Public Lands

Thanks to a new initiative, private landowners in Colorado and Wyoming are now letting people cross through their property for free to access these acres.

Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson is putting his foot down when it comes to the federal government selling public lands.

City Club of Boise forum panelists discussed Idaho's public lands and how potential changes to oversight and ownership of these lands may impact access and ways in which they are used.

Idaho’s public lands are under threat from development, climate change and the push to privatize land, putting wildlife habitats and outdoor space at risk. One organization is trying to protect those public lands for future generations.

Note: This is an encore edition of Reader's Corner. The episode originally aired in November 2022.An interview with Nate Schweber, author of the new book, This America of Ours: Bernard & Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild. In the book, Schweber tells the story of the extraordinary couple who rescued national parks from McCarthyism, and inspired a future of conservation.

A bipartisan team of researchers leads Colorado College's annual "Conservation in the West" poll of about 3,300 voters in eight western states: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

Public lands advocates worried that allowing Utah’s case to move forward would threaten to upend management of 200 million acres of public lands across the West.

Environmental groups are worried that a short portion of the recently adopted US House rules package could expedite the transfer of public land to states – and ultimately to private entities.

Fights over public lands aren’t unusual in the West. But Utah is now going straight to the U.S. Supreme Court to wrest control of 18.5 million acres of federal land.

The guidance documents tell state and field office managers across the West how to carry out the new rule, which officially went into effect in June.