A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property
nytimes.comCorner crossing seems like something that could be solved by saying "where two corners meet there must be an easement xx meters wide to allow the public to cross". I can't imagine any reason why the private landowner should be allowed to put up fencing and signs that block the corner.
In cases where the only way to access a parcel of public land is through private land then an easement should be created. If a road or trail can't be built for whatever reason then a sign with an arrow should be the rule.
Typically that happens when it’s needed, and then (unless someone tries to stop it), it becomes a defacto easement after awhile.
A lot of land in the US is newly settled (by European standards) especially anything other west, so those kinds of things haven’t risen to the level of official standards. The basic ‘if it’s your property, you can do what you want, including people off of it’ is still mostly true, though it is getting more and more ‘supplemented’ by others rights over time (cough zoning, HOAs, etc)
> I can't imagine any reason why the private landowner should be allowed to put up fencing and signs that block the corner.
A legally valid reason would be like "the wealthy elect lawmakers that write laws in the interest of the wealthy." That's how the USA works
Not disagreeing with the sentiment expressed here, but from a PURELY theoretical standpoint, there is no actual space to pass through a corner without trespassing on the two adjacent plots of land
I live in Utah, where 54% of the state is public land. San Juan County is 94% public land.
It's cool because you got just a few hours south of the Wasatch Front, where 92% of Utahns live, on state route 29, and you see beautiful vistas of practically untouched territory.
The truth is public land is generally unreachable because there are no roads out there. Sure there are lots of roads into BLM land but there's just lots and lots of BLM land and they can't build roads into all of it on their current budget. Besides, usually the roads are gravel and of questionable maintenance.
As I hiker I definitely disagree with the notion that no roads = no access. I've been plenty of places you could not construct a road without some pretty hefty engineering.
And note that this article is about a case where there were no roads but the hunters were there anyway. I'm definitely on the side of the corner-crossers, you don't get to control public land by land-locking it. I'd say the owner of the land that land-locks it gets to within reason decide the route that is permitted, but they have to grant it. And I would say that any corner like this should automatically become shared access to both owners of the corner (in this case one of those owners is public, but I would apply the same standard if both were private), they can move anything between their properties so long as they minimize the intrusion and neither can do anything to hinder the other's ability to do so.
Locally, we have an interesting hiking area that's been a matter of dispute for many years and it isn't even due to a hostile land owner. There is private land with an old mine inside a national recreation area here. Unfortunately, it cuts the only way you can reach a canyon without encountering terrain obstacles. Reportedly, somebody's car got damaged while parked there, their insurance company tried to go after the landowner and the landowner's insurance company responded by requiring him to keep people off the land (he hadn't cared about us hikers, our passage did not harm him.) There is also the issue of a couple of mineshafts that idiots (the timbers do not look safe to me!) like to explore. Some states have gone partway towards addressing this--exempting the landowner from liability for any natural hazards (hey, nature doesn't come OSHA-sanitized, us backcountry guys know we need to make our own safety evaluation of the situation!), but this doesn't deal with the issue of old mineshafts. I'd like to see it go farther, exempt the landowner for all natural or old hazards, they're only liable if they create a hazard.
> I'd say the owner of the land that land-locks it gets to within reason decide the route that is permitted
Suppose that the public land is sandwiched between two private owners. Which of those private owners must grant the access?
Worse, suppose that that chunk in the middle wasn't originally public land, but is later purchased by the state. At that point, the previous owners - having done nothing on their own - are suddenly encumbered with a right-of-way across their land, decreasing their value. This sounds like a taking to me, and thus subject to the 5th Amendment. (IANAL)
I'm fine with the horrible unbearable unfair rapacious evil taking.
As far as I'm concerned there shouldalways have been some provision where the government essentially subtracts a roadway from any parcel that otherwise blocks access to any other, any time the two parcels are not owned by the same person. If there is a way to make a path along a border, then do that and intrude 1/2 as much on 2. If an owner would prefer the path be elsewhere for some reason and is willing to provide a reasonable alternative, allow them.
There is no cause at all to pity the poor abused land owner for their inability to control access to public land, or even just another private land that they don't own, and the "taking" to carve out a path from "their" property is no "taking" at all. They and you are crying over the loss of something they never had and moral right to in the first place.
Wrong side to pity.
This already happens with public utilities and whatnot.
I own a number of acres with a public walking trail through part of it. I don’t particularly like having random people being able to walk though my property, but honestly it’s such a minor inconvenience. And people use it much less than you’d think, especially in sparsely populated places like Wyoming.
If you own the property how is the public allowed to walk on the trails? Is there an easement or something similar?
Trails create easements that can continue even when the land becomes private.
Yeah, there is an easement for the trail.
This has nothing to do with public ownership; it occurs with private ownership of the interior parcel as well. Are the outer parcel owners also unfairly encumbered by an access easement then?
This is a very real problem in some agricultural country! Not unusual for farms to purchase a field that is surrounded by other owners and then have a big dispute over easement to access. It's a particularly large problem in areas that were historically subdivided without road easements between lots (as is the typical modern practice), or that were originally subdivided for reasons like mineral exploitation that did not customarily use road easements.
Depends how they got that way. Will they pay for it? Perhaps they made an unwise investment and should have paid for more rights.
I have seen the case where someone buys a parcel from a larger property. Then turned around and demand easement access from the neighbor on the other side who was not party to the deal, because that neighbor has better roads and is easier to cross.
The burden should be on the one who created the landlocked parcel.
That would be a 4th Amendment concern, not a 5th.
It's a good thing that there aren't roads in every conceivable place they could be built. My favorite places on public land are still in good shape because they take planning and effort to reach, and are only accessible on foot.
There’s a difference in kind between “you can drive to this plot of land the size of a smaller state but there are no roads in it” and “the only way to reach this land at all is via helicopter”.
