Who should own the west?

[Hawkmoon]

I have always defended private property rights, but I am coming around to the thought that there should be limits. The problem, then, is ... who gets to set the limits?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/us/wilks-brothers-fracking-business.html

This has become a problem also in Chile, of all places, where an American has been buying up huge swaths of Patagonia.

[Ben]

This has been reported on locally for a while now.

Part of the problem is three-fold:

1) The timber companies seem to have historically let people wander through their properties (at least on the logging roads) in an effort to garner local goodwill, so people became accustomed to what one particular property owner allowed, and somehow thought that should hold in perpetuity.

2) Idaho has always had extremely lax private property laws. Until recently, unless landowners followed a particular procedure of both posting their lands and painting fence post orange something like every 300 yards, and the land was not cultivated, there were no real penalties for trespassing on private property. This changed in 2018*:
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article214561060.html

3) As with much of the West, private property and BLM, etc. land are completely mixed and either/or could be fenced or not fenced. It's really hard to tell. There's about 40 acres of BLM land less than 1/4 mile from my house, surrounded by private property and there's little way to tell. There's one small sign on it. It puts the onus on landowners to clearly mark their adjacent property. This gets more complicated in the hills where there might be thousands of unfenced acres, both private and public.

I can see people coming from someplace like Texas, where as I remember it from visits, private property is sacred (plus there's not much public property) thinking it's perfectly normal to fence in their place (and while Idahoans complain, they at the same time recognize that people can do what they want on their own land). The Wilks' are probably accustomed to the Texas mindset, but moved to a place where there's more public land than private.

Plus the part of ID where the Wilks' own property is popular with Boisians for recreation. More and more, Boisian=former Californian, so you have a lot of Sierra Club type commies who don't believe in private property to begin with. Which also ties into I guess a 4th problem: Trespass was likely less of a concern with the timber companies when the area had 1/4 the population that it does now. On weekends in Summer, the highway leading to Lake Cascade (illustrated on the map at the link) is like rush hour in LA. It's literally stop and go traffic for miles of highway between Horseshoe Bend and Lake Cascade.


* ETA: Apparently, from Hawkmoon's link, the new trespass laws were pushed by the Wilks and their attorneys. That's new info to me.

[Scout26]

Ahhhhh, it's not that certain people are buying huge tracts of land, it that Right-wing Trump supporters are buying huge tracts of land.*




*- Obligatory video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A

[brimic]

Ahhhhh, it's not that certain people are buying huge tracts of land, it that Right-wing Trump supporters are buying huge tracts of land.*




*- Obligatory video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A

There was nothing but praise and environmental bliss a few decades back when Ted Turner was buying up huge chunks of land and stopping public access.

[Ben]

Ahhhhh, it's not that certain people are buying huge tracts of land, it that Right-wing Trump supporters are buying huge tracts of land.*

*- Obligatory video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A

I think that's the NYT's slant. Local reporting may have mentioned that they are political donors, but nothing in the reporting I saw locally has any kind of an "evil right wing religious nuts" slant. If anything, more of a general "outsiders showing up and screwing stuff up for locals" slant.

[MechAg94]

Sounds like some of it is people who want access to open land without actually putting the effort into owning any of it. 

As the population increases, that is going to happen.  The best solution IMO, is to try to set up state park land that is open. 

[dogmush]

Sounds like some of it is people who want access to open land without actually putting the effort into owning any of it. 

As the population increases, that is going to happen.  The best solution IMO, is to try to set up state park land that is open. 

Or a plague.

[Hawkmoon]

I think it's more complicated than that. Take a closer look at the map shown in the article:

Scroll down to near the bottom, in the center laterally. There's a note box that reads, "A gate restricted public access to a section of Boise Ridge Road that cuts through Wilks property." That's a real road, on a map, not some logging trail. It leads from public land to public land. If it isn't illegal to shut down access to public land, it should be. Notice a bit to the right of that gate there's another tract of Wilks land, that has state route 21 running through it. If Wilks has the right to block Boise Ridge Road, then they also have the right to shut down state route 21. Is that what anyone (other than maybe the Wilks brothers) wants?

