OUR OPINION: A CRP of North Dakota’s own
April 2, 2012 at 6:30 pm in Grand Forks Herald
The Conservation Reserve Program has proved its worth time and time again. North Dakota has derived tremendous benefits from it enough so that the program should be kept strong, even if some of the federal funding falls through. Continue Reading
North Dakota has huge quantities of public land, thing is, they are mostly very poor at offering recreation.
The solution isn’t to buy more land for public ownership. We should develop what the public already has.
Is there wintering habitat for deer and birds on the public lands in Western ND, nope, the animals have to winter in the ranchers yard. Buy that ranch and you will get less, not more game.
Go up to Lake Irving and you can do all sorts of fishing and such right until you hit the row of buoys that mark public land. Go there and you will get fined big time. Lots of recreation until you hit the public ownership, go figure, and they want to own lots more of it so they can lock you out of that too.
I don’t disagree with the opinion that there needs to be more recreation use of public lands, I just disagree that the problem is lack of public ownership, it’s the now we own it stay off it mentality.
You go to Federal Waterfowl refuges anywhere but ND and they have blinds and such for public use, In ND it’s stay off, and so there is rented hunting around it and the average Joe can just as well quit.
There is a place for land like CRP has been used but it needs to be in a mix for maximum effect.
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