Federal policy and behavior regarding public lands has shifted dramatically in the past 20 years. The Democrats have embraced the environmental lobby and are doing their bidding. The Republicans aren’t much of an obstacle as they don’t want to upset their suburban base who embrace all of the “saving the planet” propaganda.
Much of this is in direct violation of federal law and existing regulation. The left uses the differences that govern each state’s public lands and unrelated laws and regulations to impose their will.
They don’t want ranching, mining, foresting, or energy extraction on lands that belong to us. The only exception to this are the so called “green energy” scams. If you want to jump onto a get rich quick scheme, that’s the place to look.
The underlying problem is that federal policy or congressional policy regarding disbursement of the federal lands to settlers didn't vary from state to state. What worked along the 96th or 98th meridian didn't work along the 120th meridian.
The original policy of 360 or 180 acres worked very well to the east in the wetter zone. I didn't work in the west dry zone. Congress was aware of this all along but they stuck with it. Solutions such as grazing commons didn't work and the lease system was the least bad.
Some people will say that Congress stuck with a bad system for egalitarian reasons. Others say Congress stuck with a bad system because they wanted to limit the political power of the western US(relative to the north and south).
As for the dramatic shift in federal policy and behavior regarding the public lands, that would date to 1976 when congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act(FLPMA)
Well the county lands were given to the counties over 80 years ago designated to to pay for their county governments. Under the spotted owl deal, Clinton and the dems guaranteed payments of at least 50 million per year to help close the gap when the county has no resources to pay judges, juries, public defenders, sheriffs, jailers, etc. Guess what our county commissioners have to do every year when it comes up in the budget in DC, fly there and beg and beg to give us the 50 million handout. Meanwhile thousands of raptors, owls, eagles, pelicans, osprey's are being bassomated by the environmentalist wind mills, the same ones who shut down the timber industry to save an owl.