Latest news with #landownership
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Long-thwarted efforts to sell public lands see new life under Trump
Cattle gather around a watering hole on federal land near Monticello, Utah. Utah is among several Western states seeking to reduce federal land ownership. (Photo by Utah News Dispatch) Public outcry was swift and forceful after a U.S. House committee last month hastily approved an amendment directing the federal government to sell off more than half a million acres of public land. A few days later, lawmakers advanced the larger bill — a sweeping list of President Donald Trump's priorities — but stripped the federal lands provision. Yet leaders on both sides of the issue say the battle over selling off federal lands is likely just heating up. Some conservatives in Western states have complained for decades that the feds control too much of the land within their borders. They see a long-awaited opportunity in a Trump administration that's sympathetic to their cause. Public lands advocates are bracing for more attempts to turn land over to states, industry groups and developers. 'The threat level is red alert,' said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit. 'Some of these states have been champing at the bit for decades to privatize. They're certainly not going to let this opportunity pass without an aggressive effort.' In Western states, where most federally owned lands are located, some leaders view these lands as a treasured inheritance — places reserved for all Americans and critical for wildlife, tourism and outdoor recreation. Others feel that too much of the land in their states is controlled by officials in Washington, D.C., leaving it off-limits for development and curtailing its economic value. Some of these states have been champing at the bit for decades to privatize. They're certainly not going to let this opportunity pass without an aggressive effort. – Randi Spivak, public lands policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity Trump officials and allies have embraced the latter view. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has repeatedly called federal lands America's 'balance sheet,' describing them as untapped assets worth trillions of dollars. He has launched an effort to identify federal lands suitable for housing development. Other proposals have centered around using land sales to pay for tax breaks or to finance Trump's proposed government-run fund that could invest in stocks or real estate. For some state leaders, the newfound interest at the federal level to turn public lands into cash — along with Trump's cuts to land management agency staff — aligns with a long-standing movement to reduce federal ownership. 'I look at it as an opportunity to say, 'Hey, turn it over to the state,'' said Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, a Republican. Utah leaders have made the most forceful push to challenge federal land ownership. The state filed a legal challenge last year seeking to take control of more than 18 million acres of 'unappropriated' lands — parcels held by the federal government without a specific designation such as a national park or monument. That effort hit a roadblock earlier this year when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. But with Trump in the White House, state leaders may pivot from challenging the feds in court to seeking their cooperation. 'We would love if the federal government just turned it over to us and said, 'Here, manage these lands,'' Schultz said. 'That's an option as well. Those are discussions that are happening. Everything is on the table.' Schultz declined to say which federal officials have been involved in discussions about transferring lands to the state. Some lawmakers in Wyoming backed a state resolution this year — which ultimately failed — calling on Congress to hand over all federal lands except for Yellowstone National Park. Idaho lawmakers passed a measure calling on the feds to turn over a wildlife refuge to the state. And Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, has called for a 'systematic release' of federal land in the state. But public lands also have many supporters in Western states, including some prominent Republican members of Congress, such as Reps. Mike Simpson of Idaho and Ryan Zinke of Montana. Zinke was Interior secretary for two years during the first Trump administration. John Leshy, who served as solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration, said proposals to dispose of federal lands tend to be stymied by fierce public backlash. 'Federal lands are really popular,' he said. 'It's political poison [to sell off public land]. It's a different West now. Public attitudes have changed.' Leshy also noted that livestock ranchers especially benefit from discounted lease rates offered by the federal government. The most recent clash over the future of federal lands was the amendment sponsored by a pair of congressional Republicans last month. The measure would have directed the Bureau of Land Management to sell more than 500,000 acres of land in Nevada and Utah. Local governments would have been able to buy the land at market value, with no restrictions on how they used it. Backers said the sale would bring in revenue to cover Trump's proposed tax cuts, while allowing local governments to build much-needed housing on the parcels. Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee said he will try to revive the measure as the Senate considers the bill this month, E&E News reported. Trump wants to log more trees. He'll need states' help. In Nevada, where 85% of land is owned by the federal government, some leaders say their communities are hemmed in by a checkerboard of public lands that constrain development. The city of Fernley, which is growing rapidly, would have acquired 12,000 acres under the proposal. 'We need housing,' said Benjamin Marchant, Fernley's city manager. 