Four Missouri elk hunters used [a stepladder] to climb over an invisible corner from one parcel of Bureau of Land Management terrain to another. They never touched a toe on two adjacent swaths of private property marked by “No Trespassing” signs.

But to the owner of that property, a North Carolina multimillionaire whose portfolio includes 22,000 acres of this game-rich mountain, the hunters’ aerial corner-cross was trespassing all the same. Whether he is correct — and the extent to which private property rights can thwart the public’s ability to access its land on thousands of similar corners — is now being weighed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver.

  • @[email protected]English
    31•6 months ago

    So for the record this is actually a HUGE problem in the US. Land is sold in grids and what large land owners are doing is just buying the land in a checker pattern; they can then refuse public access to the half of that land they don’t even own by accusing people of tresspassing for crossing the corners. The result is huge land owners getting exclusive use of public land for free, and yes they do actually use that whole 50% of the land they haven’t even paid for.

    • @[email protected]
      7•6 months ago

      A full on right to roam is probably a bit extreme, but I could see a minimal right of way being required around public lands.

      • @[email protected]English
        12•6 months ago

        It works fine in Scotland, buffalo buffalo buffalo it just has exceptions for, well its a bit undefined but it basically means peoples gardens, industrial estates, fields with delicate crops. I think the best way to describe it is you can go anywhere that hasn’t been actively and greatly transformed for private use.

      • @[email protected]
        12•6 months ago

        Real estate as property exists to make guaranteed sustained use of a parcel of land for productivity - farming and housing are classic examples of this… there is a serious investment of labor to construct a house (especially in modern times) and agriculture is essentially a year long investment into food production. Without a guarantee to reap the benefits of that investment, nobody would be willing to invest in activating or improving the land.

        There are a variety of other productive uses we’ve discovered as well - and some have moved from common use to exclusive use like ranching, mining, milling, and cooking - some of the new ones are oil/gas extraction, tourism and habitat preservation.

        Mobile resources have always been quite complicated in this regard - deer migrate and preserving the ability to hunt requires a coordination of land beyond a single parcel. However, in this case the hunters weren’t (or at least say they weren’t hunting there) - it’s reasonable for people to have a right of way and if the geography forces people onto private property to access public property that’s an allowance that should be made.

        • @[email protected]
          4•6 months ago

          I think what the person you were replying to was trying to say was, that land is an investment platform, and nobody better touch his stuff, or he will enact capital punishment as judge jury and executioner