The government instead adopted a pattern of selling access to the West’s rich resources—grazing rights, timber, precious metals, oil and gas—without actually selling the land itself. As a result, the residents of a place like Idaho, where fully two-thirds of the land is federally owned, don’t make decisions about how the resources in their own backyards should be used. Instead agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management call the shots from Washington, and people all over the country—even those who visit a place like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon only once in their
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