[Vision2020] Fight Over Public Lands Takes to Boise

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of Northwest Cable News (Seattle, Washington) at:

http://www.nwcn.com/story/news/local/2016/01/31/fight-over-public-lands-takes-to-boise/79595496/

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Fight Over Public Lands Takes to Boise

Downtown Boise was a battle ground for two opposing views Saturday afternoon. While a property rights workshop was going on at the Boise Centre, a group was rallying in support of keeping public lands in public hands.

Land ownership is a hot-button issue in the West, and it has been brought to light recently through the take-over of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. However, it's not a new concern for ranchers, or for those who want public lands to stay in the hands of the public. Those rallying against privatizing public lands- against the corporate and individual land-grab- marched from the Capitol to the Grove where Utah's Freedom Conference was hosting a workshop.

At the Statehouse, signs like "Free Malheur" and "Birds Not Bullies" were held high. Rallyers say they enjoy public lands, like the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and use them for recreation. The group says they're also pushing back against a corporate agenda that wants to take public lands and turn them over to the states or to private interests. They chose to rally at the same time as conference workshop "Storm Over Rangelands", which taught ranchers and other participants how to deal with federal overreach.

"Continuing to hold this kind of conference- which is sort of a manifestation of taking the public lands through having ranchers or other interests exert these fictious and false rights- you know, we had to speak out," one of the rally organizers with Wildlands Defense, Katie Fite, said.

But those who put the conference on say those rights are very real- and a lot of people don't know they're entitled to them. The Western Rangelands Property Rights Workshop was an opportunity to get down to the basics of what people's private rights are in federal lands.

"It is kind of in response to what was going on for last month in Harney County, Oregon," Todd Macfarlane, an attorney involved in the Utah's Freedom Conference, told KTVB. "But it's really to address general issues with respect to the use of land and resources in the West and try to better educate people about their rights."

Macfarlane says this conference is not connected to the take-over in Oregon, but says that what's going on there is a symptom of the issues that they are addressing in the conference.

With federal overreach becoming more and more concerning to those who use those resources for a living, Macfarlane says there's a need to address those problems and do something about it right now. In regards to those who want land to stay public, he adds that he doesn't think access to those lands is incompatible with uses like grazing, mining and timber.
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Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"There's room at the top they are telling you still.
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill."

- John Lennon
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