I think the problem is how it is administered (specifically, how environmental law is administered), not who owns it. We’ve seen loggers driven out of business over environmental issues, same with ranchers. Even farmers in central California are being driven to reduce acreage due to environmental law.
Better accommodation of human and business interests is certainly possible and should be established as a high priority by Congress.
In the meantime, the President should recognize the inhumanity of current environmental law by signing an executive order exempting Bundy from further persecution pending review of the law by Congress. He has set aside ACA law due to its inadequacies. Why not this one?
“This isn’t just a Western problem. It’s an American problem...”
It’s a constitutional problem too. National forests, wilderness areas, national parks, and BLM lands are ways of robbing states of resources and real estate. They keep massive bureaucracies going, and provide the federal government with more power and control it doesn’t need. The founders tried to avoid this kind of federal meddling in state business.
In my area we need permits to cut dead wood on Forest Service or BLM land. The Forest Service makes the permit process easy enough, but the BLM is impossible. The only people cutting wood on BLM land are BLM employees, or grazing lessees, and I’m not so sure about the latter. I’ve given up trying to get one of their permits.
I was asked to do a psychiatric consult on a patient admitted to a medical ward with a terminal illness in Wyoming years ago. He was severely depressed.
He was a career BLM guy, and talked wistfully about how lonely he had been in Wyoming because of it, and how much people there hated him because of it.
‘Nuff said.
The states need to find ways to get it all back