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Posted on 07/29/2026 2:27:14 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Cody Peterson is a farmer and property owner in North Dakota.
My family has been farming in North Dakota for generations. Like most farmers, we have lived and worked through droughts, floods and price swings that would make a Wall Street trader’s head spin.
Now the government is adding an obstacle that threatens my ability to work my land. In the 1960s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came to landowners across the Midwest, including the farmer who previously owned my land, with a deal. The government wanted an easement on part of the property to protect wetlands that provide habitats for ducks and other waterfowl. The agency did not offer much money. It paid about $630 for rights across roughly 328 acres of land I now own. The easement document explicitly states that farmers could continue “normal farming practices.”
Farmers across the northern Great Plains signed these deals. In North Dakota, the government claimed easements on 1.5 million acres of privately owned land. It made sense at the time: Landowners got some money for land that they couldn’t farm effectively, and the government got to protect wetlands for waterfowl. It was as simple as a handshake deal between neighbors — except one neighbor was the federal government.
When my family bought farmland in LaMoure County‚ the property had one of these easements on it. If the government had stuck to the agreement, the easement would not have been a big obstacle to our land management practices.
But in 2024, the Fish and Wildlife Service reinterpreted the scope of the wetland easements and updated the restrictions applied to prairie potholes. Prairie potholes are shallow depressions created by glacial runoff thousands of years ago. Water can accumulate in these holes, leaving some wet for large parts of the year. To the government,...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Pencil neck government geeks in DC have zero respect for us out here in flyover country.
The 40 acres to the south of us is land locked. Their plan was to sign up with the Fish & Wildlife service like in the article. The landowners hurdle was they needed an easement from one of the surrounding land owners to allow the government inspectors to access their land.
I said no. The other neighbors around them said no.
Never let the camel get its nose under the tent.
Never invite the government into your business.
Wasn’t there a kinda kerfuffle about gov’t overreach/totalitarianism a ‘lil while back ?
seems something sparked that memory earlier this month..
Well, the pic on the thread looked like old strip mined ground I had seen from light plane in north central IL. But, after looking at google sat maps of that county, yes, that looks like nature formed it.
It sounds nice. Even logical. Except that they change the rules any time they please.
I have nearly 500 acres that are within the someday not too far away target of developers. it is timber, creeks, a lake, ponds and pasture. I plan a conservation easement with such restrictions to poison development for what I hope will be a very long time. It will be my final FU to greedy bastards, city planners and politicians. Not a park donation though, they legal their way out of those too easily.
I will not ever enroll in any government program though. They meddle too much.
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