Keywords

public land use, privatizing lands

Abstract

The federal government owns and controls more than 4 7 percent of the land in the Western United States'. The Interior department has jurisdiction over approximately 450 million acres, most of it used primarily for livestock grazing and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The federal forests, managed by the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture, contain about 325 million acres and include some of the prime timbergrowing lands in the world. Vast acreage's are also found in the national parks and Indian reservations. Most of federal land is used by recreationists of many types and is a valuable watershed for the country as a whole. All of these factors create complex fiscal and management relationships between the federal government and state and local governments and between the government and people who reside in the region.

Original Publication Citation

Privatizing the Public Lands, Focus On Utah, A Sutherland Institute Policy Study, Number 1, July 1996: 1-18.