The Wilderness Society, after a 30-year campaign to nationalize all forests, finally succeeded in getting Congress to pass The Wilderness Act of 1964, which set aside nine million acres as wilderness. At the time, Hubert Humphrey said that the designation was to show posterity what their forefathers had to conquer to create the nation. Since 1964, more than 100-million acres have been designated as wilderness. With the stroke of a pen, he set aside 1.8 million acres in Utah, and is now setting aside more than a million acres in Arizona and California. He is locking up the land to ensure that future generations can have no benefit from it.
Woe be unto an owner who accidentally drops a chewing-gum wrapper.
Most of the locked-up land will simply no longer be available to the owners. Land, and the resources it contains, is the prosperity future generations will require. If land is to be taken out of productive use, it should be for good reason, agreed to by the elected representatives of the people. Both the practice and the procedure of this administration is an abomination to freedom-loving Americans. Land, and its resources, are the property of individual citizens, and should not be taken by the government by decree.