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 ...
Not much sympathy here. There’s lots of welfare ranchers in the West that buy property near, or even surrounding National Forest and then use the national forest as their own personal land by denying access.
If they refuse access, I would like to see a law that you may not enter the national forest except by official entry points to stop them from just crossing the fence and going in.
Absolutely, even if it is posted no trespassing. It’s the socialist “everything is public lands” subconscious brought about by the millions of acres stolen by the feds and socialist indoctrination. This is the Sierra Club mentality and indoctrination.
Fact is... When they make a national park or monument there are still a LOT of already existing private properties within these boundaries. But the socialist mentality tells them that now “everything” inside these new boundaries are now 100% public lands and public access cannot be denied anywhere within these boundaries.
And of course the feds refuse to explain the real situation with a sign because they love the idea that the public might drive you out so that they can grab yours too. Been there.
Now here is the worst part when this happens and they build a federal reserve around you. You still have to pay local property taxes, and if you are smart liability insurance. But you no longer have any local representation for your taxes.
You are severed from local law enforcement jurisdiction, it goes to the federal Rangers. And you are severed from your local fire district, it goes to the BLM or Park service Fire Crews. And you no longer have local representation in the courts you taxes are paying for, any and all legal issues like traffic citations etc. go through the nearest FEDERAL court. And this court could be hundreds of miles away on the nearest military reserve.
So in the end you are paying property taxes and getting absolutely no local representation for these taxes. On top of this now you have to deal with the common consensus that your private property is public property which puts your liabilities and everything you own at extreme risk.
But as an avid and courteous off-road and camping enthusiast, the feds limiting access to PUBLIC lands is also wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with multi-use within these boundaries and access should not be denied as long as private property owners are respected.
Most private property owners do not mind allowing easement access as long as it is respected that it is indeed private property, be courteous, and don’t trash it. Problem is there is not much respect or courtesy in our society anymore and there comes a point when you have no choice but to shut down access to protect everything you own from possible liabilities. When the public starts shooting stock just for target practice it is time.
While access to public lands should not be denied... In turn the rights of private property owners should not be stomped on just because the public is TOO LAZY to drive a couple miles farther to gain access when there IS other access. They are already dealing with enough wrongs thrown at them from the feds and don’t deserve even more from this added disrespect for their property.
“Better be careful....they might call in the FBI to shoot the owners!”
Yea, calling Lon Horiuchi.
Government has already extended its greed grasp over private property in ways that horrify the honest and benevolent.
gate
this is not a new problem - I sold my land back in 1980-81. Cyclist would use my drive way (unpaved) as their private toilet which I had to cleanup) then RVers would use the drainage ditch along the road fronting my property as a fine place to empty their waste tanks, plus the local cops only drove by once a week. All this led to repeated break-ins and the loss of my $500 chain saw and .22s.
The area had become a place for low lives and criminals to hide out. I could not stand it any longer (being in Alaska most of the year fishing) so on returning that year I sold for a lot of money then, but 5 years later it became worth just short of millions - view property, paved road, electricity, and phone. oh well.
The flip side of this are the rich elites who purchase ranches with definite access to public lands and illegally close them to citizens.
That is why the Pacific Land Foundation has been so successful. Over reach by the Clintons, then Obama has been rampant.
Now imagine what would have happened if one of those cyclists had a crash and injured themselves on your property and sued you. This is a factor the “public” doesn’t consider when they support unwanted or illegal access across your property. You can be held liable and can lose everything you own and have to pay for the rest of your life.
Are the feds going to pay for this if it happens? No, they will not, yet they have no problem with putting you in the position of becoming a victim to liability. THEY should have to pay the liability insurance bill when they do this.
They just tear these out and throw them in the ditch. Same with posted no trespassing signs.
Not usually. If what they wanted was THAT important, they would just take it without asking. Easements are generally for convenience.
