The Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service collectively manage well over a quarter of the land in the United States. Several Cato Institute studies have called for privatization of these public lands, but this idea is strongly resisted by environmentalists, recreationists, and others. A new paper ^[1] from Cato scholar Randal O’Toole ^[2] suggests an alternative policy: turn them into fiduciary trusts. Under this proposal, the U.S. would retain title to the lands, but the rules under which they would be governed would be very different.

• “A Matter of Trust: Why Congress Should Turn Federal Lands into Fiduciary Trusts ^[1],” by Randal O’Toole