‘Airbnb for outdoor recreation’ could turn Idaho into a playground for the wealthy | Opinion

It seems straightforward enough: A private landowner should be able to control access to their land.

That’s the basic premise behind LandTrust.com, a private land listing site that’s being called the “Airbnb for outdoor recreation,” according to an article by Idaho Statesman reporter Nicole Blanchard.

“(We believe) a landowner should be able to choose whatever type of access to their land that suits them, whether that’s no access, allowing open public access, leasing to outfitters, enrolling in a state-run paid access program like Access Yes, or facilitating access through a platform like LandTrust,” LandTrust CEO Nic De Castro wrote in an email to the Statesman.

The idea seems simple enough: Private landowners list their land on a website (with an at best misleading name; this is far from what land trusts do), along with their price for outdoor recreationists to use that land.

Just like booking a short-term rental, right?

But we must recognize the implications of this so-called “Airbnb of outdoor recreation.”

First, the Montana-based company is backed by Texas billionaire brothers Dan and Farris Wilks, who have gobbled up land in Idaho and in some instances gated their property, including to historic access roads to public lands.

Yes, LandTrust could be a tool to help people De Castro labels multigenerational farm and ranch families, but it also provides an incentive for the wealthy to scoop up private land, gate it off — just like the Wilks brothers have done — and then sign up with LandTrust.com to rent out their property to the highest bidder.

The Wilks brothers, who also got a controversial and restrictive trespassing law passed in the Idaho Legislature, have three properties listed on the site totaling 8,600 acres, according to Blanchard.

Booking land could cost as much as $4,300 for five days of self-guided hunting or $4,500 for bear hunting with a guide, according to the listings. Looking for antler sheds? That’ll be around $100 per day. Bird watching and wildlife photography will run you $82 per guest per day, Blanchard reported.

It’s a win-win, all right, as De Castro says. It’s a win for wealthy landowners to accumulate even more wealth and it’s a win for wealthy weekend warriors who are better able to outbid their less-fortunate outdoors enthusiasts for prime hunting, fishing and recreation land in Idaho.

This is not the Idaho Way.

In all, 63% of the land in Idaho is owned by the public, managed by the state or federal government through its various agencies.

In Idaho, we’re accustomed to recreating, hunting, fishing, backpacking, huckleberry picking, mushroom hunting, shed gathering and bird watching, with little or no payment expected in return.

And public land is always under threat in Idaho from anti-government types who don’t want anything to do with government land.

Keep in mind, too, that these are the same folks who have pushed anti-public lands legislation in Montana, according to Brian Brooks, executive director of the Idaho Wildlife Federation.

The other implication hidden in this deal is that LandTrust could provide a slippery slope to what’s essentially the privatization of Idaho’s wildlife.

Just as an example of how that might play out, the Wilks brothers in Montana pushed to get legislation passed (fortunately vetoed by Montana’s governor) that would have allowed them to build a fence on their Montana ranch to keep elk on their property and off public hunting lands, according to Outside magazine.

Further, as Blanchard reported, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks gave Dan Wilks several permits to hunt trophy elk at his N Bar Ranch in what is typically a special permit elk hunt area with slim chances of drawing a tag. Outdoor Life reported that, in exchange, Wilks allowed several Montana hunters to access the 179,000-acre ranch to fill their own tags.

We can see where this is going.

But, as Brooks said, “A billionaire has every chance to draw a tag and get a mule deer as some 16-year-old in high school.”

Put another way, a billionaire — just because he’s a billionaire — doesn’t and shouldn’t have a better chance of bagging that prize elk than a 16-year-old kid from Melba has.

Tom Page, an Idaho landowner who’s on the board of the Idaho Wildlife Federation and the Western Landowners Alliance, told the Statesman’s Blanchard that he doesn’t have a problem with LandTrust and that it could benefit some Idaho families.

But even he can see the writing on the wall.

“I think the era of free or low-cost hunting (on private land) is going away,” he said.

Maybe it’s just a sign of the times, and maybe it’s an inevitable change in what Idaho is becoming.

For those of us who have grown accustomed to Idaho’s free, open and fair outdoor recreation, it’s a sad state of affairs.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community member Mary Rohlfing.