[Stevvo]

As a European I prefer the way we do things here, but I do envy the amount of publicly owned land in the US where citizens do have freedom to roam. e.g. National Parks, BLM & Forrest service land. We have less space, most land already owned by a private citizen since Feudal times.

[vidarh]

Well, with freedom to roam it'd largely not matter if it's privately owned. With reasonable sensible rules you get the best of two worlds: You "only" need to take special measures for land that should be left unspoiled.

I used to walk through privately owned forests on the way to and from school and sometime go off walkthrough them with friends as a kid without once having to think about who the owner was, because it was irrelevant.