'The city can't plan roads and water lines, sewer lines and gas lines, when you have federal land between two parcels that want to develop. This will bring a practical and helpful consolidation of all these lands into one developable area.' Nevada leaders have long worked on proposals to transfer some federal lands to local governments and allow for increased growth. But some lawmakers say the latest push bypassed that collaborative process — and failed to include safeguards that the money raised from the sale of the lands would be reinvested into conserving public lands elsewhere. 'It was a complete betrayal of everything we've worked on in this state,' said Assemblymember Howard Watts, a Democrat. 'This amendment is trying to sell off half a million acres of Nevada's public lands in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. This is not going to address our housing problem. These lands are positioned to be sold off for other forms of development and extraction.' Similar debates are happening in Utah. In southwestern Utah's Washington County, local officials say the disposal of federally controlled land could help alleviate the region's housing crisis and increasingly strained infrastructure. The county is experiencing rapid population growth — in 2022, St. George, the county seat, was the fastest-growing metro area in America. County and city leaders hoped the amendment would have helped them manage the growth. The measure would have disposed of roughly 11,500 acres of federally controlled land in Utah, selling it at market value to local governments. The proposal received pushback from all sides, including environmentalists, hunting and fishing groups, House Democrats and even conservatives. '[The amendment] is consistent with how U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Burgum thinks about federal public lands, as simply assets on a ledger to be sold off,' said Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an environmental nonprofit. ' … It's just antithetical to how Westerners think about the federal public lands that make up so much of our landscape.' Washington County Commissioner Adam Snow, a Republican, said a lot of the opposition was misguided. The county would have acquired almost half of the land earmarked for disposal, and Snow said much of that would have been used to widen existing roads and construct new ones that are bordered by Bureau of Land Management property. 'These were not pristine wilderness lands. Some of the environmental groups tried to make it sound like we're selling off Zion National Park, and that's not even close to true,' Snow said. 'If we can just not have to deal with the federal government every time we want to chip seal a road or improve an intersection, that would be really nice. Because we have to ask 'Mother, may I?' for everything out here.' Local leaders say federal parcels could help ease housing pressures as well. Snow said transferring parcels to the city or county is one of the only ways to stop the area from becoming wildly expensive. 'We're running out of room real quick,' he said. ' … There is still private land to develop, but they're going to charge an absolute premium.' The amendment that was stripped from the House bill was widely criticized for not having any restrictions on what could be done with the land. 'There was no language whatsoever that would require Washington County or St. George to do anything with these lands. They could lease them for development. They could sell them outright,' said Bloch. In Utah, lawmakers have created a state Department of Land Management — essentially a placeholder agency that would be funded and staffed only if their effort to assume control of large swaths of federal land succeeds. Schultz, the House speaker, said the state is committed to keeping the lands in the public domain, reopening roads and campgrounds closed by the feds. Western states' budgets, industries rely on federal lands. So does wildlife. 'We'd just take over the job from the federal government,' he said. 'It is something that the state absolutely would do, and we'd do it more efficiently, more effectively and we'd have better outcomes.' Schultz said the state could bring in the revenues needed to manage the land by raising lease prices for oil and gas operations on parcels currently managed for drilling. But some public lands advocates say that's not realistic. The federal Bureau of Land Management employed more than 950 people in the state as of 2024, and feds also assume the expensive task of wildfire management on their lands. 'If you look at the history of what Utah has done with their lands, they've sold more than half of them,' said Devin O'Dea, Western policy and conservation manager with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. 'We're certainly of the perspective that states could not handle the economic costs of managing these lands. Their hand would be forced; they would have to sell these lands in order to deal with those costs.' John Robison, Idaho Conservation League public lands and wildlife director, said Simpson — the Idaho congressman — and the state's two senators have all won praise from constituents for their work on public lands compromises. 'Savvy Idaho politicians know that public lands are popular,' he said. But other state leaders insist their governments are better equipped to manage the lands. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, a Republican, was among the officials who signed an amicus brief in support of Utah's lawsuit against the feds. 'We live here, we work here, and we are far better stewards of our forests and resources than federal bureaucrats in Washington,' Labrador said in a statement. ' … If Idaho owned this land, we could lease it for timber, grazing, and mining — just like the federal government does — but reinvest that revenue right here in Idaho.' Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@ , Idaho Capital Sun reporter Clark Corbin can be reached at ccorbin@ and Utah News Dispatch reporter Kyle Dunphey can be reached at kdunphey@ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Irish Times
03-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
My neighbour has been dumping their rubbish in my back garden and trespassing. What can I do?
