. >> reporter: ornlly in the 1800s, an earlier version of the bl m over saw land that no-one wanted. while westward expansion changed that, the federal government has retained control of hundreds of thousands of acres. in all, about one-eighth of the u.s. land mass. ranchers like this man, a card carrying republican, feel like no-one is listening to modern-day concerns >> my party is speaking out of both sides of their mouth. all they talk about is private property rights less government, and the democrats are just as bad ard worse. >> we're on the interstate 80 corridor, so we have the interstate, we have multiple phone lines, pipelines, oil and gas and power lines. what has been difficult has - they sat down with bl m and drew a line across our ranch. >> reporter: this man runs a 250,000 ranch in wyoming. it is a combination of public land he leases from the government and private land he ownss. it looks a lot like this >> we're inside the checker board system. i deal with the land that was developed in the 1860s, so we have intermingled and private and bl m lands joochlt sounds co