Source: The New York Times
The occupiers at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, though extremists, represent the fringe population of a larger, Republic-led movement whose goal it is to make the Federal Government relinquish control over western lands to state control.
“In the past few years, lawmakers across the West have offered up dozens of bills and resolutions seeking to take over the federal lands inside their borders or to study how to do so,” writes the New York Times. “Some of the legislation has been aimed at Congress, to urge it to radically revise laws that have shaped 550,000 square miles of national forests and terrain run by the federal Bureau of Land Management.”
Critics of the movement say its leaders merely want to hand over lands to companies and developers who will profit off the lands’ rich resources, such as coal or timber. Fortunately for critics, the “land-transfer movement” has so far yielded far more talk than actual results.
Read full story at: The New York Times