The land owners in this case are even actually arguing that so much as waving your arm over their line violates their air space, so even a helecopter is no good. Which makes me wonder why I don't immediately go buy a $5000 plot somewhere and sue all the airlines for millions.
edit - ok actually a helecopter is good, see several other comments
Same in here Alaska, except far more so and without the gravel roads. Air or water travel is the only practical way to reach most of the state. Sometimes foot, snow machine or dog sled are feasible for some areas, at some seasons of the year.
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BLM Land has been a mainstay of the US for years and widely supported by both parties, especially republicans.
Hmm not so sure about that. Republicans are generally pissed that Utah has so much federal land. Their talking point is often explicitly aiming to grant it back to the state. Part of the reason they were so against Bears Ears and Grand Staircase was because it further pushed back what the state could do with that land.
And please don’t kid yourself if you think they want the state to control it for preservation.
Yes, I realised my lack of knowledge and creating an assumption there. Sorry.
No worries! It’s a relatively common (and amusing) mistake.
Oh you meant “Bureau of Land Management”. My apologies for inferring it wrong.
BLM means Bureau of Land Management
Yes, sorry for inferring it wrong.
this is very common in the west. Its one of several ways to "own" more property than you paid for. If your property completely encloses 1000 acres of public land, that land is as good as yours (with the exception of building things, but many of the property owners in these cases are taking people hunting on the land, so no permanant structures would be built anyway.) Another common thing is land leases. I don't know how many ranches I've seen for sale around here (NM) that state something like 1000 acres, but when you look closer, its 200 acres, with a BLM lease on the other 800 acres. That doesn't grant them exclusive use of the land (to the best of my knowledge), but they frequently act like it does--placing "no tresspassing" signs, confronting people, arguing its their land. (and while you are paying for those leases, it is CHEAP. something like $2 per acre per year.
I personally think this is the case in most remote areas bordered by private land as the land owners selll sub leases to big hunting companies and the hunting companies make profit off of public land as it is like a lot of areas here in Oregon
If it doesn't grant them exclusive rights, and they can't e.g. put up "no trespassing" signs, wouldn't that be a crime because they are claiming ownership, and thereby claiming that the state does not have ownership? Have you ever reported one of them to see what happens?
It is only a crime if police and prosecutors are willing to enforce it.
Sadly today too much of the law is political, both left and right, with police and prosecutors choosing what laws they want to enforce, when, and on who (i.e picking people or groups they dislike)
Not uncommon for large landowners to be on friendly terms with local politicians and law enforcement.
What crime would it be? It might be dishonest and antisocial but those things usually aren’t criminal on their own.
As someone who has grown up with "Freedom to roam"[0] laws, it seems so weird that you would need to keep track of who owns the land where you are hiking. (To be fair you can't just hunt wherever you want in Sweden either.)
"Freedom to roam" laws are an archaic notion that only sort of work in very specific locations like the Nordic countries.
Even with a large staff of park rangers and a budget for trail maintenance, trash bins, toilet facilities and informational signs about "leave no trace" ethics, it's still hard to minimize the damage tourists do in parks. And even within parks, we don't let people freely roam, we ask them to stay to trails to prevent erosion and we shut down areas seasonally to protect critical nesting, feeding or migration paths. To ask private citizens to deal with such damage to their property is unfair and unreasonable.
Further, the average city dweller has no ability to assess what land is safe for them to hike on in America. Again, for parks we have dedicated staff to put up signs and set clear rules about closures and access, but agricultural lands are far more complex. What looks like "unused" land may be grazing for cattle, flowers for bees or habit for wildlife (whether for conservation or hunting). It may have been recently sprayed with chemicals which are harmful if humans come into contact with them or it may have recently been planted and footsteps will trample early crops.
"Freedom to roam" is like suggesting that the solution to homelessness is to just let homeless people choose to sleep on anyone's couch who wasn't using it. The millions of acres of managed public lands in the US, which can have appropriate usage policies depending on environmental impact, historical significance, number of visitors, etc and which can be properly managed for the long-term balance of many diverse stakeholders needs is a far better system.
I think you’re missing the point. The right to roam is about the public having access to public land. Public land is paid for and supported by taxpayers, and is therefore theirs to enjoy.
Surrounding public land by privately held land, with no rights for the public to freely access it is just not right. It essentially becomes the domain of the land owner that controls access, which then becomes a form of market intervention by the government.
This is often a direct subsidisation of a private enterprise and should be opposed by the left because it denies equality and freedom of movement to the people that own the land. It should be opposed by the right as government intervention and interference. It only benefits the individual landowner.
Of course, this issue is magnified by the colonial concept of land ownership and ignores any preceding title or use of the land. This also prevents traditional owners from accessing sites of significance.
This is not a Nordic idea. Ideas similar the right to roam built many of the economies of new world countries. Cowboys and cattle drives in the US, Drovers in Australia relied on the free movement of men and stock over public and private land.
Finally, the land belongs to the people. Laws exist in many jurisdictions for governments to reclaim any land for any reason. Private ownership should be considered long term, but temporary. Denying access to something that the people own is undemocratic, unfair, and unnecessary. Access and maintenance shouldn’t be reduced to the cost of stewardship.
It looks like there's a disconnect here on what we're talking about for "freedom to roam". If you read through the Wikipedia article linked in the comment I was responding to, you'll see that it's about private property, not public parks.
The issue of land being inaccessible by virtue of being surrounded by private land without roads is solved by the unrelated, separate legal notion of an "easement" to allow access. Easements are used regardless of if the landlocked plot of land is publicly or privately owned.
I agree with you in the general notion of "It's bad that this public land is inaccessible and that should be fixed". But just clarifying on the terms.
> "Freedom to roam" laws are an archaic notion that only sort of work in very specific locations like the Nordic countries.
What is special about Nordic countries making it only (sort of) work there? All the issues you mentioned are issues faced in Nordic countries as well.
Well, if your average tourist does that yeah
We took advantage of this back in the mid 90s when we were 18-year-old backpackers from the UK.
We got to Stockholm, looked at the train map, picked somewhere random, and headed off. When it got suitably rural, we got off. (My memory now is of that scene from Trainspotting where they go to the Scottish hills to recuperate.)
