We have exactly the same issue here in British Columbia. Douglas Lake Ranch is a huge cattle ranch in southern B.C. I believe it is the largest ranch in the world, including those insignificant little spreads in Texas. It's been owned by one American or another for years. The issue was two small lakes on the ranch, much used by local fishermen until the ranch owner shut them out in the 1980’s by closing the public access road that went through his private property. In British Columbia all lakes are public but the land around them can be private. So, is the ranch owner required to provide access to the lakes? A local fishing decided to sue the ranch to find out and won;
McGowan’s club took the Douglas Lake Cattle Company to court two years ago after the company in the 1990s blocked access to Stoney and Minnie lakes on the Douglas Lake Ranch near Merritt.
McGowan said the court’s decision is precedent-setting and will mean the people of B.C. have a right to access all public places in the province.
“Any body of water that has been raised naturally or artificially with a dam, this means that those landowners can’t say that because they flooded their private property you can’t go to the public lakes,” he said.
In a ruling posted Friday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Joel Groves said the provincial government retained rights to the lakes, making the fish in the lakes public property. The ruling means the public has a right to access the lakes.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-new ... nch-owners
The ranch owner had some fairly novel arguments apart from the access road issue. One was that he had enlarged the lake greatly after locking the fishermen out. So the lake was like a donut with the center part public property but a ring of the lake around it was his private property. Since he refused access across his part of the lake the public couldn’t use their part of the lake.
He also argued that they couldn’t fish anyhow because he’d stocked the lake with trout for his guests and they were his fish. Judge ruled a public lake has public fish no matter how they got there so if he wanted to stock it that was his business but the public could take them. Actually some nice fish in the lake, here’s one;
What the judge, and the people of B.C. found disgraceful about the province’s involvement in this is that it did nothing about the situation and even defended the ranch in the lawsuit. It even kept out when the RCMP were arresting people for trespass for taking a public road to go fishing on a public lake. I think since they had to stand on ranch property, the lake shore, to actually fish.
Groves had harsh words for the province, the second defendant in the case: “The province did not respond to this apparent unlawful act. Over 20 years, a privately held corporation, owning a large swath of land, prohibited the public from driving on the public road and the province did nothing.”
The government came in for even greater rebuke in a scathing epilogue to the decision—a rare document Groves presented in court after his ruling. In it, Groves writes that “it makes no sense to me that the Crown would retain ownership of the lakes, only for there to be no access.” He urges the province to re-examine its trespassing laws and “guarantee access to this precious public resource.”
Christopher Harvey, lawyer for the Nicola Valley club, says he hopes this ruling will spur the province to protect right of access to public lands. “It is the easiest thing in the world for a landowner to put up a private property sign and just lock a gate over a public road,” Harvey says. “Ninety-nine per cent of the public will assume it is private property.”
B.C.’s natural resources ministry says it’s reviewing the judgment before deciding its next steps, while a lawyer representing Kroenke’s company says it is considering all options, including appeal. Neither Kroenke nor ranch manager Gardner agreed to an interview.
As is often the case with billionaires losing lawsuits the decision has been appealed.
https://www.merrittherald.com/ranch-own ... cal-lakes/
This is actually a major issue which is why the silence on the part of the province is so puzzling. Can a private individual or company expropriate public resources for their personal use by, in effect, privatizing them? At the moment the answer is no.
