Farris and Dan Wilks, billionaire brothers from Texas, own hundreds of thousands of acres of land across the West and have a reputation for closing people out.
This August, the Wilks brothers purchased 172,000 acres of timberland in southern Idaho’s Valley County. The lands, which had traditionally been open to the public for hunting and recreation, closed with little warning one month later—in the midst of the controlled-hunt elk season. This disappointment came just weeks after the Wilks revoked Valley County’s leases to access roads to the popular public West Mountain snowmobiling trails.
As Valley County wrestles with dwindling logging jobs, outdoor recreation and tourism has offered some economic respite. A 2006 report from Headwaters Economics found that 500,000 snowmobilers visit Valley County on a good snow year, with more than 18,000 of those making the trip to West Mountain. If the Wilks continue to limit public access to snowmobiling trails this winter, Valley County could lose approximately $832,000 in sales.
This is hardly the only time that Idahoans have found new orange fence posts—indicating closed lands—and no explanation on property owned by the Wilks.