Public ownership is a controversial issue in the American West.
More than half the land in the western one-third of the nation is owned by the U.S. government, Wilkinson says. National forests, including Roosevelt National Forest, which wraps almost completely around Rocky Mountain National Park, encompass 193 million acres in the United States, including a big chunk of Alaska. President Theodore Roosevelt began setting aside forest reserves in 1906, including large tracts in Colorado. He and Gifford Pinchot, the first director of the U.S. Forest Service, were lovers of nature and the American landscape. So is Charles Wilkinson.