit. The hubris that Iron Bar exhibits by "claiming" wildlife in its effort to exclude others is inexcusable. If only the county sheriff and other regulators would be as diligent to cite landowners for aerial trespass of smoke resulting from open burning, then I might have an inkling of sympathy for Iron Bar.
Can someone please explain the rationale or historical reasons for why the US government divided up public and private lands into a literal checkerboard like that? Not only does it create legal headaches as in this case, but from a nature conservation point of view it's terrible because it breaks up habitat into little islands with a lot of edges, that invasive species tend to prefer over native species, and makes it difficult for animals to move from one island to another if most of the private plots are deforested or fenced.
Hi! As the federal government pushed westward expansion, in several areas it divided federal public land into blocks and granted every other lot to private interests, generally railroad companies. The idea was to use the private development to drive up the price of the retained federal land and then sell that too, but it didn't generally work out that way out west. This report from the Center for Western Priorities linked below goes over the basics of that history, but if you want to go deep, you should check out the book "Our Common Ground" by John Leshy.
Thanks for reading!
https://westernpriorities.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Landlocked-Measuring-Public-Land-Access.pdf
The Iron Bar case is another gross example of a landowner attempting to privatize Mother Nature for profit. The hubris that Iron Bar exhibits by "claiming" wildlife in its effort to exclude others is inexcusable. If only the county sheriff and other regulators would be as diligent to cite landowners for aerial trespass of smoke resulting from open burning, then I might have an inkling of sympathy for Iron Bar.