How to Stop ‘The Big Bad Public Land Grab’
Annoyance, persistence, and badgering is worth it. We promise.
If you’ve been wondering when it’s bad enough to matter, I’m telling you that we’re there now.
The current Republican budget requires disposing of 3.3 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service land over the next five years — that is, if it passes the Senate. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources amendment also qualifies nearly 300 million acres of public land in 11 Western states for sale to private parties.
This June 17th addition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), goes beyond past public land privatization schemes in the scale of affected land, and its lack of transparency and oversight in who decides which lands are sold, who can buy them, and what they can do with them.
If you were ever going to light both your ass and hair on fire while pooping your pants about something related to public lands — this is the time to do it. We left the world of “they won’t really do that” or “the courts will stop them” or “someone else is going to solve this” months ago.
Info on how to easily contact your reps is available at the bottom of this article, as well as an example script, since time is of the essence.
It’s time to behave like this land grab will happen if we don’t put an end to it now.
Understanding What Lands are Threatened Through Mapping
Hint: It’s a little confusing. The maps highlight areas that could be eligible for sale, not lands that will be sold.
The Outdoor Alliance built on The Wilderness Society’s mapping work to put visuals to actual locations of multi-use federal public land (aka your favorite spots) that would be eligible for sale in Wyoming, Alaska, California, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, Washington and Oregon.
The maps highlight hundreds of millions of acres that could potentially be disposed of, and believe me, many politicians are reaching for that goal and have been for a long time. We see you, Rep. Mike Lee of Utah.
My Professional Assessment After Studying the Map
The unprecedented nature of this proposal makes the public land transfer battles we’ve seen in the last five or ten years look quaint. This isn’t transferring federal land to Utah, or other states, to manage. How cute that we once talked about how state management may not be as effective as federal management. Or that it’s all a thinly veiled ploy to, gasp, sell our public land.
Today, we’re going straight from public ownership, to private real estate development with no stop in between. This is what getting robbed in broad daylight looks like.
I don’t say any of this lightly, and I typically avoid anything that hews too close to alarmist language. But we don’t live in normal times.
So for now, I’m not reporting on this in a traditional sense here, or anywhere. I’m a journalist and I’m telling you that more information is not going to solve this problem. Congress is about to be a mile down the street defrauding us of one of the most American things about America, while the rest of us are still figuring out how to put our pants on.
Risking The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Wyoming Range, Wildlife Habitat, and So Much More
In a Wyofile article about this amendment, the first I happened to read, I learned that the entire Wyoming Range would be up for grabs. I also saw that places in the Wind River Range and around Star Valley are included too.
My first thought: Kiss any hope for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as we know it goodbye.
Wildlife management in the last decade has increasingly focused on the reality that conservation needs to happen on large landscapes, and that requires big collaboratives of people who manage federal, state, and private land. We’re well along the path of realizing that we can’t simply manage national parks, wilderness, national forests, and wildlife refuges like islands.
But this bill encourages exactly that.
I went to the map and zoomed in to see a pattern of pale green sky islands surrounded by dark green parcels. The dark green represents nearly 300 million acres of public land that would be eligible for sale according to the bill’s language and the Outdoor Alliance’s GIS analysis.
Those pale green islands are what personally lit my hair on fire. Many of them are federally designated Wilderness Areas and National Parks, which wouldn’t be eligible for sale.
But simply developing the land around them has a strong potential to sever them from their landscapes. It’s easy to look at the map and see potential development patterns that could make mule deer and sage grouse populations, just to name a couple, shit the bed.
Recreational Access Will Surely Diminish
The map shows potential not only for an excess of habitat fragmentation and degradation nightmares, but also an access mess for hunters, backpackers, backcountry skiers, ATVers, horse packers, and people trying to access cultural resources. Landlocked public lands are already a growing issue.
Disposing of federal land as proposed in the Senate bill seems like accelerating it by handing exclusive public land access to the wealthiest among us. For anyone who has followed Montana’s Crazy Mountain public access saga, I’m imagining it repeating again and again thanks to this bill. But notably, not in Montana, because the Senate bill exempts it from this scheme.
