Locked Out: Montana’s Missouri River Breaks

Today, most of the Missouri Breaks is public land in the care of the Bureau of Land Management. American hunters know it as perhaps the most unique and legendary elk, mule deer, and bighorn sheep country in the world. If you’ve never seen it, ponder this: Mountain hunters are accustomed to going up into the hills to seek their quarry. In the Breaks, you hike down, eventually reaching the big river itself. This is the home of the second-largest elk herd in Montana and some of the West’s biggest trophy bulls.

So, imagine their dismay at hearing the Breaks are in the crosshairs of the movement to transfer public lands into state–and possible private–ownership. On June 24, 2014, the Montana GOP announced that it had taken a position of "shifting public land management away from Washington, D.C., control," and interest in private ownership of Missouri Breaks land remains at a record high.

A Texas family recently purchased more than 300,000 acres in the area for hunting purposes. The once-abandoned and unclaimed lands, now rich with big game, solitude, and adventure, are the on-the-ground equivalent of diamonds and gold. If transferred to the state of Montana, these lands could be sold and closed forever to the average American sportsman.

By Hal Herring

Full Story: http://blog.trcp.org/2015/09/01/locked-out-montanas-missouri-river-breaks/