This was posted as a link on the "Public Land Issues" forum, but I thought it may find a wider audience here. Features our own Buzz H. A long read, but worthwhile. I've posted the article in its entirety here.
It’s Public Land. But the Public Can’t Reach It.
By Ben Ryder Howe
Ben Ryder Howe, who frequently contributes to The Times, reported this article in Elk Mountain, Wyo.
Published Nov. 26, 2022Updated Nov. 28, 2022
The first time I showed the app to someone who had never used it, I had to gently extract my phone from the person’s hand. This happened the second time, too, and was followed by an email requesting the name of “that mapping program.”
The app is called OnX. Its basic functionality is simple: OnX shows you where you are in real time, using a blue dot exactly the same as the one on Google Maps. The difference is that OnX is designed to show where you are in a forest, on a mountain or in a canyon. It has been around since 2009 and is popular with hunters and outdoor enthusiasts.
It is also at the root of a potentially far-reaching case in federal court in which a Wyoming landowner accuses four hunters of trespassing — and causing millions of dollars in damage — even though they never stepped foot on his land.
OnX was born when Eric Siegfried, a mechanical engineer and part-time hunting guide in Montana, decided to make a Google Maps for the wilderness. He had solid navigation skills, he said, but was sick of getting lost.
To address the problem, he filled up a workspace in his wife’s scrapbooking room in Missoula with U.S. government maps, which he then loaded onto a microchip. OnX’s layers of data would eventually include everything from wind patterns to fire histories. The most important data by far, however, showed property lines.
This is because hunters, more than any other type of outdoor recreationist, need to be aware of whose property they are on, as Hal Herring, a journalist and public lands activist, explained to me.
“Hunting involves killing, and it involves people carrying weapons,” Mr. Herring said. “Many hunters are irresponsible, and they’ve got these big, high-powered rifles that people don’t want by their grandmother’s house.” Hunters can, and should, be arrested for trespassing, he added, if they are on the wrong side of a property line.
Property data is often inaccurate and outdated, and early in the development of OnX Mr. Siegfried found himself asking, “Why is there no nationwide picture of land ownership, of public and private property boundaries, of who owns what?”
This was the “game changer,” he has said. By collating state and county data and putting it on a microchip, Mr. Siegfried turned the project in the scrapbooking room into a company that just received more than $87 million from investors and that understands the American landscape arguably better than the government does.
It turned OnX almost overnight into a popular tool for the nation’s 15 million hunters.
In answering the question of who owns what, OnX helped bring to light how much public land — often highly coveted — is not reachable by the public. That’s because private landowners control access.
Across America, 15 million acres of state and federal land lies surrounded by private land, with no legal entry by road or trail. Most can be found scattered across the West, moated by ranches and corporate holdings. Such “landlocked land,” if it were one contiguous piece, would form the largest national park in the country, an area nearly the size of Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut.
Until a few years ago, the existence of landlocked lands in the United States was largely unknown, except to neighboring owners, some of whom “saw them as part of their ranch,” said Joel Webster, vice president of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. OnX helped expose this, he said, a change he called “profound.”
“For me it was revelatory,” said Steven Rinella, host of the popular Netflix hunting show “MeatEater.” “It opened people’s eyes to what’s out there.”
Throughout the West, hand-held technology has added a volatile ingredient to an already simmering conflict between landowners and outdoor recreationists. In small town after small town, the increased visibility of property lines on devices has coincided with a generational shift in land ownership, as wealthy out-of-state buyers have scooped up vast portions of countryside.
Many of the new owners, after buying old ranches where hunting access was generally permissive, have converted them into tightly controlled private hunting experiences charging upward of ten thousand dollars for a single elk.
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Such places, often teeming with game compared with public land, have become magnets for unwanted visits by the public. And where crowds increase, tension increases, too. Especially around the fact that public land — by definition owned by all Americans — is not always publicly accessible.
One ranch manager I spoke to called it “the OnX effect.”
It’s Public Land. But the Public Can’t Reach It.
By Ben Ryder Howe
Ben Ryder Howe, who frequently contributes to The Times, reported this article in Elk Mountain, Wyo.
Published Nov. 26, 2022Updated Nov. 28, 2022
The first time I showed the app to someone who had never used it, I had to gently extract my phone from the person’s hand. This happened the second time, too, and was followed by an email requesting the name of “that mapping program.”
The app is called OnX. Its basic functionality is simple: OnX shows you where you are in real time, using a blue dot exactly the same as the one on Google Maps. The difference is that OnX is designed to show where you are in a forest, on a mountain or in a canyon. It has been around since 2009 and is popular with hunters and outdoor enthusiasts.
It is also at the root of a potentially far-reaching case in federal court in which a Wyoming landowner accuses four hunters of trespassing — and causing millions of dollars in damage — even though they never stepped foot on his land.
OnX was born when Eric Siegfried, a mechanical engineer and part-time hunting guide in Montana, decided to make a Google Maps for the wilderness. He had solid navigation skills, he said, but was sick of getting lost.
To address the problem, he filled up a workspace in his wife’s scrapbooking room in Missoula with U.S. government maps, which he then loaded onto a microchip. OnX’s layers of data would eventually include everything from wind patterns to fire histories. The most important data by far, however, showed property lines.
This is because hunters, more than any other type of outdoor recreationist, need to be aware of whose property they are on, as Hal Herring, a journalist and public lands activist, explained to me.
“Hunting involves killing, and it involves people carrying weapons,” Mr. Herring said. “Many hunters are irresponsible, and they’ve got these big, high-powered rifles that people don’t want by their grandmother’s house.” Hunters can, and should, be arrested for trespassing, he added, if they are on the wrong side of a property line.
Property data is often inaccurate and outdated, and early in the development of OnX Mr. Siegfried found himself asking, “Why is there no nationwide picture of land ownership, of public and private property boundaries, of who owns what?”
This was the “game changer,” he has said. By collating state and county data and putting it on a microchip, Mr. Siegfried turned the project in the scrapbooking room into a company that just received more than $87 million from investors and that understands the American landscape arguably better than the government does.
It turned OnX almost overnight into a popular tool for the nation’s 15 million hunters.
In answering the question of who owns what, OnX helped bring to light how much public land — often highly coveted — is not reachable by the public. That’s because private landowners control access.
Across America, 15 million acres of state and federal land lies surrounded by private land, with no legal entry by road or trail. Most can be found scattered across the West, moated by ranches and corporate holdings. Such “landlocked land,” if it were one contiguous piece, would form the largest national park in the country, an area nearly the size of Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut.
Until a few years ago, the existence of landlocked lands in the United States was largely unknown, except to neighboring owners, some of whom “saw them as part of their ranch,” said Joel Webster, vice president of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. OnX helped expose this, he said, a change he called “profound.”
“For me it was revelatory,” said Steven Rinella, host of the popular Netflix hunting show “MeatEater.” “It opened people’s eyes to what’s out there.”
Throughout the West, hand-held technology has added a volatile ingredient to an already simmering conflict between landowners and outdoor recreationists. In small town after small town, the increased visibility of property lines on devices has coincided with a generational shift in land ownership, as wealthy out-of-state buyers have scooped up vast portions of countryside.
Many of the new owners, after buying old ranches where hunting access was generally permissive, have converted them into tightly controlled private hunting experiences charging upward of ten thousand dollars for a single elk.
Daily business updates The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox.
Such places, often teeming with game compared with public land, have become magnets for unwanted visits by the public. And where crowds increase, tension increases, too. Especially around the fact that public land — by definition owned by all Americans — is not always publicly accessible.
One ranch manager I spoke to called it “the OnX effect.”