A Wyoming lawsuit could determine the fate of millions of acres of public land that remains inaccessible to the public because of private land ownership.
If you put together all the public lands that Americans can’t actually reach, it amounts to an area more than 10 times the size of Yellowstone National Park.
It sounds difficult to believe, yet that’s exactly what research from onX has shown. Known primarily as a navigation app popular with hunters, the digital mapping company has also been working to improve access to public land.
OnX released a report in 2021 showing that nearly 16.5 million acres of public land around the country can’t actually be reached — not legally, anyway. Many public lands are surrounded by private property, so anyone who tries to visit, including government officials, risks trespassing charges from landowners.
But with the onX app, anyone can now see where these public lands are located. When a group of Missouri hunters used the app for hunting on Wyoming’s Elk Mountain in 2020, it resulted in an ongoing lawsuit that could address legal ambiguities about American land access.
It’s just the beginning of efforts by onX and other groups to expand access to public lands across the country.
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$7 Million in Damages for Crossing a Boundary
At 11,000 feet high and covered with dense aspen groves, Southern Wyoming’s Elk Mountain offers premium hunting. It has elk, pronghorn antelope, and mule deer — and is technically public land.
Unfortunately, those 11,000 acres of public land are surrounded by the private property of Fred Eshelman, a drug company founder from North Carolina, The New York Times reported.
But that fact hasn’t deterred everyone. In 2020, a group of four Missouri hunters used the onX app to hunt on Elk Mountain, killing several bull elk. That led to a charge of criminal trespassing. At trial in April, a Wyoming jury only needed 2 hours to find the hunters not guilty.
By then, however, Eshelman had already filed a civil suit as well. According to court filings, he now claims the hunters diminished the value of his 22,000-acre property by between $3.1 million and $7.75 million — just for passing through.
That’s “the most egregious thing I’ve seen,” said Land Tawney, the president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA). The organization has joined the fight on behalf of the hunters, starting a GoFundMe page and raising over $110,000 to pay their legal fees.
The core issue of the case is the legality of corner-crossing. In short, it’s a method of accessing “landlocked” public lands that remains a legal gray area.
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What Is Corner-Crossing?
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