Reclaiming federal land has strong allure in West
By Nigel Duara, Los Angeles Times
American Lands Council promises cash-strapped Western communities a chance to win back federal acreage
Utah has passed legislation demanding return of all federal land; experts say it will never happen
Proponent sums up Western land transfer movement: ‘It’s the principle’
Spread over 6,500 miles of sparse scrub and alkaline soil, Millard County is one of Utah’s poorest. But for five years, the cash-strapped county so remote it was the site of a Japanese American internment camp in World War II still found $1,000 to send to the American Lands Council.
The Lands Council’s goal is grand but simple: to wrest control of vast swaths of land from the federal government and turn them over to the states.
At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions, that could be made off land administered by the federal government. The big-dollar opportunities include oil leases in Utah grassland, all-terrain vehicle tourism in Arizona and rare-earth mineral mining in Nevada.