Local Enforcement for Local Lands

It may be news to many Americans, but as individual land owners, ranchers and farmers in Washington already know, the federal government is one of the largest property managers in the nation, and especially in the West.

According to a 2014 government survey, federal agencies manage 640 million acres of land, or one million square miles nationwide.

That number accounts for 28 percent of land in the country. To put that enormous number in further perspective, it is just a bit smaller than the size of the land area of the three largest states, Alaska, Texas and California, combined.

However, in o...