I am a huge fan of any national tournament. During the Olympics, I will wave my flag and cheer on the Americans in the doubles luge. Normally, I’m not a doubles luge fan, but when it’s our best against Germany’s best, count me in.

Of the balled sports, soccer is the most inane. I hear arguments about how exciting a soccer match ending in a nil-nil tie is, but I’d rather watch grass grow. Regardless of how you feel about soccer, it’s hard not to root for a soccer World Cup in the Americas.

The most fascinating part of the World Cup is not the action on the field but rather watching our European, African and Asian cousins experiencing American culture for the first time. The videos are stark, as they drive an SUV or peruse the selection at a palatial convenience store. They marvel at the intense flavor and abundance of food as most of them will return home with an extra 15 pounds of body fat. It’s hard to appreciate how friendly Americans can be in our culture that demands it. It seems we only remember our rude neighbors when other cultures just accept rudeness as routine.

These soccer fans are just nibbling around the edges. They should experience Idaho. We have fry sauce, Tater Tots and finger steaks. We have abundant agriculture without the mud and humidity. And most taken for granted, Idaho has wide-open spaces.

The vastness of the West is indescribable. You will never capture the awesomeness of the Sawtooth Mountains on a TikTok video ... words fail and the landscape doesn’t fit on a postcard-sized screen. The wide-open spaces in Idaho can only be fully appreciated in person.

Some of the open space in Idaho is inherent. There are millions of acres that are practically inaccessible to the public. These rugged and inhospitable lands will forever evade development because no machine and few animals can get there. If we want to maintain the rest of our open spaces for future generations, we must answer two questions; First, how did we get so much open space, and second, how do we keep it?

The default answer to both questions seems to be public lands. But the virtue of public lands, both federal and state, is often overstated and the drawbacks are routinely unknown.

Through the 19th century, the U.S. added nearly 1.3 billion acres of largely open space to our country. These vast areas were untamed and could be used for hunting, trapping, prospecting, grazing and logging. After the Homestead Act in 1866, lands could be patented and farmed.

As the century turned, these open spaces were overused. Economists describe this phenomenon as the “tragedy of the commons.” Without private ownership, the users of these lands take a “use it or lose it” philosophy. The resource was overgrazed, overlogged and depleted. Economists developed three solutions to the tragedy of the commons. The solutions are privatize the resource, empower a local working group or government control.

Idahoans think open space and the federal government administering public lands is the same thing. In a 2025 survey conducted by the Conservation Voters of Idaho, 96% of Idahoans favor the federal government controlling public lands. This is even after a five-year fight with federal land managers over the Lava Ridge Wind Project. Despite efforts by a myriad of local entities, final approval for the Lava Ridge Wind Project was granted on Dec. 6, 2024. If the 2024 election result had been different, construction of 241 wind turbines would be ongoing on 104,000 acres of “open space” in southern Idaho. I am part of the 4% in favor of something else.

Is privatization the answer? What about state control of public lands? How about returning to the third option from the tragedy of the commons of empowering a local working group. From the beginning of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), local grazing boards were established and empowered to allocate the grazing resource. Grazing fees were paid to the grazing board, and half was for administration and half sent to the U.S. Treasury to fund government. The board could hire inspectors, build range improvements and allocate grazing.

In 1976, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) centralized management of federal lands in Washington, D.C. Grazing boards became advisory. Expert range managers were empowered, but their decision-making is usurped by lawyers and judges. With a before and after with FLPMA, the difference is stark. Before 1976, 15 million animal unit months (AUM) were available for grazing, dropping to 8 million after. Before FLPMA, 10 billion board feet of lumber was harvested, dropping to 3 billion after FLPMA. Before FLPMA, about 500,000 acres of federal land would burn annually; after FLPMA, that number jumps to 3 to 7 million acres annually. Before 1976, grazing earned $7.5 million for the Treasury and hundreds of millions of dollars in timber harvest. Today, grazing is a $30 million loss and less than $10 million in timber sales.        

Indisputably, open space is a cultural imperative for Idahoans. As federal lands in Idaho become less productive, uneconomical and constantly ablaze, is the federal government effectively managing our public lands? Is it simpler to manage windmills? The answers to these questions will determine the state of our open spaces for generations to come.