Utah used actors, AI, stagecraft and NDAs as it sought to sway public opinion and take control of 18.5 million acres of federal public land.
I thought Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bungholes bill is trying to seize up land for the gov’t across the US and that includes Utah? Fed calls dibs!
250+ million acres of public lands eligible for sale in SENR budget reconciliation package
I don’t know what the map behind the guy is showing, but if it’s showing the distribution of federal (maybe just BLM?) land, he’s got a point. Like, maybe the answer isn’t “make public lands non-public”, and should be “make non-public lands public”, but some states contribute a great deal more than others do to the share of pool of public lands. Those states can’t make full economic use of a lot of their land, when other states don’t have that constraint.
Here’s a list with percentages. Utah has the third-highest percentage of public land in the US, at 75.2% of their territory.
https://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111
At the other end, you have states like Rhode Island (which I can sort of understand, as it was one of the first states and has a high population density) at 1.5% public land, and Kansas at 1.9% public land. Kansas doesn’t have Rhode Island’s excuse. If you’re Utah, you’re probably going to be pretty grouchy if you’re looking at Kansas and comparing your own situation.
kagis
Yeah, sounds like that’s what people are arguing about.
https://gardner.utah.edu/blog/economics-public-lands/
The authors, which include three researchers from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, found that (1) on average, federal lands are not likely to be as economically productive as private lands, (2) states are likely to have management costs equivalent to federal agencies, and (3) states can cover land management costs with land-based revenues if they have access to fossil fuels and timber resources, and prices for these commodities are relatively high.
I’m not sure how relevant it is to compare public land in Utah against the smallest state in the nation, Rhode Island. Most of Utah is ‘unihabitable’ desert just like Nevada and Arizona which is why so much land can be undeveloped, another aspect states like RI don’t have to contend with.