We walked a couple of miles down a road and found an idyllic patch of well-kept grass. Might have been a bowls green or something. We pitched our tents at the edge, respectful of the surface. Heated up a meal, had a tea, watched the stars. It was amazing.
The next morning some guy was on a ride-on mowing the grass. He gave us a friendly nod, we packed up, we left.
Interesting. In Sweden people can roam with some restrictions. In particular they can't go close to someone's house (up to 70m). Also, in Sweden, they wanted to protect the right to walk along a shoreline, so due to the other rule they stopped allowing houses to be built closer than 100m to the shoreline.
> Also, in Sweden, they wanted to protect the right to walk along a shoreline, so due to the other rule they stopped allowing houses to be built closer than 100m to the shoreline
Naturally the rich and powerful have been claiming the shoreline along most of the coast around major towns in Sweden - this is especially true pretty much anywhere in the affluent suburbs around Stockholm, where house owners just extend their gardens down to the water.
As for freedom to roam - I’ve been walking around Södermanland the last few summers, and have met an amazingly few other Swedes hiking. Even during the pandemic I met more foreigners out on the paths. Swedes were safely ensconced in their cars.
Money tends to bend the laws. Mexico also has freedom to roam the shoreline, but rich people keep trying to reserve their beach fronts, and in many cases they succeed. Ironically, hotels have a harder time doing the same.
Curious about how civil liability works if someone is injured on your land while partaking of their freedom to roam privileges?
In the US, a lot of the desire to keep people off private lands is liability driven (which is not mentioned in the article) e.g. someone decides to wander onto your land where you are building a house in the country, falls in a ditch at the construction site and sues you for their injuries while trespassing on your land…
where i grew up as a kid, way out in the country suburbia in texas, most people did not have fences. the only fences i knew were barbed wire fences around cattle pastures. one summer, a friend/neighbor got a pool in their back yard and suddenly a new wooden privacy fence went up. it was odd enough that i asked about it, and my friend said it was because his parents didn't want to be sued if someone accidentally drowned in their pool. that was the first time i had ever heard of something like that, and it has always stuck.
someone fucking up on your property without your knowledge, and you can get in trouble. this was also when i learned about how home owner's insurance can be targeted. it was just one of those moments in life when the facade starts to crumble as childhood views start to give way to real world realities
Sweden doesn't have the same system of punitive damages.
I am not a lawyer, but I would guess that this might result in a small fee for not following building ordinances or something more serious if gross negligence was involved. People suing each other for millions is not really a thing in Sweden.
In fact, hunting rights (leased or as land owner) supersedes the "freedom to roam" rights. So a hunting party is fully within their rights to ask you to leave.
The kicker in the article that "nobody is going to grant access out of the goodness of their heart," is absolutely untrue. There are fox hunts and hikes in my area where landowners grant access for this reason. What has done the most harm is insurance and the risk of liability and litigation from people injuring themselves on your land, and that has made landowners become very aggressive about trespassers, as it just takes one "slippin' jimmy" scammer (like the many auto insurance collision scammers already out there) to put their home at risk and cost them a significant settlement. That liability makes any trespassing at all a present and reckless threat against your home.
Public land is lovely until you have vagrancy problems as well. I live around conservation land near a major suburb and the number of loiterers, trespassers, and poachers you get is way more than you expect. When you are close to the city, the relative isolation becomes a real home invasion risk. Privacy and respect for property and boundaries is a very regional value, and attitudes against something as obvious as littering just aren't universal either. The corner crossing case in the article where there is some tendentiously legal loophole is really an example of people lacking respect for property and going where they explicitly aren't welcome. Nobody has a problem with people coming to appreciate nearby public land, but use and abuse of it without any value or contribution to the surrounding community is a problem. Instagram has become an utter cancer that way, where people drive into your driveway to take a picture, and then you get 10 others showing up because they want the same location. Someone who demonstrates that lack of respect for privacy and property should be incentivized to do so with whatever imposed cost is adequate, imo.
Wait. How is anyone liable if someone slips & trips while trespassing?
Being held liable for setting booby traps for thieves, sure, completely understandable. But ... injury while walking ... especially on land that wasn't prepared as a path/road? WTF
Is this some kind of black comedy bingo contest?
> attitudes against something as obvious as littering just aren't universal either. > Instagram has become an utter cancer that way
Yeah, no questions about those. Some people are just unimaginably selfish and inconsiderate egokings/queens.
In some states even if the person is trespassing you can be liable for contributory negligence.
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/who-is-liable-if-a-trespas...
ah, too bad that article only has basically one example, and everything else accessible via a few Google searches is complete trash on the subject :(
it seems the standard seems to be somewhere around "ordinary care" and reasonably expecting trespassers
so - to my layman eyes - it seems simple, that if someone slips while crossing my field/forest and it's in its natural state, then I contributed nothing :)
built environment is different (and usually well demarcated), and the problem is probably with backyards and front lawns and other gardens, where people leave out stuff, let's say a saw.
For example, “attractive nuisance”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
I don’t know about liability for injury to adults trespassing but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a thing in some jurisdictions.
I’d be fine with explicitly limiting liability in exchange for passing “right to roam” laws, the US is way to litigious.
This is an area of the law I find problematic. It seems to me there should be a way to tolerate access without assuming any liability.
adhesion contracts? basically a sign that says "by entering you accept all liability"
I don't think that would work because attractive nuisance is meant to be about risks to children, who are generally presumed to be unable to waive liability. Originally, it was only applied to very young children, but has been expanded. In one case, 17 year old boys were allowed to use it: https://www.law.com/almID/900005548604/
Very young unsupervised children probably aren't an issue for a property in a remote area, but 17 year olds on ATVs could easily access such a property and could certainly find ways to injure themselves with the combination of ATVs and terrain.
I think statutory limits on liability for attractive nuisance would probably be the best answer. It should not be usable over a certain age - ten seems about right to me. That's old enough to know things like drowning is possible, unfamiliar machinery is dangerous, and large animals can hurt you.
