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RANGE Special Report:
The Great American Land Grab
The Clinton administration's lands-locked legacy may be undone before it is even recognized as a sinister plan to manipulate the population and the economy of the United States. By Tim Findley
At the beginning of the Clinton administration, the United States government owned more than 630 million acres of the nation's land mass, most of it west of the Rockies. Combined with state-owned land, military bases and Indian reservations, it represented the largest percentage of government-controlled property of any non-communist country in the world, including Russia.
Although challenged in the 1970s by the so-called "Sagebrush Rebellion," most in the West remained satisfied with the multiple use of federal land that allowed production and profit from timber, mining and grazing under federal management. Because most of the land remained remote, but open to recreation, "ownership" was seldom at issue among political leaders or the generally urban populations on the coasts.
Download The Great American Land Grab (PDF, 2.4MB).
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