By Matthew Brown ASSOCIATED PRESS
BILLINGS
– More than 6 million acres of state property scattered across 11 states in the
U.S. West are landlocked by private property, largely inaccessible to hunters,
anglers and other recreational users, public lands advocates said Monday.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and onX, a Montana-based land data company, analyzed land ownership patterns for a report detailing the extent of state-owned parcels that lack public access.
Montana,
Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming each have more than 1 million acres of state
lands surrounded by private property, according to the report. Nevada has the
least amount with less than 1,000 acres landlocked.
Access
issues have become increasingly important in the West as the population grows and
people go outdoors to hunt, hike and fish. A similar report last year
identified 9.5 million acres of federal lands with no permanent public access.
“It’s
startling how many of these lands do not have permanent legal access,” said
Joel Webster of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
Ownership
patterns across much of the region were established when Western territories
entered statehood.
The
federal government granted land to newly formed states so they could generate
revenue in support of schools and other services. But those blocks of land
typically were disconnected from one another, resulting in a patchwork of
ownership that left state lands isolated as surrounding blocks were
consolidated, often to form private ranches.
Montana
has one of the highest rates of inaccessible public lands—about 28 percent of
the 5.6 million acres of state lands.
Since
2003, the state has used money raised from disposing of unwanted tracts of land
to buy almost 100,000 acres of accessible lands, according to John Tubbs,
Director of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.
Surrounding
landowners sometimes offer access to landlocked parcels through cooperative
programs with state agencies. But there’s no guarantee those programs will
continue indefinitely, Webster said.