The Energy and Natural Resource Committee’s fact sheet notes that most of the land going up for sale in the next five years is within five miles of population centers. As if that should comfort us.
That proximity is exactly what makes that land valuable for people trying to get their close to town runs, bike rides, nature walks with kids, foraging, and target practice after work. It boggles my mind to think that popular mountain bike trails like the Lunch Loop trails outside of Fruita, Colorado and Hartman Rocks outside of Gunnison, Colorado are included in this. Other iconic cycling and/or offroading areas affected include places close to Moab — like Behind the Rocks and Porcupine Rim.
Popular backcountry skiing zones like Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah and Snoqualmie Pass in Washington are in the mix. All told, according to the Outdoor Alliance this would affect an area that includes nearly 100,000 miles of trails, more than 45,000 climbing routes and bouldering areas, and 3,405 river miles.
This is Not About Affordable Housing
It’s interesting that Congress suddenly cares about national scale affordable housing policy when it can be used to commodify public land. As others have pointed out, Las Vegas already has an arrangement allowing them to use federal public land to alleviate housing issues on an as-needed basis.
If this were a good faith effort to solve the housing crisis, or solve any problem besides enriching modern robber barons with our assets, we’d be looking at something much more targeted and surgical than an 11 state proposal stuffed into a reconciliation bill.
Federal Land-Based Welfare for WUI Developers
So we’re just going to build “affordable” housing in harm’s way? It gets a lot less affordable when you factor in the cost of defending it against wildfire — or rebuilding after.
California is already having an insurance crisis, partly fueled by wildfire. In May, the nonpartisan research group, Headwaters Economics, published an analysis of how effective public land development would be at solving housing affordability. Wildlife risk is a major limitation, concluding that more than half of federal land near communities with housing needs have high wildfire risk.
We know how this story ends because of disasters like Hurricane Katrina, or almost any flood in the southern U.S. — where the poorest neighborhoods are in the floodplain for reasons. Remember, DOGE fired all the government’s environmental justice staff, but nature and insurance premiums don’t know the difference between woke and negative externalities.
The Deficit is Far Bigger Than This Attempt at Incrementalism
We should be asking why politicians want to sell our irreplaceable assets to cover debt. This is blatant fiscal irresponsibility. Everyone knows it’s better to reduce spending before putting precious family heirlooms in hock.
Someone get Dave Ramsey down here to give Senator Mike Lee of Utah and the entirety of Congress a stern talking to.
A Sell-Off Primed for Corruption and Conflict
One sneaky piece of this that makes me lose my mind is that once this bill passes, it lacks a public process for land disposal, moving sales through on a rapid timeline. It fails to allow Tribes input on the disposal process, or right of first refusal to acquire unceded land, ancestral homelands, or sacred sites.
The Wilderness Society cites concern that “the bill sets up relatively under-resourced state and local governments to lose open bidding wars to well-heeled commercial interests.” If someone wanted to design a process to generate more conflict and division in Western communities, this bill would be a good template.
Even if you believe selling public land will alleviate the very real affordable housing crisis, this is a shoddy solution. I don’t care what side of this debate someone is on, we ALL deserve better.
You know how the British army sucked during the American Revolution because they marched in one big blob with red coats that stuck out in the eastern hardwood forest? That’s what we get to fight now, one big problem in Congress.
If the bill passes, it will turn into local skirmishes in 11 states. The national multi-user coalition that could fight this today will be so much harder to rally around local backyard issues. Read: it’s much easier to join together in cowing our senators away from this now than it is to fight it on our home turfs later.
Let’s be pains in their asses now, so we don’t all have to act like NIMBYs later.
Let Your Reps Know: The Answer Is No
Congress has a self-imposed deadline to pass their budget by July 4. Reconciliation bills only need a simple majority to pass. Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) stripped a different public land transfer amendment before the House voted on their budget. So we don’t know if this one will survive.
