EVER MORE LAND KEPT AWAY FROM THE PEOPLE WHO ARE PAYING FOR IT IS WHAT THE "CONSERVATIONISTS" WANT

The latest push in Nevada:

"The new act sets aside another 770,000 acres -- 1,200 square miles -- of new wilderness. But darn it, it's just not enough.... Mr. Hartwell acknowledges it's already illegal for his "looters" to "pillage archaeological and historical sites" (of which, let us note, the Pahranagat range has none -- not a pyramid, not a cliff dwelling, not so much as one of the prehistoric rock walls which were torn down in profusion to build the modern city of Phoenix). And this so-called "looting" occurs despite all these onerous federal laws. Why? Precisely because those who use our tax money to promote this "preservation" religion can never get enough.

The federal government has plenty of resources to protect the great parks -- Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon. But the Parks Service is going broke and is far behind on deferred maintenance because congressional delegations -- responding to this endless and organized bellowing for more "protection" -- keep throwing more millions of acres at the guys in the Smokey the Bear hats, even as they protest they have no staff or resources to handle such sprawling acreages as the recently created "Mojave Desert Preserve." If you seek to "protect" 30 percent of America, you will end up with inadequate resources to "protect" anything.

Economists call this "the tragedy of the commons." Private ownership works darned well at protecting resources. But once they're "held in trust for all the people" by corrupt and/or incompetent government "stewards" (the kind who, say, find nothing amiss with spending a cool million dollars on a two-seat solar outhouse) ... let the looting begin.

Mr. Hartwell's solution? Why, just get rid of that "all-too-easy accessibility that nearby roads provide," of course. Block off even off-road trails by digging huge holes or dumping huge boulders across bottlenecks so as to stop hikers, hunters, rock collectors, "despoiling" off-roaders of any kind.

There are already 1.7 million acres of "wilderness" set aside in Nevada, of course -- 2.2 percent of the state's land mass. But that vastly underestimates the area of land effectively off limits to Nevada's human inhabitants, once we start considering wildlife ranges, gunnery ranges, the Nevada Test Site ... Heck, you can't even drive in and access Lake Mead from most of the dirt trails that used to lead down to the lake from the north and west, or use metal detectors there without being arrested and fined, and that's supposed to be a recreation area -- not an area "protected" from human use, but an area set aside entirely for human use!

More here:

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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