HEY, BIG BROTHER, DO YOU NEED ALL THAT LAND?

The biggest landowner in the U.S. is the federal government . . . by a long shot.  When I read through the list of states where the feds own the lion's share of acreage, I shudder, thinking maybe we'd all be better off if those lands were in the hands of private enterprise or the state governments.  Is there any reason the federal government should own 81 percent of the state of Nevada?  Do they need to own over half of a number of other states in the western U.S.?  And if they didn't own it, who would?  I don't have definite answers to those questions, but I'm of the opinion those lands are better off right where they are.  At least most of them are, and some states are better off not owning them.  The feds
pay out big bucks each year to the states where they own considerable property to offset the loss of funds the states would get from levying property taxes on them.

Like a lot of other environmentalists, I'm not exactly wild about the way the feds manage their properties.  It's not like they're just sitting there.  They lease a lot of it to mining interests, tree cutters, and ranchers who want to graze cattle on it.  They make considerable money off their holdings, and sometimes at the expense of what's best for the land itself.  But overall, they do a much better job of taking care of it than most states would . . . and they most certainly do a better job than private owners would do.  Only a small percent of people who look at forestlands, for instance, see them as a thing of beauty that should be preserved.  Left to private enterprise, there'd be no more redwoods, and they'd turn the country into nothing but a vast treeless expanse . . . save for their tree plantations, which don't replace natural forests.  Wildlife would be in even worse jeopardy without federal protection.

I don't advocate more federal ownership of lands, but one reason so much of it is in their hands is because the states and private holders showed little regard for it.  Left in their hands, it would've been utilized in ways damaging to us all.  I do advocate, however, stricter government control over the land it already owns.  They could do a better job of managing it, partly because it is subject to politics, and politics has a way of screwing up almost everything.  We go from having liberal leaning politicians in office who want to do more to preserve natural resources, take care of the environment in a more conscious matter, to having conservative leaning governments that want to loosen the controls and give up more to those who want to profit from it.  That's not a good deal, but measures have been put in place that to some degree minimize the effects of politics on the environment, on federal holdings.  Much of the management of federal lands is in the hands of career bureaucrats, and that's probably a good thing . . . probably, but not always.

Woody Guthrie got it wrong when he wrote the words, "This land is my land, this land is your land."  Only in a round about way through the muddled democratic processes is it your land or mine.  It's theirs, the feds, and there's a lot of it.  About all I can say about that is:  GET USED TO IT.