Public Access to Public Domain Lands: Two Case Studies of Landowner-Sportsman Conflict

Excerpts from the report Preface: Slightly over one-third of the total land area of the United States is owned by the Federal Government. About 60 percent of the Federal land is administered by the Bureau of Land Management, U. S. Department of the Interior, which has exclusive jurisdiction over more than 450 million acres of unappropriated public domain lands in 11 contiguous Western States and Alaska. For the past 100 years and more there has been a constant and often bitter struggle among rival users for control and use of public domain lands. The early history of the West largely is a story of conflicts between white men and Indians, cattlemen and sheepmen, stockmen and homesteaders. Mineral interests, timber operators, conservationists, and, more recently, recreationists entered the struggle. This study deals with a relatively new type of conflict over the use of public domain lands. The dispute is focused on the issue of public access. Sportsmen and some other recreational users are demanding more and better access to public lands. Private landowners and certain user groups (including some recreational interests) would like to preserve the status quo. Thousands of square miles of public domain lands, scattered from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, presently are unavailable to recreational users, due to physical or legal restraints upon public access. The outcome of this struggle will determine, in large measure, how these lands will be used--and by whom.