I'm not sure what I think of this

NYT Op-Ed on river access battles in Montana.

The money quote of this article is:

...there's something wrong when a billionaire buys a ranch, gets a tax break for an easement and then chases the locals off the river in the name of conservation.

In the UK there are public rights of way across a huge amount of farmland - you walk along public paths that go through fields of cows and across stiles. It is part of the culture there. In Australia I don't ever remember anyone going down the gorgeous Shoalhaven River that went through the farm I worked on (Jinglemoney in the Southern Tablelands). People used national parks for their recreation. And they certainly never walked across the paddocks to get there. The Devon bulls would have got them.

I'm not sure where I stand on the issues in the article, but I know I don't like the manipulative way the arguments are presented. For example,

Consider the people who are fighting for access to the river: retired miners and schoolteachers and other working folk.

How could we possibly deny those retired miners their river access.