Local effects of stranded public lands

A large share of the land in the United States is public. Public and government access to these lands have major implications for their management and recreational use as well as surrounding privately owned lands. Because of historical policies related to the distribution of public land, the government manages countless areas of inaccessible land that are commonly referred to as “stranded public lands.” This stranded public land has been shown to decrease county-level property values and has resulted in a higher risk of wildfire. However, past studies have focused on county-level information. In this study, we constructed and used a novel, parcel-level database of property values for Montana. We expanded the scope of past work and found that, although there was a negative correlation between property values and the presence or amount of adjacent public land, stranded public land had less magnitude effect on adjacent land values than did nonstranded public land. We also found that stranded land managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management had a greater effect on adjacent land values than stranded land managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

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