KREMMLING, Colo. — As big-game archery season kicks off this weekend and rifle season approaches, Colorado`s Bureau of Land Management offices have received numerous calls from hunters with questions about access to hunting. Although it is an obscure problem, inaccessible public lands and cornered public lands are very common in the American West. “They were packed like sardines in the committee room,” said Stan Blake, a state official and committee member at the time. “All hunters and conservationists were in favor of it,” the Green River resident said. Their argument is, among other things, “You really don`t touch anything when you cross corners,” Blake said. To recap, two hunters in different states were both found not guilty after stepping over corners of property, a statement from the attorney general said the individual circumstances of crossing corners must be investigated, three states saw the introduction of bills to make crossing corners legal, and one of these states also saw the introduction of a law, to make it illegal. But none of the bills became law. No wonder the debate continues. The applicant owns and controls the airspace above its property and has the right to prevent others from using that airspace through a “corner intersection”. For some public land hunters and access advocates, the solution may seem simple: legalize all crossings across the country and allow Americans access to every acre of their public land, including those enclosed between private parcels. After all, what harm could you do by stepping over private land to access public land? Welsh said Wyoming`s law was a good sign, as it could prompt other Western states to take action in the legal gray area.
Until then, the corner crossing is a murky intersection of the law. Airspace, the corner is exactly the airspace. One foot on the public and the other on the public passage of a corner should and should be a legal access. A recent report by geographic navigation software company onX found that more than 8.3 million acres of publicly accessible land in the western United States are surrounded by private land, but share an opposite corner with public land. For parcels of public land that meet at corners surrounded by private land, many outdoor recreation enthusiasts use an unusual method to try to access the land. It`s unclear whether the practice avoids criminal trespassing and led to a high-profile trial in Wyoming last year. I agree that if the land is public land, the public has a right of access. Many private landowners lock down public land with these strange laws and then use them to their advantage. Let`s make it easy. Corner crossing with a fixed width allowed, public land only on public land In this context, private landowners do not have the right to prohibit reasonable access to public land, even if it means a major road via private land. This goes beyond simply reducing costs.
“We see the crossing as a violation of private property rights,” Magagna said. The owners have “a certain amount of space above the lot,” making it physically impossible to cross corners without harming that space, he said. The conflict arose from the Western Exchequer land ownership model established during the days of territorial settlement and railway construction in the 1800s. In Wyoming, the question is whether hunters and others are unauthorized when they travel from one public property to another through an intersection of two private lots at four corners — without touching private land. Corner Crossing made headlines in Wyoming last year after four hunters were charged with criminal trespassing. The group had placed an A-ladder between two corners of public land and had never set foot on private land, but was charged with criminal trespassing into the airspace of adjacent private owners. Over the past two centuries, legislation, chance, and a multitude of land deals have left the American West with a patchwork landscape of public and private land. In the disparate carpet are strips of alternating sections of public and private land, like squares of a chessboard. At every point where four squares meet, there is a corner of property ripe for controversy. As the topic of crossing a turn was back in the news, we decided to use our strengths and analyze the data. What we discovered was shockingly large.
Finally, there is another proven way for the public to access cornered land: by asking permission from the neighbouring landowner. It may not work everywhere, not every time or with all landowners. But there is a history in the West of knowing one`s neighbors. As the population of these formerly rural areas grows, gaining and building relationships with landowners may be the most cost-effective way to access inaccessible Crown lands. “Therein lies the heart of property rights,” Welsh explained. He compared the issues surrounding corner crossing to a metaphor often used in real estate law that property rights are like a bunch of sticks. While a member of the public may never have set foot on a homeowner`s property while crossing a corner, they likely ended up in the airspace above, one of the sticks of property rights. However, as pressure on resources in the West increases (from wildfires to the increase in the number of hunters in the countryside), even the most prominent proponents of access to public lands are not calling for the general legalization of corner crossings.