Public lands need protection 

Last October, a group calling itself the Free Land Holder Committee (FLHC) decided to make claim to 1,460 acres of Forest Service land near Mancos. The rational? The U.S. Constitution, Louisiana Purchase, Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago excerpts and a loose affiliation of the group’s spokesman, Patrick Pipkin, of being Native American and some connection to a Mormon Pioneer in the Mancos Valley in the 1800s.

Now if memory or, more accurately, history serves, the Navajo and Ute peoples inhabited the area well before the 1800s, and prior to them, their relatives, the Ancestral Puebloans lived there. So the claim of “prior ownership” makes little sense.

The U.S. government claims ownership of the land and uses it for multiple purposes to serve the public. In the FLHC “Proclamation - 001” dated Oct. 9, 2024, they state “under law and exclusive equity” – evidently referring to U.S. laws in prior named rationale – the group wishes to not only take the land ostensibly for grazing purposes (so they don’t have to pay USFS fees) but says it will not keep the public out. 

Then why the fencing off the USFS lands they claim? Thankfully, Mancos residents took it down in support of the public lands. So let’s see, dispute U.S. government ownership of lands based on some excerpts of past law, throw in some nebulous Native ancestry claim, as well as Mormon pioneer connection, and sue the federal government to get the land?

This sounds a lot like what the Bundys tried with armed force back in 2014, with the exception of the FLHC not being armed.

And what about the state of Utah trying to take federal lands to return to the state, aka Celeste Maloy’s (UT-02) bill or the State of Utah’s lawsuit in the Supreme Court trying to wrest some 18.5 million acres of “unappropriated” federal lands into state hands?

Whether it’s individuals who believe they have rights to lands near them or a larger group in government who wants to exert state control over public lands, the bottom line is our public spaces are under threat. Land is a resource that is getting more and more valuable as a commodity, to make money or to make a livelihood from, and those seeking to make money off the land will use whatever means possible to attain it. Let your representatives know that you value our public lands and that we need to protect them now more than ever.

– Tim Thomas, Durango