Owners of land that blocks access to significant amounts of other public land should be required to maintain public access roads or lose ownership (of a path of the states choosing).
American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
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Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought that weird 'corner crossing' case or whatever with the hunters had rendered this sort of thing impossible? Is that not correct?
Still going, and we can call the guy keeping it going by his public records name - Fred Eshelman, pharma wealthy North Carolinian owns the notoriously checkerboarded Elk Mountain in Wy, which if you ever drive I80 past Laramie Wy it’s the big mountain on the south side going west. owns 6000 acres of checkerboard land that’s effectively 20,000 acres with a notorious ranch manager. Lost his case in Fed courts in Wyomin…
Sometimes the checkerboarding is the result of indian reservation agreements. For example, Palm Springs is technically like this.
Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#43America needs more land that’s under stewardship of people who want to conserve it for the future. We’ve lost so much native biodiversity, but there’s still pockets that can revive it if managed appropriately.
In the early 80's, Congress passed some laws that allow people to buy undeveloped land, and declare it to be undeveloped for perpetuity (no one can develop on it even if sold). The owner gets some tax benefits from doing so.
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).
Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#44America needs more land that’s under stewardship of people who want to conserve it for the future. We’ve lost so much native biodiversity, but there’s still pockets that can revive it if managed appropriately.
There is a guy in Alabama that is working to preserve and restore native habitats and plants including prairies, through things like prescribed burning and felling invasive species. https://youtube.com/@nativehabitatproject
I follow this channel. He’s the reason I’ve got engaged with land conservation efforts.
Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#45> The group bought the land from two billionaire Texas brothers who’d kept the public locked out of one of the only western access roads into adjacent public land, There's something uniquely evil about locking the public out of public lands. I'm looking at you, too, Vinod Khosla.
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Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#46The UK has a much more intelligent (though far from perfect) approach to land use. 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 la…
During the Highland Clearances in Scotland _many_ people were kicked off land.
Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#47The UK has a much more intelligent (though far from perfect) approach to land use. 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 la…
... the last time the UK had large herds of wild grazing animals was several thousand years ago. There's absolutely no way any herd of wild bison could exist in the UK's current "much more intelligent approach".
Visit Scotland. We've plenty of wild deer. There are even herds in Glasgow. Highlands are covered in them. We have road signs to warn drivers.
Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#48Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#49The UK has a much more intelligent (though far from perfect) approach to land use. 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 la…
Two very, very different situations.
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.
Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
#50> one of the only 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".
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