Congressional Candidate Proposes Pilot Program to Cede Federal Land to Wyoming
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.
The minerals below Wyoming’s prairies, deserts, and forests “belong to us,” she said. “We should not have a government that is an enemy of the people” it is supposed to be working for.
Hageman, a natural resources and water rights attorney, is among nine congressional candidates—including five Republicans—on the state’s Aug. 16 primary ballot.
She drew a half-dozen ovations during an Aug. 9 candidates’ forum at the Niobrara County Fairgrounds in Lusk hosted by the Niobrara County Farm Bureau Federation (NCFBF).
The forum featured mostly Republican candidates running for the congressional seat, governor—including incumbent Republican Gov. Mark Gordon—state superintendent of public education, state secretary of state, state Senate, state house, and numerous county positions such as sheriff, and two seats on the Niobrara County Commission.
More than 200 people attended the forum in the fairgrounds exhibit hall—a remarkable turnout for 2,628-square-mile county with a population of about 2,500.
Framed by Rawhide Buttes and Thunder Basin, Niobrara County is the smallest of Wyoming’s 23 counties.
The eastern Wyoming county, like much of the
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