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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fritz the Cat" data-source="post: 418922" data-attributes="member: 605">From BHA:Sponsored by Sen. Hoeven (R-ND) and Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), along with Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) as a cosponsor, the entire North Dakota congressional delegation is seeking to pass legislation that would facilitate the transfer of your federal public lands to the state of North Dakota. The North Dakota Trust Lands Completion Act would allow the State to relinquish broad swaths of state trust lands inside Tribal reservation boundaries in exchange federal public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). As a result, those state trust lands would then be held in trust by the Department of the Interior on behalf of the Tribes. The federal public lands granted to the State in exchange would become state trust lands, by law managed to generate revenue through development. No action would be taken to offset the loss of these BLM lands to the public, resulting in a loss of access. Once transferred, state trust lands can be closed by lessees, meaning that tens of thousands of acres of land that has always been open to public hunters could now be closed. The State manages trust lands solely for profit, not for multiple use, and North Dakota could develop prime hunting and fishing habitat and/or close state lands to public entry entirely. Once federal public lands are transferred to the state, hunters and anglers lose.This is harder to swallow in  North Dakota, where sportsmen and women already have limited options to hunt public lands. There are only 58,000 surface acres of BLM lands in the entire state, and since this bill would make approximately 37,000 surface acres of state lands and 186,000 mineral acres within the boundaries of the Tribal reservations eligible for transfer, we could see a significant portion of North Dakota’s federal public lands lands lost in exchange.  Even more worrisome, nowhere in the valuation process is public use or recreational value considered, and the public hunter will be left out of this process completely with no way to oppose transfers or be involved at any level. The bill also does not specify what federal acres or mineral rights would be targeted for transfer to the state, so the negative impact to North Dakota’s hunters and anglers could be even more outsized depending on the parcels and their appraised valuation. At this point, North Dakota hunters don’t even know which public lands stand to be lost. Join the North Dakota Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers in speaking up to oppose this misguided legislation and ask that, at the very least, safeguards be added that protect the public’s interest in our public lands.Solely for profit......well that piqued my interest.<a href="https://www.land.nd.gov/sites/www/files/documents/Financial%20Services/FinancialReports/2B%20-%2007%20-%20July%202024%20Financial%20Dashboard.pdf" target="_blank">https://www.land.nd.gov/sites/www/files/documents/Financial Services/FinancialReports/2B - 07 - July 2024 Financial Dashboard.pdf</a>That's a butt load of money.</blockquote>

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