A number of European countries have "freedom to roam". It would be nice if America had an equivalent, but given how lobbying works that seems impossible at this point.
In practice it doesn't matter at all, just BLM (Bureau of Land Management) alone owns 387,500 sq mi of public land. For comparison, Scotland, is 30,090 sq mi in size .
This is not counting local, state and national parks and forests.
Why fix a problem that doesn't exist?
Some of the largest parks are comparable in size to European countries.
Having to drive to a place to hike rather than just being able to go across the areas around you is annoying.
Exactly, the difference between unconnected wild areas (public access wise) and connected wild areas is massive. The landscape in large parts of the US is totally fenced in and splintered in a way that even if there is lots of public access it isn't effectively connected in a way that people can actually utilize it.
There are tons of hiking places that are walkable from most US city centers. Most US cities have large parks.
Unless European cities are smack in the middle of nature, I think they also have same issue.
It’s the US, you’re going to have to drive to it anyway because it’s 500 miles away.
If you read TFA, the issue is access to said land.
Because just giving out land numbers is pretty useless?
How much of that land is where people actually are? Most of that land you need to drive to.
If you want to be where people are, you can just be home. Isn't the point of hiking and camping being away from other people? ;)
You misunderstand. The point is that people are only able/willing to travel a certain distance from where they live to use public land. Public land that's very far way from population centres is not useful (for public access purposes) regardless of how much of it there is.
> It would be nice if America had an equivalent
A problem is that (at least some parts of) America has pretty absurd "stand your ground" laws (absurd from a EU POV).
Even in the EU countries which don't have freedom to roam laws it is most times safe and often rather inconsequential to trespass, as long as (very oversimplified) you don't climb any fences or similar and keep on the path. (I.e. you have only "accidentally" overlooked the sign pointing out it's a private path you are not allowed to take.)
Note that I strongly recommend reading/translating path signs, they might matter a lot. Similar keep on the path, not just for nature but because there might be unexpected natural and less natural dangers (like WW2 left overs, accidentally entering military training areas, flash flood risks, dangerous nature, etc.).
>A problem is that (at least some parts of) America has pretty absurd "stand your ground" laws (absurd from a EU POV).
You're confusing "stand your ground" (wherein one can defend against an attacker regardless of where they are) and "castle doctrine" (wherein one can defend against an attacker if residing on one's property). It's the latter that's applicable in this case, but only if the person trespassing is also attacking the property owner.
Additionally, there is a very strong historical precedent for both in western (ie European) law, and especially for the latter.
Sure I mixed up the terms but the difference is how the law is interpreted today.
in many EU countries the ways you can defend against an attacker are in practice much more limited and highly contextual. If you kill someone who is hiking across your property you are most likely going to prison for killing, even "just" using a taser or holding them down until police arives can easily count as unproportional amounts of force and get you sentenced for hurting the trespasser. On the other hand you are much more likely to get away with it in some US states.
Furthermore in some EU countries trespassing laws are also more limited and can even have unexpected "gaps". Like there had been a case in which it was found that activists which trespassed onto a farm to document animal abuse where not found guilty of trespassing as they had a reasonable reason to enter the property.
And sure it's something else if you idk. brake into someones home instead of "just" trespassingly pass through a property (especially if the property is not fenced off, I think in some countries if a property is not fenced of and there is a path especially if its without a sign and it's not just obviously a garden of a house it doesn't even count as trespassing at all).
Lastly people having a gun at hand is also much more rare in many EU countries.
This is a good "tell me you only know life in the city, without telling me you've only lived in the city".
To anyone living in a rural area or working in agriculture, conservation, timber/lumber, mining, ranching, hunting, etc, the idea of a finding a random stranger walking across their property would be as alarming as finding that stranger in their living room. The tourists may unintentionally cause damage, disrupt operations or create an unsafe condition even if they were well-meaning. And of course, many people will not be the ideal "leave no trace" expert and many will cause problems- they'll leave litter, they'll gather sticks for firewood, they'll clear areas for campsites, they'll walk on wet grass, they'll leave human waste, they'll leave fire rings with charred remains, they'll pick flowers or fruit, they'll take fossils, they'll carve their names in trees and paint on rocks, etc.
Ethically, if we're going to start taking away people's property rights, I'd rather we force vacant urban housing to be made available to rent before we start forcing farmers to clean up rogue campsites on their fallow fields.
You are speaking with a lot of assumed authority about what "rural people" as a large category think
I wouldn’t want that in the US. We have more than enough national public land where people are free to roam. The last thing I want is some random camping in my backyard. We are a very individualistic people, I don’t want people in my little nation state.
> The last thing I want is some random camping in my backyard.
FUD. Freedom to Roam laws only allow camping a fair distance away from inhabited buildings.
how is "a fair distance" specified?
As with any legal term, the exact specification comes down to each individual country and their set of precedence and legal culture. One can ask a lawyer about any legal term and the answer will always be "it depend".
Camping for example, using Sweden as an example, is limited based on if a person is living nearby, what the land is used for, risk of damage to the environment (land and animals included), sanitation, and government issued exceptions and restriction. In practice most people choose to pay for a camping place in order to be allowed to camp. Place near roads are generally used for farming or grazing (neither allow camping under freedom to roam), nature reserves tend to be generally restricted by the government, and naturally people need a place to park their car for a extended time which is not a right given under freedom to roam.
What that leaves most people is the freedom to camp (in small groups) in the forest when hiking or mountaineering.
Sweden needs that law because it’s a tiny country where you can’t be outdoors for extended periods for more than 6 months out of the year. The US is huge. People aren’t really missing out if they don’t go on other peoples properties.
Sweden is about the size of California with 1/4 of the population.
The notion that we stay inside during half of the year is funny. Normally foreign media loves to write about children sleeping outside in the winter and all-weather forest kindergartens. And then we have all the german tourists that love camping and hiking.
I understand that it seems strange to hike on other peoples property. It's not that I have to go looking for privately owned property, it's that I can't imagine ever having to keep track of land ownership when I am out hiking, camping, skiing or picking berries or mushrooms.
