Unlocking The West’s Inaccessible Public Lands – Off Limits, But Within Reach In partnership with onXMaps

Across the West, 9.52 million acres of public lands sit entirely landlocked, and can be accessed only with the permission of the neighboring private landowners. In some cases, isolated parcels of land are wholly enclosed or "landlocked" by private-land holdings, through which no legal public road or trail passes. In other instances, a checkerboard of land ownership results in public and private parcels meeting corner to corner, and, by most interpretations, state trespass law prevents "corner-crossing" from one piece of public land to another.

Back when private-land permissions were readily acquired, this was not a serious obstacle to sporting access. But as land ownership patterns have shifted, sportsmen and women more and more frequently encounter no-trespassing signs and gated roads, and inaccessible public lands now present a major barrier to hunting and fishing. Surprisingly though, little has been done to understand the scope of the problem, its effect on our hunting and fishing opportunities, or what it will take to systematically unlock these lands–until now.

Unlocking Public Lands