I'm John Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

with my good colleague Terry Anderson at the Hoover Institution.

We're discussing the phenomena of the checker board.

That is, look at land, not settled land, tends to be

sloping towards mountains. One is public, one is private. Can you cross from the public to the public without crossing the airspace

or the land of the private? There's the question. It's a great quiz, but it comes from a better idea that didn't work out.

The Congress wanted to settle the Great American West, so they came up with a checker board

thinking, well, they'll buy the public and then they'll be

obliged to they'll buy the private they'll be obliged to develop the public so it's a way

of spreading civilization.

It didn't think through this Hunter problem.

But it is a good idea at one time.

And I'm taking it Terry that no one imagined in the 19th century that it would come to describe a way for

private owners to dominate a landscape that's almost twice as large as what they

paid for. I think it's important to emphasize to the listener that these parcels in the

checkerboard are one mile square.

So it's not as though there are thousands and thousands of acres. There are 640 acres of private adjacent to 640 acres of public or probably more if you are in the wilderness. But at the

intersection point it's the the intersection of these one mile square sections.

So it's not huge amounts and it leads to real problems for managing those lands.

The landowner says, well I want to manage to grow a crop or to graze my livestock.

The hunter in this case says I want to access my public lands one acre square to hunt.

The hunters in question in this case,

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