> Sweden needs that law because it’s a tiny country where you can’t be outdoors for extended periods for more than 6 months out of the year.
Tell me you haven’t even visited Sweden without telling me you haven’t ever been to Sweden.
They may not be citing specific law, but instead generally describing the spirit of a broad set of such laws.
then essentially it's unenforceable, so no I don't want that in the states.
fair to me means "not one inch across my property line"
Incorrect. Broadly-defined laws that do not hammer out the specifics to the inch are absolutely enforceable, just not with perfect certainty ahead of time. All laws are imprecise, and judges and juries are well able to operate more flexibly than a rigid programming-style logical interpretation (IF position X WITHIN bounds Y-Z THEN arrest) would allow.
Yes. In my experience, technical people often assume that laws and judges act like programming commands, when in reality it's more like a case-by-case assessment from the point of view of a reasonable person. Judges are not stupid, they understand what "fair distance" would mean.
How so? Specific laws might define specific distances. The spirit of the law is some reasonable distance, and the letter of a specific implementation of such a law might define a distance, which you could demarcate on your property if it were an issue, much like people may demarcate the boundaries of their property if trespass is an issue today.
> fair to me means "not one inch across my property line"
Then the compromise should be that vast wilderness can’t be privately owned.
i think "not one inch across my property line" makes sense, but there is still a problem to resolve regarding access to public land. in particular the article describes a problem with public land being inaccessible except through "corner crossing".
In the US we accomplish this in a lot of location with easements, common easements are for utilities, but easements can be for anything including transit to other parcels.
Easements means the ownership is maintained however access is granted for VERY VERY specific things, (like putting in and maintaining utilities, or transit across ) but can not be used for other things (like camping)
The solution is simple. Land owners should just be required to grant access to public land they border.
If you don't like that, don't buy property that borders public land.
Virtually every property borders public land of some kind (a public road right of way, typically). It might be interesting to minimally specify what it means to allow access in a way that doesn't allow virtually any path across one's land. You can't just require allowance from any other border directly to the nearest border of public land, for this reason (could be through the owner's house or garden). One way might be to require the specification of public traversal areas as part of the title. Or 100m around the edges of every property is traversable.
Specifying some minimum property size should cover most cases, as well as specifying land uses that are or are not covered by the requirement for public access.
If you own a large parcel of land but are actively farming it, I think disallowing public access is reasonable. If you own hundreds of acres of wilderness, I think public access to traverse the wild areas of your property is perfectly reasonable, even light camping with reasonable restrictions. Specific issues can be prosecuted individually, instead of a blanket ban on all public access.
Well said
It depends, but even travel is restricted within 70m of a house… so 250ft?
It depends on the country.
If it’s 70m that’s still very close to my house. Americans have a way of pushing the boundaries of every law, we’re a litigious country we follow the letter of the law not the spirit. This will probably result in a chain of homeless people that stay in your backyard for three days and then move over to the next backyard.
> If it’s 70m that’s still very close
“150 metres in Norway and in all countries far enough that you do not inconvenience anyone and particularly not those in the nearest house.”
— https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Right_to_access_in_the_Nordic...
> This will probably result in a chain of homeless people
Countries with Freedom to Roam laws have homeless people, too. What you describe has not happened.
> stay in your backyard for three days
Again, FUD about “your backyard”. Do you have a 250,000 sq. ft (2.24 hectares, 5.5 acres) back yard? Also, Freedom to Roam laws usually restrict camping to at most two nights, sometimes one night only.
Yes, I have a 24 acre backyard
Your usage of the word “backyard” differs from everybody else’s.
It definitely doesn’t, not according to the dictionary anyway.
As an aside, I think you may be underestimating how large American homes and properties can be, it’s not Europe scale. 5 acres really isn’t all that large.
What matters is how people here would interpret your statement “camping in my backyard”. I think most people here would interpret that as “too close for comfort”, not “somewhere within my 24 acre lot”. Therefore, your statement is misleading. Ergo, FUD.
That's most of a football field away. I could not care less about someone being that close to my house.
> The last thing I want is some random camping in my backyard.
Story: A regional gov agency bought a large tract of land behind my home for conservation. A fireline was cut all around the edge of the tract and lined with a 4' wire fence that ran adjacent to our properties. Homeowners were unitedly happy the land wouldn't be developed but some were upset it was now available for public daytime use.
Two disgruntled neighbors in particular stand out. One was a new mom who was alone all day and was unsettled with folks hiking past her backyard. The other was a generally cantankerous old guy who felt his right of privacy ought to extend far into land that wasn't his.
Whenever my kids and I hiked the fireline, we made a point of venturing away from the alone-mom's property but didn't extend the same courtesy to the old guy. Though we had a right to walk any part of the tract we wanted, we found respecting alone-mom's concerns was worth the effort.
My moral here is that demanding every last nanometer of rights - while rejecting all notions of consideration - is usually too absolutist to be productive. When conflicting desires are in play, I feel consideration+efficiency leads to more workable agreements.
> One was a new mom who was alone all day and was unsettled with folks hiking past her backyard.
This seems unreasonable to think hikers are a threat to her. It’s nice of you to work to make her feel better but it seems silly for her to think that people are going to break into her house in the middle of their hike. There are many more opportunities for violence and if she wants to worry about things, there’s others.
More to the point: it's bad policy to normalize her concerns. For the sake of her child we hope that New Mom stops at one and is single. The biggest reason for child abductions is custody disputes and the biggest perpetrators of child sex abuse are older siblings.
> it's bad policy to normalize her concerns. For the sake of her child we hope that New Mom stops at one and is single.
This feels like a pointlessly bitter analysis, one that has drawn unnecessarily harsh conclusions.
At the time, I started weighing her danger assessment but I stopped. New parents tend to suck at risk analysis. I did. Over time I sorted it out. She would too but not that day.
> The biggest reason for child abductions is custody disputes and the biggest perpetrators of child sex abuse are older siblings.
