Chas over at Southern Rockies Nature Blog has a jaw dropping post on land access issues in the west.
Public discussion has tended to portray the civil case against the Missouri hunters as extreme and untenable — a desperate move by a vindictive plaintiff standing on shaky legal ground asking the question: If you disturb the air particles over your neighbor’s land, have you potentially committed a crime?
David Willms doesn’t think the case is a joke, though. Mr. Willms, a lawyer and policy adviser for the National Wildlife Federation, hosts a podcast, “Your Mountain,” which, as its name suggests, is devoted to the issue of public lands and has not aligned himself with either party in the Elk Mountain dispute. He worries that the case could have unintended consequences.
“Can the landowner make a straight-faced argument that passing through the airspace is a trespass?” said Mr. Willms, who previously worked for the Wyoming attorney general’s office handling similar cases. “Absolutely.” He points out that Wyoming has a statute under which “ownership of the space above the lands and waters of this state is declared to be vested in the several owners of the surface beneath.”
“Can the hunters make a straight-faced argument that passing through the airspace isn’t a trespass?” he continued. “Yeah, they can.”
I couldn’t believe it was this bad out there.
It’s Public Land. But the Public Can’t Reach It.
This source article explains it in good detail. It and the links are worth reading.