Now I'm not saying that things don't happen that shouldn't 

 happen. They do. I'm just saying that I think it's exaggereated. 

 While I'm mentioning the public land, there is one person here, Pete 

 Jackson of WETA, who has a lot of state land. Pete Jackson doesn't see 

 any reason why he should lock up the public land. He feels that the 

 people have the right to use it and he also feels taht by allowing the 

 people to use it and not locking up the gates, he has less problems 

 than those who deny the access to the public from their public lands. 

 And I'm sure he's still here if anybody wants to talk to him. 



But let's get back to the public lands issue. In 1889 certain lands 

 were given, one way or another, to the state of Montana--roughly 5.3 

 million acres. This was public land before and it is public land now. 

 Nothing has changed. There's nothing in the enabling act that says 

 that whenever the state received this land, that all of a sudden 

 recreation ended-and recreation was a thing that existed before the 

 Enabling Act and exists now today. But there is nothing in the 

 Enabling Act anywhere--and here's a copy of it for anybody to look 

 at--that prohibits access. And, it uses the term "public land" many 

 places through it. And there's nothing in this that says that there 

 should be any place that wildlife management shall be of a lesser quality 

 than on other public lands in the state. This booklet--this is the 

 Montana State Land Rules and Regulations--says nothing about wildlife 

 and wildlife habitat. And, although it's maintained by the people in the 

 State Land Department that state land is not public land--it (and I've 

 circled them many times in there) mentions public land. It is public 

 land. I received letters from the State Lands Department about this 

 issue. Letters that for example, say the school trust land is, of course, 

 to raise revenue for the common shcools. That's fine. But there's no 

 reason why it can't raise revenue while we still are able to use the land 

 for recreation. These letters say that school trust land is public land in 

 a sense. Well, in what sense isn't it public land? It is public land. 

 There' re a lot of letters written and a lot of material that just keeps 

 going in circles. You know, in other words they're, as far as I'm 

 concerned, trying to confuse me with issues and I'm confused. There's 

 no doubt about that. But it says that the state does not hold the land 

 outright, but holds title of trust for the common school. I sometimes 

 wonder if maybe the federal government still has some control. I'm not 

 sure yet. They say also that "the state school lands" never were 

 granted to the people of Montana in general, so no rights have been 

 stripped." By "rights have been stripped," I want to know why that 

 recreation on these lands were being limited or curtailed in some way. 



The next letter from there that I have says that legislation was 

 attempting to provide more public access to public lands but all of it 

 failed. My point is, I'm not concerned about trying to get access to 

 state lands that are isolated amid private land. Nobody wants to try to 

 force a landowner to put a road across his private land just so we can 

 use that land. The State Land Department also more less maintains that 

 sections 16 and 36 (the state land sections) are isolated sections 

 throughout the state and are usually intermingled with other lands or 

 are not accessible because they're amid private lands. Many other 



