HotKarl_Marx

These lands were NEVER owned by the states. That's why.

And the last time the government tried to give the land to the states, they didn't want it.

And the same will be true this time. The states will only want land that has water and can be developed, exploited, or ruined.

So how come Utah and Nevada couldn't manage to sell 85% and 65% of their land by 1970 then? Hint: The answer lies in the provisions of the Taylor Grazing Act and the machinations of Senator McCarran.

Why don't we just legalize and end all this nonsense?

Ranchers discovered it was a far better deal to lease the land for a few cents/acre/year than it would be to buy the land and have to pay property taxes on it.

McCarran made this even more lucrative for the ranchers by making banks take a rancher's leased properties as collateral for loans. This made it so the banks had an incentive to keep the ranchers in business and prop them up in lean times.

Then McCarran took away the budget of the grazing service so they could not afford to enforce the limits on head count, and they could barely even afford the staff to collect the grazing fees.

Essentially the ranchers got complete control of the rangelands for a pittance of what it would have cost to buy them.

More recent administrations have given the Federal agencies who control the land more power. This has really pissed off the ranchers who had everything just how they liked it....

Quantas.... Quantas never crashed.