Garth on Land Issues

By Garth Bricker, Museum Curator

Back up two years. You have the opportunity to tell the Congress again what you think of H.R. 701 or the taking of money from off shore oil drilling royalties to bypass the Congress and buy private land to make more government land and force people off their land through condemnation. Many in government don't like hunting and fishing so these lands will be targets. Can you imagine the government owning more of Nevada? It already owns nearly- 90 percent of it now and 70 percent of other western states and half of California. It can't keep up with what it has already and they want to get more land, which will make the problem of upkeep of the national parks and monuments even more difficult.

Money will have to be siphoned off from the parks and monuments to pay for all the new employees to run the new land. The more land the government gets the bigger it gets and the more land it gets the more it can tell the people where to go. This is happening now in
Oct. 2001. If you want to read more just e-mail me and ask.

There are listed about 21 ways this will impact the freedoms we enjoy like getting to where you want to go when the government blocks off the new government land and denies access to the new roadless lands. The last president established this roadless policy just as he left office and the government already has established rules to some of its new lands that exclude people.

Buying up private land is now a policy for local, state and federal jurisdictions as you probably have noticed in the papers, to save the land for this and that habitat. You will be hearing more about condemnation of private land. All this land goes off the tax rolls. I have the feeling that private owners have a stronger feeling about keeping their land in good shape than a person paid to oversee the land but has no ownership incentive, making a big difference in how you treat something.

This country was and is built on private ownership of land and to change it to public ownership is a distortion of why our country was founded and has done so well. Hey, I'm not just sounding off for nothing. My love of mineral collecting is at stake here. All the government bodies are closing off land at a tremendous rate. Read about it and then call someone in charge in Washington. gbricker@sd.znet.com.

The latest thing that came to my attention on Oct. 17th is the New Fossil Bill being sent to Congress next week. This might be too late for anyone to do any thing. I read the Bill and it has a long and lengthy section on how the government is going to do things to you if it catches you with a fossil from government land. They will fine you, jail you, confiscate your whole collection and give it to the proper government t repository. It goes into great detail about how this is to be done. These are the conservationists and ecologist writing this. This is their usual language, "We'll fix you guys, we'll keep everyone off our land." I have the Bill on my computer and it can be passed to your computer.

THE BONES ARE GOING TO ROT IN A FEW YEARS IF NO BODY GOES OUT AND PICKS THEM UP. There isn't enough money for the universities to do the job. Rot, decay, fall apart is the sensible answer? Where has all the intelligence gone? You are the only ones that can stop this. Go back and re-read John Frey's article on the same sort of subject. See 1f there isn't a pattern here.

Lithosphere, Vol. IX, Num. 9

November 2001

Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society