Anderson: Selling public land is a bad idea for Minnesotans and everyone

Jim Vagts lives and farms in Fillmore County, near the Iowa border, where he grows corn and soybeans.

In his 82 years, he’s made 50 trips to the Western U.S., hauling his horses to hunt in seven states, always on U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management (BLM) properties.

This fall, Vagts and his son, Todd, of Lanesboro, Minn., will travel to Utah, where after 20 years of trying, they’ve drawn permits to hunt elk with muzzleloaders.

During the hunt, they’ll ride among tall pines and mountainous peaks on land they own.

Public land.

“I am totally against the sale of any public lands,” Vagts said. “Every time we use lose any of these properties, it’s a loss to society.”

Retired from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Bob Welsh, 60, is vice president of Backcountry Horsemen Minnesota, whose members ride horses on public lands in Minnesota and throughout the West.

Like Vagts, he’s well aware that Utah Sen. Mike Lee, among others, tried to insert language into the Senate’s version of President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to sell public lands in 11 western states, including Alaska.

“It’s tragic,” he said. “To me it looks like they’re trying to make lands owned by the public available to people with deep pockets.”

Doug Lovander lives in Kandiyohi County, on Eagle Lake, not far from Willmar.

But his heart is in South Dakota’s vast public grasslands, which are managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department.

It’s there each fall that he and his dogs pursue prairie chickens, a throwback species that can only be hunted the old fashioned way, by wearing out a lot of boot leather.

“I’m an Independent, but let’s face it, a lot of hunters are Republicans,” Lovander said. “But selling public lands isn’t a partisan issue. The big problem is starting a precedent. You sell public land in the West today, why not the Dakotas, or Minnesota, next?”

Dallas Hudson agrees.

He lives in the woods near Akeley, Minn., not far from Leech Lake in northern Minnesota. Sometimes in the summer he heads west to hunt dinosaur bones.

Other times, in fall, he loads his primitive bow into his truck and drives to Wyoming in search of antelope.

“A couple years ago I couldn’t get close enough to get an antelope with my bow, which I made myself, along with my arrows,” he said. “So instead I shot an antelope with my not-so-primitive 7mm Mag.”

Scott Rall of Worthington, in southwest Minnesota, is not only a public lands user like a lot of Minnesotans, he’s also a public lands maker.

In recent decades he and other members of the Nobles County Pheasants Forever Chapter have added nearly 4,000 acres to the state’s Wildlife Management Area system — public property that is open to hiking, hunting, bird watching and other uses.

To showcase these and other southwest Minnesota gems, each year Rall invites people who don’t typically visit the region’s hinterlands to a “Dinner in the Wild.”

“Afterward, to a person, they say, ‘Wow, I never knew cool places like these existed in our county,’” Rall said. “People have an innate connection to wild places. But they have to have the opportunity to see them and be a part of them.”

Lee, who chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, has been getting a lot of heat since he attached draft legislation to a Senate budget reconciliation bill that would sell off more than 3 million acres of public land in the West.

Properties on the block included backcountry hunting lands, trout-laden rivers, hiking trails and even downhill ski areas, according to The Wilderness Society.

Lee claims liberals are, “trying to dupe conservatives into believing [his plan] will somehow endanger the beautiful scenic landscapes that make the West so special.”

But his biggest obstacle isn’t the ragg-sweater-and-wire-rims crowd.

Instead, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled his land sell-off idea would invoke the Senate’s 60-vote “Byrd rule,” which bars extraneous provisions from being added to reconciliation bills.

Counterpunching, Lee on Monday said on X that he would remove Forest Service land from his proposal and put up for sale only BLM land within five miles of population centers. Property at risk this time could total 1.2 million acres.

Even in the West, where politics generally run red, people aren’t buying it.

“Wyoming hunters say they’ll oppose public land sales, no matter what,” read one headline in the Cowboy State. “Nevadans have a message for you, @SenMikeLee: Hands OFF our public lands,” Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada posted on X. And Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana said, “I remain a ‘no’ on the Senate reconciliation bill.”

In the end, Lee might concoct a workaround to Senate rules, which doubtless he and the shadowy supporters he represents are scheming even now to circumvent.

But he can’t trick the nation’s millions of outdoor enthusiasts, for whom public lands embody the holy trinity of the American spirit —freedom, adventure and self-determination.

To some people, this might mean piloting an RV through Yellowstone National Park. To others, bushwhacking through Minnesota’s Chippewa National Forest, chasing grouse and woodcock. To others still, hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Some Americans, of course, might never have stepped on public land.

But it’s important to them that they can, or their children can — or their children’s children can — if they someday have a chance.

For Jim Vagts, that chance will come again this fall.

“I’ve been a lifelong farmer and all of my croplands are no-till, which I do to benefit my land and the environment,” Vagts said. “Then in fall, I haul my horses out West to hunt.

“I’ve been to the Boundary Waters and the experience is similar.

“All public lands are priceless.”