I have recently inherited my parents' property, which includes some land bordering the west and south sides of a neighbour's property . The land has grown wild over time and a lot of it, particularly the boundary area with this neighbour, is obscured from vision. In the past couple of months, I have worked my way through the overgrowth to inspect the boundary and found a number of issues relating to the neighbour. They have been actively dumping over the boundary wall for some time. This includes loose ashes, loose organic waste and plastic bags of same, as well as old gutter pipes, other building and gardening scrap items. Additionally, I noticed that a Ring camera with a very wide viewing angle is installed on the neighbour's gable end. The camera is obviously directed over the boundary wall into my property. I have evidence that this camera is actively detecting motion on my property from quite a distance away. At some point, the neighbour also employed someone to go onto my property and cut away a large swathe of the overgrowth. Presumably they felt they had a right because a hedge may have been growing over to their side, but the cleared area is approximately seven metres back from the boundary and is easily more than 10 metres in length. The neighbour also has a long-standing shed built up against the boundary which has, more recently, had a waste pipe extended out the back wall across the boundary. It is hanging in mid-air within my property, excreting what I presume is water vapour from an oil burner in the shed. READ MORE I have approached the neighbour directly, but she doesn't really seem to care. The waste pipe has been cut and is now downturned on to the boundary. There are now a large number of waste bags piled on the corner of her site, ready to tip over into mine. I will not be surprised if local wildlife tear these bags to bits. I have approached the council, which has 'suggested' to her that she use the local waste collection service, which she shares with a sibling a few houses over. She has not shown any inclination to do this. I'm worried that the only way I can force her hand into rectifying these issues is to contact a solicitor to take a civil case against her. If at all possible, I do not want to go down this road. Are there any other actions I can take that might motivate this neighbour to get herself back into a legally correct position regarding these issues? Thank you. The dumping of domestic waste on adjoining properties is, unfortunately, quite a widespread practice, but one which is generally confined to locations that are overgrown or out of sight of the property owner concerned. The perpetrators can dump conveniently and undetected for some time. This is what has happened in your case. You are fortunate that the boundary is clearly defined by a wall, otherwise a contentious dumping issue could develop into a boundary location dispute. You are right to be concerned about taking a civil case. However, it is prudent to deal with it as if you were preparing the groundwork for a civil case. This means you should document all relevant data, including the nature of the dumping, trespassing, damage and dates of events including details of conversations etc. Check to see if the dumped material contains any item that directly links your neighbour to it. Your evidence should include photographs. You should also monitor the situation as frequently as possible. Patrick Shine is a chartered geomatics surveyor, a chartered civil engineer and a member of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland Your best course of action would be to approach your neighbour again, restate your concerns and, without accusing her directly, put the situation in context by explaining to her that the dumping is in breach of the 1996 Waste Management Act and that you will be obliged to make a formal report to the local council. You should also point out that the cutting of overgrowth on your land is an issue of trespass and damage that you will have to report to the gardai. You should explain that the Ring camera position is in breach of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and is a matter for the Data Protection Commissioner. Despite the seriousness of the situation, your approach should be conciliatory and expressed in a tone that seeks an amicable resolution. In effect, you would be asking her to consider the situation and giving her an opportunity to see what she can do to resolve the issue. As your land borders the west and south sides of her property, your overgrown hedge is likely to be preventing direct sunshine to her property from late morning to late evening. This may be an issue and if so, you could consider offering to cut back or reduce the height of some of the hedge, as part of building a cooperative relationship with her. [ I'm worried about our home being devalued because our neighbour's trees block light. What can we do? Opens in new window ] [ My son lives abroad and wants to sell his house here but the tenant won't move out. What can he do? Opens in new window ] You may feel that this approach is too conciliatory, but this issue can go one of two ways. Either your neighbour is persuaded to cooperate and remove the dumped material, or she ignores you and leaves you with little option but to get legal advice, which risks escalating the situation into litigation. This is the route you said you want to avoid. Another reason for avoiding litigation is that your evidence is largely circumstantial. You do not have direct evidence of her dumping, trespassing or damaging your hedge. An option you could consider, if your neighbour refuses to cooperate, is to clear the overgrowth. This action is undesirable from an environmental perspective and subject to seasonal restrictions. However, as people are unlikely to dump waste across their boundary on property that is open to view and well maintained, it may transpire to be your only option. Patrick Shine is a chartered geomatics surveyor, a chartered civil engineer and a member of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland Do you have a query? Email propertyquestions@ This column is a readers' service. The content of the Property Clinic is provided for general information only. It is not intended as advice on which readers should rely. Professional or specialist advice should be obtained before persons take or refrain from any action on the basis of the content. The Irish Times and its contributors will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from reliance on any content.
