LUSK, Wyo.—Western states have been agitating for greater control of federal public lands for decades with few tangible efforts by Congress to determine how such a management model could work.
If elected as Wyoming’s lone congressional representative in November, Republican candidate Harriet Hageman will propose “a pilot program” that will allot up to 1.5 million acres of the 30-million acres now under federal control in Wyoming “to the state so we could do a better job of managing” without the weighty regulations imposed by a matrix of agencies in Washington.
She said she’d also examine land-use regulations to give states and private landowners a fairer shake in claiming mineral rights than what they now have in dealing “a Biden administration that has gone to war” with Wyoming’s mineral industry….