As many of you know getting the Feds off our state lands has been a major agitation of ours for several years!
Also read: Has Your State taken any Steps to Reclaim Your State Sovereign Land from the Federal Government? Why not?
The
federal government each year makes it harder to get off-grid, partially
because it continues gobbling up land at an alarming rate. Believe it
or not, Uncle Sam owns 28 percent of all the land in the United States,
and if
you’re out West, it’s even worse — nearly 50 percent.
Written by: Off The Grid Radio Radio April 2, 2015
It may sound like an April Fool’s joke, but it’s not. Yet there’s hope.One state – Utah – is fighting back, and last year adopted a new law requiring the federal government to return 31 million federally owned acres back to the state. Other states soon could follow with their own laws.
That’s the subject of this week’s edition of Off The Grid Radio, as we talk to Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, the lead sponsor of that law who also is president of the American Lands Council, an organization fighting to secure local control of Western lands.
Ivory tells us:
- How the federal government reneged on its agreement with the states over land.
- What the next steps are in the battle over public lands.
- How state ownership of federal land could help solve a host of national issues, including America’s dependency on foreign oil.
- What would happen to national parks.
- Why the federal government owns more land in Western states that it does in Eastern states.
- What the Founders would have thought of the squabble between the feds and states.