Every example of successful, cost effective natural resource management has been completed by private enterprise, and usually provides multiple use benefits. In my experience that includes livestock grazing on rangelands, logging, hunting, fishing, and other productive uses of renewable natural resources.

All of the failures of resource management that I know of are either caused by private enterprise exploitation of the resources or are failures caused by the regulations of government agencies.

Both exploitation of the resources for short-term gain and agency rules that prevent resource management that is science based and business-like are going to cause problems and cost money.

In other words, communities prosper when the use of natural resources is based on private enterprise for profit by people who are stewards of the resources. That prosperity does not depend on land ownership, since land ownership may very well be a business enterprise that is separate from livestock production, logging, mining, etc. However our prosperity does depend on rational (not regulatory) decisions and on the rights of private property ownership being protected.

Floyd Rathbun
Wildlife Biologist
Range Management Consultant
Fallon, Nevada

Glenn C. Patterson