Fair cost is best determined by the market. As I said, the feds are a pain to deal with, and that pain needs to be factored in to what a rancher is willing to pay. What I do not accept is the idea that this rancher is special and deserves to get for free what every other rancher pays for. Those payments help fund improvements and the operating costs to manage...and the dust bowl years gave birth to the management.
I have no desire to lose public lands. They were provided for in the Constitution, and the original states gave huge chunks of land to the federal government - so the concept is not foreign to our Constitution.
We spent 150 years giving land away. It often failed because people didn’t understand that in the west, it is WATER that matters, not land. There is a long tradition of ‘common land’, and it is reasonable for that common land to be managed for the common good.
I don’t want the government in the managing or owning business when there are individuals who want to own it. As I mentioned to someone last night, I have Swain county, NC relatives who lost perfectly good property to the feds for the Smoky Mountain park...and Al Gore tried to steal more of it at the end of the Clinton era.
They just want to provide nice things for their own polluted selves and overcrowded populations. They should fix their own damn land and leave us alone.
But they make deals that you’re not legally allowed to refuse.