This false danger narrative you're referencing, you're right that it's crap and harmful. However it is mostly driven by LEO & news orgs - both of whom are in the exact position to know better. It isn't reasonable to blame new mothers for the ongoing ineptitude of professionals.
LEO & news orgs - both of whom are in the exact position to know better
They are not going to stop producing more of the "stranger danger" nonsense, no matter how politely they are asked. You have to start with the consumers if things are ever going to improve.
Regarding LEO, I'm inclined to agree. FBI stats are 2 clicks away so LEO's relentless tendency to portray custodial kidnappings as stranger abductions is at best disingenuous.
The press' issue is one of competency tho. Reporters parrot LEO (gov, corp) PR verbatim, without the least bit of verification, because they are inept. Once reporters get their dopamine hit from public freakout, they are fulfilled. Public freakout leads to ad dollars and that satisfies management.
In case anyone ever reads this: My above response became unhelpfully harsh toward the end. I could have framed that argument in a less hostile light.
It fairly contrasts with me earlier calling out a post for being bitter.
You don't know what she thought. And maybe she's worried about other forms of violence too. You also don't know the type of people who walk by.
why were her concerns more important than his? old man was probably alone all day as well and unsettled
> why were her concerns more important than his? old man was probably alone all day as well and unsettled
Young mom is young and still sorting out how to tell FUD from actual risk. Also, her peer group is at actual risk from men. I can give her room to sort out what's what; meanwhile, the risk from men diminishes with age.
The old man was married and his adult kids where there a lot. I was on the HOA board and talked to him a number of times. He wasn't struggling with any concern for his safety; he resented that his visible area could be (<5x/yr as it was remote) briefly intruded by someone walking by on the other side of the fence.
Sweden, one of the usual examples when freedom to roam is discussed, has laws agains home invasion including yards, gardens, etc. since at least 800 years. This has nothing to do with property rights, any home regardless of ownership structure is protected. So camping in someone's backyard could most definitely be illegal even if you were to introduce freedom to roam :)
As a general rule I dislike the form of government that is European, and prefer the American Individualist system, so I dont think it would be nice if America adopts more European laws, we have adopted too many of them already IMO.
We revolted for a reason, many Americans seem to have forgotten those reasons in the centuries since, Europe has always been more authoritarian than the US, and they largely replaced monarch systems with more collectivist systems instead of adoption of more Individualist systems like the US did.
I prefer the Individualist system, the smallest minority is the individual, and individual rights are supreme over collective or group rights.
In somewhere like the UK the "authority" can be the large land owner/aristocrat. And individuals own relatively little land. It is the kind of thing that Americans escaped from! In that context public access is a defence of individual rights. And often rights will have existed for hundreds or even thousands of years. Public access is a defence of that.
But I think the different culture of America is a really good practical reason against improving access for the public. Guns alone would make it risky.
Kinder Scout deserves honourable mention here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_trespass_of_Kinder_Scout
It seems really odd to view a law granting individuals the right to use land for personal recreation as "authoritarian" and not "individualist".
Why? The "right to roam" is a collective right granting the public a "right" over that of the individual property owners right to control access and use to their property.
To conflate the "right to roam" as a "individual right" completely miss understands what an individual right is
This is possibly the core difference between the US and Europe for me; American individualism isn’t about individuals, but property, and it always has been. By granting someone a degree of land ownership so extreme they can inhibit other people from experiencing nature across it, you’re merely fetishising property, and doing every single individual a net disservice in the process.
>you’re merely fetishising property
I am not "fetishising property", I am merely including property in with human rights. The Self-dermination or Self-ownership principle naturally requires some system of property ownership. One such system is Homesteading, while I do not fully support homesteading as a concept, I do believe in some kind of private property ownership is required for a functional society based on individual Self-dermination, absent that individuals would not have ownership of their labor or work product, and other functions of their lives.
Personally I lean more towards a Geoism model that combines exclusive possession of real property but is not "full ownership" but even under a Geoism model is critical that the "owner" or possessor of the land is given right of exclusion
> This is possibly the core difference between the US and Europe for me; American individualism isn’t about individuals, but property, and it always has been.
That doesn't jive with my experience on the subject. The core of American individualism has always been the traditional first amendment rights. The idea that you can live your life your way requires property rights, sure, but they're ancillary to the ultimate goal of freedom.
Now, if you don't agree with the first amendment, it may look very different. And I could understand why someone would disagree with it. Not everyone wants to have to tolerate, say, nazi rallies being held out in the open. But to reduce it all to property is missing the forest for the trees.
Land ownership, as we understand it today, is a government-granted right, not a natural right.
Ownership as a natural right is based on the idea that the fruit of your labor belong to you, and on voluntary trade. The land already existed before humans, so it can't be fruit of anyone's labor. It can't be owned in this sense. Traditional ideas of land control were based on usage, not ownership. If you used the land for something – built a house on it, farmed it etc. – that was the fruit of your labor and the land belonged to you. But if you abandoned the land and it started reverting to natural state, others could eventually claim it.
Freedom to roam laws retain some of these traditional ideas. The owner can only control access to protect their use of the land. If the land is unused, others can roam the land, as long as that does not hinder the owner's ability to use the land in the future.
>If you used the land for something
So preservation of natural state is not a "use" ? Hunting is not a "use"?
I think they are...
>Land ownership, as we understand it today, is a government-granted right, not a natural right.
I think it is largely both, and I recognize that we can and should reform some of the government granted rights I just dont think the Right of Exclusion should be one of those reforms.
The lack of usage is not a use. Preservation means changing the legal status of the land permanently, and it also prevents the land owner from using the land for other purposes in the future.
Hunting is a use, but only when it's actually occurring.
It favors the collective rather than the individuals right to personal property, it’s not an odd view.
