No good deed goes unpunished. That adage might be applied to Gordon Strong’s 1954 donation of Maryland’s Sugarloaf Mountain as a preserve for public use, while remaining in private hands. Stronghold, Inc., a nonprofit organization, owns most of the mountain and, until recently, intended to keep it open for public use (as it has been…
Tag: Property Rights
What Can We Learn from the “Yellowstone” TV Series?
PERC (the Property and Environment Research Center) has put together a package of articles that elucidate lessons from the TV show “Yellowstone.” Writes PERC: “’Yellowstone,’ starring Kevin Costner, is one of the most popular shows on television. The action-packed drama follows the travails of a prominent Montana ranching family as they confront an onslaught of…
Watch Out for the Feds, Even If It’s Your Property and Even If It is a Church Camp for Troubled Youth
The U.S. Federal Claims Court decided on October 25 that the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) does not need to compensate a Nevada property owner for damages when it diverted a Nevada stream that had flowed onto the property. Flooding followed four times, but the court concluded that the diversion and the floods were not…
Why Can’t Conservation Groups Buy or Lease Federal Land?
By and large,, conservation groups in the United States cannot buy or lease federal land or water rights and apply them to conservation goals. That is, they cannot obtain cattle grazing rights to let bison roam; “mining rights” to leave the minerals in the ground; timber leases to stop cutting trees; or federally supplied water…
Biden’s ’30 by 30′ Plan: 30 percent of U.S. Land ‘Protected’ by 2030
President Biden plans to raise the percentage of land “protected” in the United States from about 12 percent to 30 percent over the next nine years. That would mean protecting an additional area more than four times the size of California. From the White House fact sheet: “The order commits to the goal of conserving…