We also can’t afford to risk the possibility that it might. Don’t count on Zinke, and don’t get distracted by promises that officials are pro-public lands. Our calls to action aren’t that different from anyone else's. But if you aren’t usually one to raise a stink, it’s time to get big mad and crush this proposal.
Get your sledneck neighbor and gorp-gargling cousin together and let them know that it’s time to hold hands for the kind of unlikely political alliance that mainstream media loves and disingenuous politicians hate.
Call your representatives now, before it’s too late, and you have to join a Bass Pro-sponsored monkey wrench gang or chain yourself to a tree next to your favorite trail like some kind of REI-branded Julia Butterfly Hill. Go to their town halls if they still have them. Find them, and respectfully let them know you aren’t happy with this amendment and never will be.
Note the 3.5% Protest Guideline
Based on research of past movements, this is a tipping point of negative nonviolent public opinion that can sway leaders to actually change their decisions, while they’re representing us — We The People.
It doesn’t take lot to get there, but it does take a concentrated effort from a coalition of like-minded people.
Messaging Can be Hard: Here’s Some Help
Want to help others with their messaging? Copy and share your favorite text about why this is a shockingly bad idea to user group Reddit and Facebook groups and other forums. I saw someone mention they shared the info to their paragliding group and folks appreciated knowing. If you’ve gotten this far you are probably orders of magnitudes more tuned into this stuff than most people.
I’ve seen some people get creative with the the boots-on-the-ground route too, making ‘For Sale’ signs to put up at popular trailheads.
If you’re skeptical about calling your reps, phone calls do actually work, especially when a lot of people call about an issue. Phone calls also get tallied immediately by staffers and sent to reps. It’s the fastest way for them to get feedback on what their constituents think.
It’s also really easy. The switchboard just asks you to say your rep’s name, then immediately connects you to a mailbox.
Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121
Sample script:
Hi, my name is [your name] and I am a constituent from [your state]. I’m calling to urge Senator [your senator] to oppose selling or otherwise disposing of federal public land. I am asking that [your senator] vote no on One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R 1) if it contains amendments that promote public land sale or transfer such as those recently proposed by Senator Lee and Senator Daines.
I am a [something about you and how you use public lands, why you care about this, or why it is personal to you and/or your family]. If this policy moves forward [how you will be affected]. [And/or something about why this matters to you on a large scale].
Optional: I support affordable housing policy, deficit reduction, and common sense public land management (or whatever). I strongly oppose selling BLM, Forest Service, or any other federal land to address these issues.
I ask that you proactively work with other members of Congress to steward federal public land on behalf of all Americans.
Thank you for your time and your work on behalf of [your state].
This is not the Norm for The Westrn
We started this publication as a creative pursuit, not a news or advocacy project. One of our goals is to help both ourselves and our readers recover from the overstimulation and desensitization that comes from a punishing and hyperbolic news cycle.
While we engage with conservation news and activities in other parts of our lives, we maintain this space for making meaning from experiences on public lands, more than reporting on current events impacting them.
But some moments are consequential enough that saying nothing is not only impossible, it also feels irresponsible. We want our readers who don’t know us personally to understand that this article’s style is rare both for this publication and for us as individuals.
We hope that tells you something about the gravity of this moment.
We want this piece to lead to action, and hope it gives people already in the fight an extra shot of resolve.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) introduced the amendment with Mike Lee (R-UT). Daines discussed the bill’s language with Lee. Daines’ platform thus far is that he opposes public land sales and any done would have to be very, very narrow in scope. At the same time, Daines supports the Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Sure Daines opposes the sale of public lands…he already got Montana, his state exempted! Which leaves him free to vote FOR the reconciliation bill. In what universe—his state exempted but he’s willing to vote that 11 other states have their public lands sold???
Thank you, Kestrel for this message and for standing in solidarity (as if there's anything else we can do.) How do we prevent our hearts from breaking besides standing up and shouting NO?