This land had vegetation once.

It’s easy to distinguish between private and federal grazing lands when I’m out west. The federal lands still have healthy amounts of brush and grass, the private lands have large areas of bare dirt and leafless brushes. This was very evident on my recent trip to New Mexico, and was something I had noticed when previously out west.

The climate throughout much of the west is very arid, resulting in conditions varying from outright desert to short grass prairie, with scrubby sagebrush conditions in between. Such dry conditions mean regeneration of vegetation of any scale can take centuries. Overgrazing by large scale agricultural operations has destroyed vast areas of vegetation. In fact, so much destruction had occurred by the twentieth century that the federal government was asked to step in, take over much of the land, and protect it.

In fifteenth century England a number of landowners began the process of enclosing common lands. These were lands, though on the land lords’ manors, on which traditionally the local people had rights of access for winter grazing, or in woodlands for collecting firewood, grazing pigs, and picking nuts and berries. Increasingly, conflicts broke out between landowners putting up fences to block access and peasants breaking the fences down. Eventually, the crown was called in to try to protect the traditional commons through holding commissions of enquiry.

I am witnessing, through research and as eye witness, the long process of a long battle over the commons. The traditional view of the earth’s resources – water, air, land (minerals, food access, etc.) is that they are the commons. This means they are in common for all humanity. What you take with your labor is yours, but you cannot take so much that you deprive others of resources. Typically, the commons are regulated by the community in terms of who has access, when, and how much.

What we have seen over the last five centuries or so has been a movement by large landowners to enclose the commons, literally and figuratively, in order to monopolize access. Literally means fencing it off and putting up signs. Figuratively means the development of the extreme concept of unlimited private property. There is no commons, just each (rich man) possessing their own land with the rights to do with it as they will.

Support for commons from the crown or the feds has not been constant. In England the crown did indeed try to restrict, even, stop enclosure. However, by the eighteenth century the landowners and early capitalists dominated a now powerful parliament and they aggressively enacted legislation to enclose vast amounts of commons. Private property dominated and was to be protected at all costs (with the Black Laws in England through the death penalty). That mentality carried over to the American government at the end of the century.

Then, by the twentieth century the pendulum had bounced back, the unregulated private ownership had devastated so much land, and left too many people propertyless with no access to resources. Both the UK and USA founded parks and forestry services to protect the land. The USA had agencies such as the BLM to control the grazing land and try to save what was left of the water and vegetation. However, they failed to renew the concept of the commons. The concept of unlimited private property rights continued unabated. Even the land controlled by the community – through agencies such as the BLM – tended to be considered government owned land rather than the commons.

That failure to reconceptualize allows for space for the large landowners try to claim the land and nullify the government “ownership.” The famous recent cases, of course, have centered around the Bundy family and their protests. The problem is instead of presenting the land as commons, possessed and protected by and for the people, the land is simply designated federally owned. There is now a hard fight out west as wealthy landowners fight for ownership of these federal lands. If they win the barbed wire fences will go up, and the overgrazing will begin again.

As I see the devastated lands, I recognize we can’t do this again to the entire west. As I see it we must actively bring back the idea of the commons in order to save them. This will not be easy as the idea of absolute private property has been embedded very deeply. It is a crucial fight though, because not only must we save the land, but water shortages abound, and of course climate change is the ultimate threat to all the commons and to all of us.