GOP hopeful Tim Sheehy, the founder and CEO of Bridger Aerospace, pauses during a tour of the company's facility on Aug. 30, 2022, in Belgrade, Montana.If GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy wanted to know how advocating for transferring control of federal lands to states goes over in a place like Montana, all he had to do was look at the last Republican to take a run at Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.of all Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands within Montana’s borders.
While federal agencies are headquartered in Washington, D.C., most land management decisions are made by local field offices. In that same radio interview, Sheehy condemned federal agencies, specifically the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Agriculture, accusing them of being “hijacked, in many cases, by bureaucrats who are carrying out a political agenda.” And he railed against efforts to put additional federal lands into conservation.
Weiss stressed that transferring control of federal lands to states would ultimately lead to their privatization.