> We revolted for a reason, many Americans seem to have forgotten those reasons in the centuries since
Aristocrats couldn't accept admitting representatives elected by the merely rich, rather than only aristocrats, since that would obviously be a large step toward the end of aristocratic political privilege, while most British citizens in positions of political power in the colonies were rich but were not aristocrats, so wouldn't accept representation that curtailed the franchise and/or restricted office to aristocrats, as it was in Britain (American revolutionary leaders wanted a slightly larger franchise, as was the custom in the colonies, and without which they would suffer a great loss of power and probably wealth, since office is a great way to get richer, maybe even more-so then than now) and these positions were irreconcilable for reasons of individual interest on both sides?
[EDIT] I mean there were also propaganda reasons but if that hadn't been a factor the war very likely wouldn't have happened until/unless Britain tried to end slavery.
My backyard borders on about 1/2 acre of green space. Technically it is public land, but it is inaccessible unless you cross my property or parachute in. The yard is fenced on all sides (to keep our golden retriever in), except the green space side. So, someone would have to come over the fence. I wonder how much pubic land like this probably isn’t included in the app mentioned in the article.
Really shortsided position by the land owner, and I have no doubt he’ll end up with far less rights than he started by raking people over the coals.
Pulling straight from Franklin Covey’s seven habits: think win-win. Simply allowing people to cross at the corner and encouraging them to do so by building a path works keeps them off his land and in public areas. Hell even charge them a reasonable fee for the crossing to keep it from becoming a free for all!
But the no compromise, ‘7 million airspace violation’ position will lose badly in the long term, even if he can convince if he can convince a few local juries for a few short sighted temporary wins. Worst case scenario is the federal government decides that there has to be land access and forces a road onto his private property. Now _that_ would suck.
> Simply allowing people to cross at the corner and encouraging them to do so by building a path works keeps them off his land and in public areas.
But that's not what this person wants. He wants to maintain exclusive access to land that isn't his.
Agreed that squeezing too hard will probably backfire. I don’t agree that encouraging or facilitating the crossing is a win-win.
It’s likely that the landowners bought the plots strategically to get de facto “ownership” of the public land. Why buy all of the land when you can buy the moat around it?
The best part is that he couldn't even convince a local jury!
It'd be interesting to know what tech stack OnX is using to achieve their outcomes. Looks pretty slick!
You might also be interested in Regrid, https://regrid.com/
They started as a Detroit-only grassroots effort called "Why don't we own this?", tracking property auctions and helping locals buy adjacent parcels when they came available.
But quickly they realized this data was powerful once it was easy to access. Which was no mean feat -- every locality has their own terrible way to store parcel data, it seems, and it's a ton of work to gather and unify it. But once they've done that work, they can charge a bit to access it in scriptable and exportable ways, but the browser interface remains free.
Personally I think the government should just fund the operation and make all the access free, because this is fundamentally everyone's data, and unifying it should be the government's job. But in the meantime, I've never found myself needing more than the free access.
Awesome website!
What kind of use cases are there for using this data in bulk?
Looking around my city in the onX app makes me really sad. So many historic trails have been sold to investors and are now being blocked/developed…
> Mr. Eshelman ... Discussing the case in an email statement to The Wall Street Journal this month, he said “forcible trespass” was a safety issue and could affect the property value.
Clearly the property, trying to hem in public land, was over-valued.
The public should have access through private land to get to public land this whole thing with land ownership making money off of public land is a crock and if that’s the case the public should change the land owners for taking animals off that public land that have no access to the public
In many places, the land between high tide and low tide is public no matter what the beachfront property owner says. That doesn't stop them from making it very difficult for the public to access.
Someone with big balls should set up a company that flies people in and out of these areas by helicopter. Would probably make a fortune from libertarians
I hesitate to engage with this comment, but this 'method' is the same that was used by the hunters with the ladder. The sticking point is that, sure, they're not stepping foot in the corner-adjacent lots, but they are still crossing into the property via the air. This would be the same issue with the helicopter.
Consider a property line not just a line on the ground, but an invisible wall extending from that line on the ground up toward the sky. That's the issue here, is that the hunters are disturbing the 'air rights' of the adjacent properties by crossing that invisible wall, and not just by stepping physically onto the property. Using a helicopter wouldn't be much of a loophole if the air rights are concerned, I think.
Edit: after comments, yes, duh, it doesn’t extend infinitely and there’s the aspect of reasonable use, c’mon, why do people need their hand held through everything. Flying a helicopter over another property at 100’ is different than 2000’. Talk to the FAA.
This is incorrect. Imagine the impact on Starlink of property rights extended infinitely.
In the US there is not a specific limit, but the principle is “your airspace rights extend as far as could reasonably be used in connection with the property.”[0]
It also depends on frequency of overflight. A small plane landing at a nearby rural airport once a week is treated differently than swarms of drones flying at the same altitude all day every day.
So maybe a few hundred feet, maaaaybe 5000 feet if your property is a helipad. But not infinite.
[0] https://aviation.uslegal.com/ownership-of-airspace-over-prop...
That's not correct in the slightest - landowners do not control the airspace above their property. That's why municipalities can't ban the use of drones, just their launching and control from their territory.
Even the national park service, which tries to restrict aircraft as much as possible, can only regulate in this way (and to prevent harassing wildlife).
I have a commercial drone license.
Landowners generally control the air above their land to some certain limit, which is why you can fly your drone at 2000' elevation over their land but not necessarily 10' elevation over their land.
The situation is a bit confusing but the general idea is that altitude doesn't matter, regulatory context does. The FAA holds the exclusive right to regulate civil aviation and so property owners are not able to restrict any aviation activity unless the FAA permits it. There are aviation regulations that generally prohibit operation of aircraft within 500' or 1000' feet of the ground (depending on unpopulated or populated area) except when on the way from or to it, but there are plenty of nuances to that rule (most notably that it's all completely different for sUAS) and it's nothing to do with property ownership but rather aviation and public safety.
In other words, property owners are generally viewed as owning the airspace all the way up from their land, but that ownership does not confer any rights to restrict aviation, which is all done according to a separate body of federal regulations that has very little interest in land ownership. This is a similar situation to mineral rights, where land ownership matters more but there is still a separate system of regulations and deeds that operates largely independently from property title (which is why it's common in rural areas to buy land where the mineral rights are held by someone else).
