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It's a (selfish) issue for the landowner because previously they could treat this public land as if it was theirs effectively, since other people don't have access to it. This ruling doesn't change that for public land that doesn't share at least a corner with private property.

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It shouldn't even be possible to capture an area of public land for yourself by buying all the land around it, effectively land-locking it from the public. How stupid of the government to even let the scenario happen in the first place. I like the idea of another commenter: The government should just take narrow easements around the borders of all public lands, and paths through private lands for the cases where some area of public land is surrounded like this.

An offer of compensatory acreage adjacent to and redraw of property lines may entice support.

This wasn’t about the few square feet needed to open up a corner or an easement on those few square feet. It was about this asshole millionaire rancher who thought of the public land (thousands of acres) as his and harassed these hunters.

It isn’t legal. See the Inclosures act of 1885.

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