When you grant an easement you are giving that person access for whatever purpose in perpetuity. I used to get easements for cable TV construction. Even our attorney would shake their heads at how people had no idea what they were signing away for cable tv.
They can’t if there is no other access. I have been on this side of the fence too. In this case if it was the ONLY “established” access when they bought it, they have to legally continue to allow this access. If there is even just one other access to these lands they do not.
This is the fault of the Feds and the environmentlists, They need to give up access, or build access roads across federal lands to access these lands. But they absolutely refuse to do this because it literally takes an act of congress for each one and the environmentalists will sue them... They force the surrounding land owners to give up easements across their private property instead.
Thing is these bums will fence off the road and force the usfs into a decade long court process to re open it. Unless the locals remedy it first.
My property butts up against National Park property, it has been in my wife’s family back into the 19th century before there was a park. In fact her great grandfather gave the park some of his property when it opened. Her father lamented that decision until the day he died. The park routinely sent letters to her father telling him what he could and couldn’t do on his own property. He essentially told them to stay off his property, or be prosecuted for trespassing and when they paid the taxes on his property they could tell him what to do until then go to hell.
He passed in the 1990’s and we moved in a house on the property in 2000 time frame. One day after moving in I was in town and my wife heard a knock on the front door and it was some park employees asking for permission to cut across our property to work on park property. Remembering her Dad’s clashes with them she said, sorry but you stay off our property end of discussion. They haven’t bothered us for nearly twenty years. We know the regular employees and they are pretty good people but Rangers are the biggest jerks on the planet, punks with a badge. I put nothing past park administration and rangers.
I have been there already. I fenced my property line and on one side was a fire access BLM road. My property line was 6ft into this BLM road. They had 20 miles of BLM land on their side of the road. It was their own fault for not having it surveyed correctly.
They tried to grab my whole property parcel through the courts rather than just widen their own road 6ft into their own BLM lands. One pass with the grader the next time they brought it out after a rain and it would have been a done deal.
But instead they tried to pull a Bundy on me and take everything I had to get back that 6ft. And I hadn’t even blocked access, I just made the road skinnier and that personally bugged the local area overzealous authoritarian (GOD) BLM office manager.
Judge took one look at the pictures and said “I could still drive a truck through there...” Yep, sure can. :)
My parents owned some property in Vermont. The railroads came through and were granted an easement for the rails, plus 20 feet on either side of the grading.
100 years later, the tracks were dug up. The State of Vermont decided it would be a good place for a bike path and with no legal right, they just started calling it a bike path. People were riding their bikes up and down the path, cutting through property to get to the lake from our lawn. Their dogs would run loose, getting our dogs worked up, getting into fights, hunters would shoot deer on the gravel grade. All sorts of crap.
Ten years in court, and the owners were given a token amount for the land that was literally stolen from them. And the state not only took the track bed, plus the forty feet...but they took the rest of the property strip on the other side of the tracks (maybe 10-20 feet more.)
I will NEVER sign an easement. If they need the property that badly, take it through due process and be done with it.
Yep... they are GOD, and these public lands belong to them personally as far as they are concerned. And this attitude does not do those who want to access public lands any favors. They create animosity and hatred from the get go with their disrespectful overzealous authoritarianism. And access to public lands across private property suffers because of it.
I think that has happened in both CA and southern OR.
Pretty much exactly what the Malheur/Bundy standoff was about in OR as well. The Hammonds owned property that was completely surrounded by a Wildlife preserve and has been endlessly harassed by the BLM until they finally got them jailed on bogus arson charges hoping to bankrupt the family and force them into selling out. The BLM got a first right of refusal out of the plea agreement and were mad as hell that the original judge gave them a minimum jail sentence, which is why the BLM bided their time until Obama appointed a new AG in OR who promptly appealed the sentencing to make them do the “terrorism” minimum. Total travesty of justice.
Trump pardoned them which is why he is a great president.
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