Alternative Options for Public Land Transfers

[Jason__G]

One of the issues that keeps coming up in the Federal Lands ownership discussions are the land-locked areas that are owned by the government, yet due to lack of easement, or adjacent public lands, are inaccessible to the public. Proponents of transfers say that these areas are a burden on the BLM/Forest Service and serve no public good. They use these as examples of why we should sell public lands or transfer them to the states(sell in phases program). Below is an example of these lands:


How about another option in place of a simple sale?
For instance, start with a very specific land-swap program with the following criteria:
Federal Lands to be swapped must be under a certain acreage i.e. 160 acres. This will limit the program to only the grids and small chunks like above.
Federal Lands to be swapped must be adjoined on all sides by private lands with no travel management or recorded access easement in place.
Lands may only be 'swapped' for parcel of same acreage that is adjoined on at least one side by public land.
What this would do is create a program that would trade these land-locked portions for acreage that is accessible. You could add other stipulations like land valuation, etc. The goal would be to get these low-hanging fruits that are constantly being used as out-of-context reasons for federal land transfers out of the discussion.

Is this an option, or am I missing something?

 

[mfllood3800]

I have heard the government swapping land for other lands
It's not new or uncommon

They did that here in Utah, because they needed something the lands they had didn't have

But usually the government only deals with swapping when it benefits them proportionally either short term or long or both.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

 

[Matt Cashell]

Land Swaps have happened frequently all over the West. A blanket policy oversimplifies the issue. Every swap proposal should be evaluated independently on its own merits.

This is totally separate from transferring management to the States, which would almost certainly lead to sales of public lands.

 

[Murdy]

In a checkerboard situation, I don't see the motivation for the landowner. The landowner already has nearly exclusive access to parcels landlocked within land he owns. Rearranging ownership so that some of the land would no longer be landlocked doesn't seem to be a tremendous benefit to the owner and may even be a detriment--more people on land that he formerly was able to use exclusively. Maybe where development was at issue, an owner might have a tangible benefit, but outside of that, I don't see it.

 

[Bulldawg]

MY OPINION,

A lot of this public land is leased for agricultural reasons like running cattle on. Some permits are given to outfitters so they can charge money to take someone hunting on public land.

I think that if public land is landlocked and the public cannot access that land, I don't think the landowners should be able to benefit off of it as well. They shouldn't be allowed to run cattle on the land unless they allow an easement for the public to access the land as well. There should be no outfitters operating on that land unless an easement is there to allow the rest of us on it. If the general public cannot utilize the land and enjoy the resource, nobody should be able to make a profit off it.

Now I do not believe that we have to keep people off the land because that defeats the purpose of public land, if a landowner allows access through his land to the public that should be ok, but I do not think he should be allowed to profit through taking something from the land if nobody else can get there.

 

[vanish]

Murdy pretty much nails it.

While it would seem a reasonable trade, since the adjacent landowner can already make use of the land, they'll feel like they're losing out. You see this all the time when huge ranches are sold, they'll include the landlocked public acreage in their description of the property as if it was their own.

 

[Jason__G]

I think that if public land is landlocked and the public cannot access that land, I don't think the landowners should be able to benefit off of it as well.

What if these two ideas were tied together into one program? Take away the ability for adjacent landowners to legally abuse the checkerboard while putting in place a simple program to allow consolidation for them into contiguous parcels.

 

[TheTone]

Matt did a very good job of addressing the thought IMO. Assigning value to land is incredibly difficult and acre for acre isn't going to really touch it in a "fair" way

 

[Jason__G]

So if a simple trade program wont work, then what will?
These parcels are the low-hanging fruit that the transfer advocates correctly point out as being a being both a burden on the tax-payers, and having no public benefit. So what can we do to keep them from being used as examples to promote a larger, federal land transfer/sale agenda?

If you were tasked with addressing this issue, how would you handle it?
Gift them to the landowners?
Force easements and access?
Limit adjacent owner access?
Tax surrounding owners for the value of the property including fire suppression, etc?
Require future surrounding land sales to include access agreement?
Leave it alone until someone else deals with it and hunters have no input?
????

If the major argument against doing something about these lands is that the private landowners benefiting off of them for free will get upset, then that is not much of an argument.