Posted on 11/17/2018 7:57:06 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
FULL TITLE: The Forest Service pulled a bait-and-switch on a decades-old land deal. Here’s how the owners are fighting back.
When the government negotiates for a limited-access easement across your property, it cannot turn around later and decide it has an unlimited right to cross your property. Wil Wilkins and Jane Stanton, two Montana landowners, have had to sue the U.S. Forest Service to prevent it from pulling exactly that kind of bait-and-switch.
This week, PLF took up their fight as their lead attorneys. At issue is who is allowed to use a Forest Service road across their land. Wil and Jane live next to the Bitterroot National Forest, and, in the past few years, excessive use of the road has led to serious traffic hazards, road damage, fire threats, noise, trespassing, illegal hunting, speeding, and other dangerous activities.
The general public was never supposed to be using this road. In 1962, the previous property owners granted the federal government an easement for limited use by the Forest Service. The road was supposed to be used only by the Forest Service, its employees, and those with Forest Service permits, such as loggers and ranchers.
The easement’s terms were clear, and a letter from the Forest Service confirmed the purpose. Yet the Forest Service recently began to advertise that the road is open to the public. In doing so, the Forest Service is attempting to gain a better easement than it paid for, at the cost of Wil and Jane’s property rights.
Unfortunately, the Forest Service’s actions are not unique to Wil and Jane. In other parts of Montana and the West, federal agencies have tried to expand access to public lands to meet growing recreational demand. But instead of negotiating a mutually beneficial solution with property owners...
(Excerpt) Read more at pacificlegal.org ...
Why the hell would any one sign an easement over to the government. That is just asking for trouble.
The fact that USFS is doing this in spite of there being a better quality higher access road a few miles away tips their hand to their real agenda.
They are simply harassing the property owners by proxy to encourage them toward the idea of selling up and moving on.
Any time your land abuts federal land you can expect that eventually they will want it to continue their wildlands expansion in accordance with agenda 21.
Open the road, it’s a publicly built, finance, and maintained road. I am tired of people trying to close off our access to public lands.
The Forest Service was for 20 years been closing off roads that have been used for years to access OUR PUBLIC lands.
Locked gates all over OUR PUBLIC forests. I hunted an area for years and last year found a new locked gate blocking my access to OUR PUBLIC forest! The Forest Service is just green weenie thugs. Look what happened to California and the fires. The Fire Dept says cut brush and trees from around your property ——— Another Fed or State agency says DON”T cut the brush ———The bunnies live there you will make them homeless!!
If the original easement was negotiated with the previous owners why didn’t the USFS negotiate a new one with the new owners? And why wasn’t it an issue when the property was in escrow?
Wasn’t some person who owned a parcel of land surrounded by a federal park raided and prosecuted for having an illegal marijuana growing operation despite no drugs being found? IIRC, the government generously offered to drop charges if he signed over the title to the land.
It probably wasn’t an issue.
the Forest service will conveniently find a reason to shut we the people out......endless road construction ON A DIRT ROAD, or there’s a tree blocking the road or they have to protect the mating grounds of the purple nosed raccoon......and, they’ll take all summer and most of the fall to do it...
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An easement is forever unless a limit is stated in the deed.
My son battles the Forest Service and BLM to maintain old trails and roads for ORV use. He has several old maps that show them but they are no longer listed on the newer maps. The new FS district supervisor is a friend and that helps
Lots of folks buy a few acres abutting National Forest, and eventually, they grow to think the many thousands of otherwise inaccessible acres of public land are their personal playground. Yes, there is access "a few miles up the road", so they only want "a few miles" of private forest...
That also works in reverse - one of the reason I sold my land abutting a public forest - public forest users think your land is just more of their land and do a lot of damage and leave behind squishy brown calling cards - they also imagine your home (if you are not in it at the time) is theirs to use as they will and your stuff also.
If you don’t grant them the easement they’ll just take your land through eminent domain.
Better be careful....they might call in the FBI to shoot the owners!
FedGov was NEVER intended to be a property owner on the scale to which it has grown.
Well past time to rethink all that...
The public land can be accessed. It just can not be accessed across private property without an easement.
Everything was a done deal, just needed to get rid of that last impediment.
Last place I lived, I saw plans with the majority of my side yard gone, the street widened and a multi-level parking garage across the street. I put my house up for sale in under a month.
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