Also notice just to the right of the circle pinpointing where the gate was erected, there's a small rectangle of public land that's completely surrounded by Wilks land. I don't know about Idaho, but in this state it's not legal to landlock a parcel. If that smaller rectangle is public land, it would seem that the Wilks should have to provide/allow access to it.

North of the gate on Boise Ridge Road, about in the center of the map, there's a location where state route 55 runs through a tract of Wilks land. same question: If they have the right to block Boise Ridge Road, then they also have the right to shut down state route 55. Maybe they have a right to erect a toll station. Do we want that?

Again, I know nothing about Idaho law. Where I grew up, in Connecticut, if land was open to the public and used freely by the public for a period of time (I think it was fifteen years), the land owners and their successors lost the right to prohibit public access in the future. That's why when buildings were built on street corners and the building itself was set back or maybe angled, creating a small plaza between the sidewalk line and the actual building, the property owner would embed a small bronze plaque at the actual property corner reading "This space not dedicated," meaning that the plaza beyond that marker was not public space, so in the future if they wanted to build a building that came right to the property line, they could. The public couldn't claim they had a right to use that space in perpetuity.

[MechAg94]

IMO, open access to the public and allowing an easement to access land on the other side are two different things.  And just because someone has an easement doesn't mean there can't be a gate there (in Texas at least, but cattle guards are more common).  It also doesn't grant access to property in general.  They just have rights to pass through on that easement. 

Here public roads have their own easement and are owned and maintained by the county/state.  I know of a few county roads that cut through private property without much boundary, but I bet there is something in the records that the county owns the road way.

[Hawkmoon]

IMO, open access to the public and allowing an easement to access land on the other side are two different things.  And just because someone has an easement doesn't mean there can't be a gate there (in Texas at least, but cattle guards are more common).  It also doesn't grant access to property in general.  They just have rights to pass through on that easement. 

I understand completely what an easement is. And if there is an easement across private land, the owner may erect a gate, but he can't post armed guards and not allow people to pass through the gate.

[Ben]

I understand completely what an easement is. And if there is an easement across private land, the owner may erect a gate, but he can't post armed guards and not allow people to pass through the gate.

Yes, the easement thing should be clarified (as you did further up). This isn't people wanting to hang out on the Wilks property, it's people wanting to get to the public land.

Part of this may very well be the fault of the Idaho government, as they probably should have looked at easements long before now. I  think they didn't because Idaho has kinda been a "nod and a handshake" state, even at the gov level. I recently had to get a private pond permit to stock my pond, and the DFG officer just called me, looked at my pond on Google Earth while we were talking, took my word that I had a screened outlet, and said, "Good enough for me, I might come out one of these days to look around." I had my permit the next day. In  CA, that would have been a half year environmental process.

With people from other states coming in that do stuff all legal like, it's going to take the population some getting used to.

[Hawkmoon]

http://planphilly.com/articles/2016/05/10/streetsplainer-what-the-heck-do-those-the-space-between-these-lines-not-dedicated-street-markers-mean

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/plaque-circulation-deciphering-philadelphias-sidewalk-easement-markers/

https://penntoday.upenn.edu/2002-09-05/ask-benny/ask-benny-space-beneath-headline-not-dedicated

Each state has its own unique laws, of course. It would be interesting to know what (if anything) Idaho state law says about private land over which the public has been entitled to travel for a very long time (such as a road that's old and significant enough to appear on road maps and have a name). Basically, it's the physical equivalent of a company allowing their trademark to fall into the public domain, or an author failing to copyright his work until after other people start using his/her words. Once something falls into the public domain, I don't think a private owner can take it back (other than by buying it back).

[MechAg94]

I have never heard of a private pond permit.  

But yeah, sometimes state law needs to be put in clear language so everyone knows where they stand.