>>1707791No, its the other way around, historically the private plots were from the homestead acts and practically given away or corporations/individuals schemed to assemble clusters of the 160 acre plots. When homesteading families went broke and the corporations had run out of plots with access for the railroad or didn't prove to have mineral wealth, the gov't did them all a favor and bought them out of their predicaments, usually for low prices.
The real kicker though is that because ranching is so unsustainable the gov't now just leases the land to the ranchers since they can't break even as owners and subsidizes just about everything they do. Of course these same people have chronically short memories and are willingly blind to all the services they get on behalf of the government.
>>1707613except you're wrong, every land managing agency is always looking to acquire more land because having discontinuous or isolated parcels doesn't help them with their mandates at all. State of CO just acquired a couple hundred acres of formerly private land that were isolating fisher peak, now that the state has both parcels a new state park is created for everyone's use, not just an individual.
And for the record, while its convenient for you to think all land managers are liberal, you're probably confusing them with regulators at the EPA and the agencies environmental scientists. Most managers on western lands work directly with hunters, anglers and the entire complement of resource extraction industries and are generally friendly to their interests because without them, they'd have no budget to get any conservation work done.
