U.S. Billionaire Stan Kroenke Wins Fight to Kill Public Access to Lakes
American billionaire Stan Kroenke—the real estate and sports mogul who owns more than 2 million acres of ranching land across North America— has just won a decade-long legal battle in Canada to keep the public from two lakes that can only be reached through his property.
Kroenke, who is married to Walmart heiress Anne Walton, owns the largest ranch in Canada—a hulking mass larger than the metro Vancouver area, which fully surrounds two bodies of water: Stoney and Minnie lakes. The lakes, each more than a half-mile long, are both publicly owned in Canada and filled with fish. But the orientation of Kroenke’s property leaves citizens without a route to reach them, forcing would-be hunters and fishers to take a small dirt trail or unpaved wagon road across his land to access the wilderness tended to by their tax dollars.
Kroenke’s ranch, known as the Douglas Lake Cattle Company or Douglas Lake Ranch, used to block access to these routes with locked gates and fences. (Notably, the ranch owns two private lakes on the same property, which visitors must pay an undisclosed day rate to access). So in 2013, the Nicola Valley Fish and Game Club, a local non-profit dedicated to wildlife management in the area, sued the ranch to open the through-ways, arguing the trail had historic significance dating back to its use by an indigenous village, and that Canadian citizens have a right to access public land.
In 2018, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge sided with the recreational group, noting that Canadian tax dollars had been used to rehabilitate the historic trail. But Kroenke appealed, and on Friday, a higher court overturned the 2018 ruling, banning Canadians from “trespassing” on the two paths.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-billionaire-stan-kroenke-wins-fight-to-kill-public-access-to-lakes/ar-BB1enw0C?li=BBnb7Kz
Way to be the ugly American.
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