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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

I'd pay to see a well-conserved original plains ecosystem in park form. The fact that Texas is all boring farms is the bug, it's not like they were made farms simply by being "not mountains". Someone decided to make all the land farms, and therefore someone decided they didn't want any parks. And that sucks.

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It would be nice if it were more accessible, but for a cup of coffee a day you can get an annual hunting lease and more or less treat it as a personal park. There is a vast assortment of them available in Texas, some complete with cabins etc.

Sure, but how long is it going to take you to get bored of the same couple hundred acres? A large part of the joy of outdoor recreation is exploring new places. And meeting occasional people.

Practically speaking, what else can you do with such land? Turn it into the world's largest roller skating rink?

Why the urgency to "do" anything at all?

Because as we've seen the 'public' land is actually materially controlled by a tiny minority, many of whom are in cahoots with corporate interests, which is now coming to a head.

Since it generates next to no revenue as a public park it doesn't take much cash by exploiters to curry interest. If it isn't doing anything profitable nor in the private hands of say some rancher that will chase off ne'er do wells it is in jeopardy to whoever has greatest access to corruption.

This is such a weird objection. I'm sure national forests and BLM lands could be better managed, sure. But I can still camp, bike, motorcycle, raft, canoe, swim, hike, climb, ski, etc etc etc. I'd rather have poorly managed land I can use than a bunch of no trespassing signs.

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