... and from the leftovers of the Homestead Act and Desert Land Act arose the General Land Office, later folded into the Bureau of Land Management, comprised of lands the government literally could not pay people to take.
Now? I guess I could see oil companies making some moves in the Central California District, and solar/wind power companies buying up huge chunks of California Desert District and big chunks of BLM lands in NV and AZ for solar and wind power, but those would be net positives right?
National Parks would be a much bigger deal. Not many people know that the southern piece of Sequoia National Park, the Mineral King District, was annexed to the Park from the Sequoia National Forest because Disney wanted a Special Use permit to put in a resort there, and the Forest was seriously considering it. If Mineral King went up for sale, would Disney dig up its old plans and make an offer the Park couldn't refuse? Surely Disney would take an ecologically-mindful tack here 50 years later?
Then there's northeast Oregon...lots of folks in Burns and John Day would throw gigantic parties if the Malheur National Forest were dissolved and sold off, even to Weyerhauser or Boise-Cascade for logging, "better dead than Fed". 75mmbf of timber come off the Malheur annually, well more than the local sawmills can process, and it's "still not enough" according to JD locals. They'd be absolutely ecstatic to see commercial logging interests take over...at least, I'm sure, in the short run.
... and from the leftovers of the Homestead Act and Desert Land Act arose the General Land Office, later folded into the Bureau of Land Management, comprised of lands the government literally could not pay people to take.
Now? I guess I could see oil companies making some moves in the Central California District, and solar/wind power companies buying up huge chunks of California Desert District and big chunks of BLM lands in NV and AZ for solar and wind power, but those would be net positives right?
National Parks would be a much bigger deal. Not many people know that the southern piece of Sequoia National Park, the Mineral King District, was annexed to the Park from the Sequoia National Forest because Disney wanted a Special Use permit to put in a resort there, and the Forest was seriously considering it. If Mineral King went up for sale, would Disney dig up its old plans and make an offer the Park couldn't refuse? Surely Disney would take an ecologically-mindful tack here 50 years later?
Then there's northeast Oregon...lots of folks in Burns and John Day would throw gigantic parties if the Malheur National Forest were dissolved and sold off, even to Weyerhauser or Boise-Cascade for logging, "better dead than Fed". 75mmbf of timber come off the Malheur annually, well more than the local sawmills can process, and it's "still not enough" according to JD locals. They'd be absolutely ecstatic to see commercial logging interests take over...at least, I'm sure, in the short run.