It's very important to our overall cultural fabric. We want rural communities that depend on agriculture to survive and thrive. The head of a New Mexico ranchers' group is more blunt. These people do not care about conservation. These people are community-destroyers.
Public land dominates both the landscape and the politics of much of the West.
The federal government owns almost two-thirds of all land in the 13 western most states, including Alaska and Hawaii. In Idaho, Utah, California, Nevada, and Alaska, more than half the land belongs to Uncle Sam. Texas is not in that group because it was an independent republic, not a territory, before it became a state. The federal government owns a mere 1.7 percent of Texas. Federal land use Almost 70 percent of federal land is open to ranching, logging, oil, and gas drilling or mining.