Originally Posted by Rochard

Let's back up here a bit.....

A lot of land in the western states belongs to the federal government. Nearly 30% of all US land is owned by the government. In the state of Nevada 84% of the land is owned by the federal government.

While I am all for preserving federally owned land, but the US government sure does own a lot of land. I see no reason why some of it cannot be handed down or sold to local state governments, or if not, auctioned off to private citizens so long as our government gets a fair price for it (meaning no deals where land is sold off cheaply).