Notably, though, this is all about flying - ground operations are different and you must have permission of the property owner for ground operations (except in emergencies when the regulations are generally tossed out the window for better glide). So property owners can restrict takeoff and landing, and (I think this is a little bit fuzzier legally but still generally agreed) remote operation of aircraft from their land.
Incorrect. You can't fly your drone at 2000' AGL in almost any circumstances, anywhere, ever. Elevation is also the wrong term. Drones are capped in the US at 400 feet above ground level, with exceptions for part 107 pilots within 400 feet of a structure or terrain feature, and specific situational waivers.
There is no specific rule against flying even 1 foot above ground over someone else's property, though it's very unlikely that doing so would not violate other rules unrelated to airspace. These include operating a drone unsafely, violating laws against harassment, and photography in a context where someone would have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
> but they are still crossing into the property via the air. This would be the same issue with the helicopter.
Surely there is some altitude at which that doesn't apply? Otherwise there'd be problems with commercial jets too?
Not sure about ladders, but the post you're replying to is spouting complete nonsense wrt aircraft.
The FAA has defined “navigable airspace” here: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/pham_htm...
That cites another FAR, 91.119: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.119 which lays out the general rules for fixed wing traffic and some exceptions for helicopters.
Over most unpopulated areas, it’s 500’ from surface, structures, vehicles, or people, unless lower is needed for takeoff and landing.
Fly over the private land at 500’ until you reach public land, descend the helicopter, have a party on the public land and stick two fingers up at the arseholes trying to claim it for themselves by buying up the surrounding land and denying road access. Make sure you have a nice ex-military security team with you in case the arseholes decide to get pushy. Thank you for flying with FU Airlines.
I guess there must be some upper limit, otherwise normal commercial air traffic at 10k meter / 30k feet would be in serious trouble.
As long as the public land is large enough that you can land the helicopter far enough away from the private property to not expose yourself to other problems (some kind of noise limit maybe?), it seems like it should be doable right?
Fly over the property at 3000 feet and land on public land.
Much lower than that -- aircraft ascending from or descending into airports cross tons of private property lines.
As they should be.
Does anyone know if I could go look up ownership of parcels of land in my city? I don’t really need a hiking map, I was just wondering if there was a government database or something where I could look up who owned what.
In the US this tends to be done at the city or county level, as far as I know. In my state each city has their own land parcel database that they make available.
That said, this commenter pointed to https://regrid.com as a company that aggregates all this local data and provides a nationwide parcel map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755133.
Regrid looks great and might work for you.
Ah, yes, this is pretty close to what I needed. I across referenced it with my county's parcel survey :)
If you're in Germany, ALKIS I think shows what you're looking for. If in the Netherlands, check PDOK.
Your username somehow gives me an Indian vibe though, so not sure if this was helpful. Might help to specify which city or area you're asking after.
Indian-American living in the Bay Area, I used Regrid as suggested by another commenter.
This is insane. Nobody should be allowed to block access like that. The land owner was harassing these men while they were on public land and is continuing to harass them using a court. The landowner should be in prison.
Prison--no... we do too much of that in this country already. He should be defeated though.
Do we throw too many people in prison: yes
Do the rich almost always avoid prison: yes
Maybe if we applied laws equally and actually jailed rich people who committed crimes instead of giving them fines/slaps on the wrist we'd have a few more powerful advocates for prison reform. And I'm not talking about sending them to white collar prisons [0], it's absurd how there are 2 sets of justice in the country.
Nah. Rich people who use hired goons and courts to harass people should be in prison.
I would guess the parent is on-board with proportional harm done for wealth-based thuggery - and that that can be achieved without putting prison on the table.
The potential principle here is that our current version of prison is too inhumane to be a thoughtless, automatic goto.
Yeah, we should only imprison the poor not white collar criminals they're too similar to ourselves.
who about we do not imprison either, only using prison to
1. Separate violent people from society
2. Separate people who through a long pattern of behavior have proven they cant or are unwilling the follow the laws of civil society
Economic status should not be a factor
3. Penalize someone with a penalty that actually matters to them.
Fining a rich person is simply giving them the option to pay for a pass to do something that's supposed to be illegal.
There is a rule in my state that cars have to display license plates on both the front and rear of the car. But one of my cars has a sharp sporty front end and the licence plate bracket would be ugly. So I just eat the ticket I get once in a blue moon. Mentally it's simply my trivial token service charge for getting to have what I want.
I don't know what the fair penalty should be for that infraction, but if the goal is to ensure every vehicle displays plates on both sides because it's actually important, then it's not whatever $50 or $100 I paid maybe once, possibly twice in 20 years. Maybe the fine just needs to be a percentage of income or assets instead of an arbitrary fixed value, or maybe it needs to be some other consequence that I actually feel yet won't unfairly harm someone else more than me for the same wrongdoing. (I can afford to take lyft everywhere for instance, or just stay home even, so even losing my license would inconvenience me slightly, but could be devastating to someone else.) Or if the goal is just to collect a fine and no one cares about the plates, well then job done I guess.
But the point is I don't know if "blocking a public path" should qualify for prison exactly either, but there are other possible justifications for prison than just seperation. It may be simply a consequence that actually matters to the people whos actions you are trying to regulate.
It's not just that he blocked a public path with his signs. He also had his employees harass these men, got them arrested for trespassing, and is suing them for millions of dollars.
After reading this article I got a deep impression that the land owner is making profit off of the public land The hunters where with in there rights to corner crossing the private land
In countries which already have advanced, digital, unified land record systems, "illuminating public land" would be a relatively simple database instruction.
What an amazingly petty thing to put signs like that.
Blocking access to public land is definitely bad. But am I the only one who's first reaction is "Fuck hunters" anyway?
>But am I the only one who's first reaction is "Fuck hunters" anyway?
Yes? Anyone that says that is clearly ignorant of the need for hunting in maintaining environmental balance.
Unless of-course we want to bring back natural predators and have the problem of children, pets, and live stock being attacked.