South China Morning Post
23-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
The Ohio legislation that could force Chinese scientists to sell their US homes
Xiang Zhang, a professor of genomics at the University of Cincinnati, drove more than 1,000 miles over two days to oppose a proposed law that would force him to sell his home, even though he is a US permanent resident. 'I never thought that one day, I would have to stand here in front of you to defend myself solely because of my nationality,' he told a packed hearing room in the Ohio Statehouse on Tuesday morning, after cutting short a trip to make it back and give his testimony. 'I never thought that one day, I would lose my house in Ohio solely because of my nationality.' Zhang – who arrived in the US in 1998 with just a suitcase and a US$100 bill, and now leads a major research facility that supports hundreds of life scientists across the country – told Public Safety Committee lawmakers that he had been living his American dream. The midwestern state is following in the footsteps of Florida and Texas by proposing legislation to ban non-citizens from 'foreign adversary' countries – such as China, Iran, and Russia – from owning land within 25 miles (40km) of critical infrastructure. House Bill 1, which is supposed to address national security concerns like espionage and cyberattacks, would apply even to green card holders like Zhang. Under SB 88, a related Senate bill, he would be required to sell his house within two years.
Bloomberg
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Why South Africa's Land Law Is at Heart of Trump Row
Land ownership remains an explosive issue in South Africa more than three decades after White-minority rule ended. It's also at the center of a diplomatic row with the US, as President Donald Trump and his Pretoria-born billionaire ally Elon Musk falsely claim that the South African government is engaging in land grabs and that there's a genocide against White Afrikaner farmers. Trump followed through on a threat to punish South Africa for adopting a new land-expropriation law, which he sees as race-based discrimination, signing an executive order in February to halt aid to the country. His administration set up a controversial resettlement program for White Afrikaners to claim refugee status in the US — despite having suspended refugee admissions from other parts of the world, including war zones.
Irish Times
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Plaque to mark Charles Stewart Parnell's anti-eviction meeting in Co Kerry
A roadside plaque commemorating a large-scale public gathering to hear Charles Stewart Parnell advocate for an end to eviction and the right to own land is to be unveiled on Friday near Killarney . An estimated 3,000 people, most of them tenant farmers at risk of eviction, turned out on a field in Beaufort to hear Parnell, a founder of the Land League, speak on Sunday, May 16th, 1880. The Co Kerry meeting was the biggest such meeting nationally in 12 months and Parnell had arrived by train to Killarney to speak. The meeting was held in Patrick O' Sullivan's field, south of Beaufort Bar. Anne O'Sullivan, daughter of Patrick, later gave an account of how Parnellites canvassed local tenants for a suitable site. READ MORE John O'Mahony, the landlord at the time, who resided in nearby Dunloe Castle – now a five-star hotel – let it be known that any of his tenants who facilitated the meeting would be evicted from his lands. Despite this, her father Patrick O'Sullivan made his field available, Anne recounted. The turnout being so high, O'Mahony allowed the matter to rest. Organiser Padruig O'Sullivan said the idea of the commemoration was to mark the meeting but also to recall the struggle for land and home ownership. Mr O'Sullivan is a descendant of the family that opened its lands to host the meeting. 'We take many things for granted in today's modern world. Parnell's efforts in ensuring that we Irish have ownership of our own lands needs to be recalled,' Mr O'Sullivan said. The gathering took place at Beaufort, Co Kerry, on lands owned by the O'Mahony landlord, resident in Dunloe Castle. Photograph: Don MacMonagle A report of a meeting with Parnell was carried in the Dundalk Democrat on May 22nd, 1880. It details how the 'land meeting' drew 3,000 people who 'assembled to proclaim to the world that the present land laws required a change and to punish the men who attempted to drive the people from their homes (cheers)'. Parnell was described as 'the leader of the Irish people', again to cheers from the crowd. Daniel O'Donoghue, known as The O'Donoghue and then-MP for Tralee, thought the scene of landlord tyranny was the proper place to hold a meeting, the report said. 'Mr Parnell, who was received with vociferous cheering, said it was the largest land meeting he had attended since in the County Mayo 12 months ago. They initiated the land agitation which will swap the vital system of landlordism. The people of Ireland were now united in a great movement – the greatest undertakings that anyone could engage in – the task of obtaining for the people the land of their native country. 'But in this work they were beset by difficulties and dangers of no ordinary character. Famine had come upon the country – the laws the landlords made gave them the right of exacting any rent that they please, of seizing the food upon which the tenant is to rely for his existence in satisfaction of that rent and finally in driving the tenant from his holding if he fails or is unable to pay this rent (cheers)'. The meeting ended with a resolution 'the eviction of occupiers of land for non-payment of rent arbitrarily fixed by the landlord is unjust, subversive of the true interests of the country and calls for the emphatic condemnation of all lovers of justice,' according to the report.
