The rancher came roaring up on a four-wheeler.

“Hey, you,” he shouted. “You’re trespassing!”

This was deep in the middle of Wyoming. I had GPS and a topographic map.

“I don’t think so,” I replied.

“I don’t give a damn what you think,” he bellowed.

“I know exactly where I am,” I said. “BLM [Bureau of Land Management] land,” and held up my GPS.

He put a hand on his leather holster and stuck out his lower jaw.

“Let me show you where we are on the map,” I suggested.

“That map don’t mean nothing. Get off my land or you’re gonna get yourself shot.”

I noticed he had two plastic rifle sheaths, one mounted on each side of his quad. Would he really shoot me? Looking straight into his face, I decided he might.

That was years ago, but since then I’ve had similar encounters exploring the American west, as have many of my outdoor friends. Rightwing and religious extremists who believe they personally own public land are relatively commonplace out here, beyond the 100th meridian. Case in point: Ammon Bundy.

“We’re here to unwind claims the federal government has on this land,” said Bundy, a Mormon cattle rancher in southern Nevada, after he and two dozen heavily armed militiamen forcibly took over the Malheur wildlife refuge, a central Oregon bird sanctuary, in January last year.

Their occupation lasted 41 days. Robert LaVoy Finicum, a Mormon rancher from Arizona, was killed and 26 others were subsequently indicted on charges of “conspiring to prevent federal employees from doing their jobs”. Although Bundy and six others were acquitted of these charges, he and his father, Cliven, and three brothers are still in jail at the Nevada southern detention center in Pahrump, awaiting trial on other charges stemming from an armed confrontation with the BLM in March of 2014: Cliven Bundy had been illegally running cattle on upward of 100,000 acres of federal land and owed over $1m in unpaid grazing fees, but when the BLM tried to remove the cattle, Bundy, with his 14 children, 52 grandchildren and arsenal of guns, hunkered down at their Bunkerville ranch. Concerned for the safety of citizens, the BLM backed off and pursued legal action through the courts.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rancher Cliven Bundy stands along the road near his ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada Photograph: John Locher/AP

Once again, we’re hearing vociferous calls to “give the land back” to the states, despite the fact that the land in question never belonged to state or local governments. Backed by the Koch brothers, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) and Americans for Prosperity have cynically joined in, funding Utah state representative Ken Ivory’s tenure as president and lobbyist for the American Lands Council, a group pushing Congress to cede control of public land to “willing states”.

All this recalls the Sagebrush Rebellion, a movement that goes back to 1897, when President Grover Cleveland, fearful that the great forests of the west were being decimated by private interests, set aside 25m acres for the public. Ranchers and miners, who had only recently participated in the ethnic cleansing of the landscape (relocating its last original inhabitants to reservations), were apoplectic about how “esthetic” easterners were ready to “plaster the west with reserves that would retard and cripple the hardy pioneers”.

President Theodore Roosevelt, further concerned about the rapidly disintegrating public commons, created the United States Forest Service in 1905. Recognizing the need to preserve large tracts of land for the benefit of all Americans, Roosevelt eventually established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks and 18 national monuments, protecting 230m acres of public land.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Theodore Roosevelt on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park in 1903 Photograph: Bob Thomas/Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Cliven Bundy and his sons – who face charges of threatening and assaulting a federal officer, extortion, obstruction, weapons violations and conspiracy, and years in prison if found guilty – represent only the most recent iteration of the Sagebrush Rebellion. The first was in the 1890s. The second flare-up came in the late 70s, following the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, the Endangered Species Act in 1973, and most importantly the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) in 1976. The FLPMA ended homesteading, and mandated that the Bureau of Land Management begin to include the concepts of preservation and conservation, not merely extraction, in managing land.

The self-appointed leader of the 70s movement was Cal Black, a uranium miner and Mormon from Utah who threatened to “blow up bridges, ruins and vehicles. We’re going to start a revolution” – a revolution that would result in extensive vandalism to ancient Anasazi sites in Utah.

We’re now living in the third Sagebrush Rebellion. During the seizure of the Malheur wildlife refuge, Ammon Bundy told the press that his band of outlaws intended to use the refuge as a “base for patriots”. They planned on staying several years, “freeing the lands up, getting ranchers back to ranching and miners back to mining and loggers back to logging”. Theirs is the same populist, duplicitous rhetoric that Trump used in his presidential campaign. Bundy, citing revelations from God, defended the violent actions of his anti-government, gun-waving cabal by reiterating their most sacred belief: “The federal government does not have the authority to come down into the states and control its land and resources.”

The simple truth is that the US constitution itself, in the property clause, explicitly states that Congress has the power to “dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States”. This clause was based in part on the ancient European public trust doctrine which maintains that a sovereign nation can hold national lands in a trust for the benefit of all citizens. Furthermore, the supreme court, in an early ruling that has been upheld numerous times since, has said that Congress has the “absolute right” to manage federal lands. As far back as 1922 the supreme court “firmly settled that Congress may prescribe rules respecting the use of public lands”.

Bundy and pals past and present reject this interpretation, insisting that the states themselves have sovereign power over their land, which is even more preposterous. To move from being a territory, and actually admitted as a state of the United States of America, all western state constitutions have a clause similar to this one in Utah law: “That the people inhabiting said proposed state do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof.” As for Malheur specifically, a 1935 case ruled unequivocally that it was under federal jurisdiction.

This insistence that the feds “hand over” land so that it can be made profitable through clear-cutting, strip mining and overgrazing has limited support in big red states, except in Utah. In January of this year, Congressman Jason Chaffetz introduced a bill that would eliminate law enforcement within the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. In February, Utah governor Gary Herbert urged the Trump administration to revoke the recently designated Bears Ears national monument in southern Utah.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Comb Ridge in Bears Ears National Monument, San Juan County, Utah Photograph: Bob Thomason/Getty Images

These anti-conservation initiatives caused outdoor companies such as Patagonia and Black Diamond to boycott the Outdoor Retailer Convention, held biannually in Salt Lake City, a 20-year-old tradition that brings 50,000 people and over $45m to the state. Subsequently, so many outdoor companies agreed to the boycott that the convention has decided to find a more welcoming home for the lucrative industry – both Portland and Denver are in the running – abandoning Utah altogether.

However, just for the sake of argument, let’s say that both the US constitution and all western state constitutions could somehow be amended, and states took control of American lands. Then what? Given that most states are strapped for cash, unable to even effectively manage the land they already have, it is entirely probable that large chunks of the west would be sold off to the highest bidder – which would not be a misguided ATV-riding rancher but more likely a hedge fund manager or an international conglomerate. Just imagine your favorite place in the west – your favorite cold blue river to raft or fly-fish, your favorite snow-capped mountain to climb, your favorite fir forest to camp in, your favorite backwoods to hunt – privately owned and aggressively fenced off with barbed wire and “No Trespassing” signs.

The federal government, or more accurately, the American public, own 640m acres – almost a third of the country’s landmass – from the Grand Canyon in Arizona to the Bob Marshall wilderness in Montana, from Rainier national park in Washington to the Bridger-Teton wilderness in Wyoming, from California’s Yosemite national park to the Gila wilderness area in New Mexico. We, all the people of the United States, own this land. Let’s keep it that way.