WASHINGTON, D.C. – Following push back from a growing coalition of politicians and public interest groups, U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, proposed an amended version of his plan to sell off public lands.
While the previous proposal would have required the government to auction off between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, the new plan backtracks that to between 612,500 to 1.2 million acres of just the bureau’s land.
Lee, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he is taking into consideration how the American people are responding to the proposal.
“I’m still listening,” Lee said on social media. “I’m working closely with the Trump administration to ensure that any federal land sales serve the American people — not foreign governments, not the Chinese Communist Party, and not massive corporations looking to pad their portfolios. This land must go to American families. Period.”
Supporters of the legislation, which is a provision to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, argue this move will help address a nationwide housing crisis, while providing more money to help the federal government pay off debt.
For opponents of the proposal, selling any of the nation’s public lands is too much.
“Don’t come for our public lands,” said U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colorado.
There are several other guardrails included in the new version of the bill, which was obtained on Wednesday by Politico.
These include the following requirements:
• Parcels can only be sold within five miles of the “border of a population center.”
• Land that is sold can only be used for housing development.
• Federal authorities should consult with state, local and tribal governments to decide what to sell.
• For each sale, 5% of the proceeds will go to local governments, while 10% will go to “hunting, fishing, and recreational amenities.”
• Underutilized land tracks will be prioritized for sale.
In total, the federal government owns roughly 640 million acres throughout the United States, or nearly one in three acres. That means that, while the bureau would be required to sell off 0.25% to 0.5% of its land, that is only 0.2% of all federal lands.
Leaders from some western states affected are in favor of the sale and the benefits it would bring to local communities.
“These are important, commonsense policies for better energy and public lands strategy,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. “Sen. Lee deserves enormous credit for championing the use of certain federal lands for housing — especially in rural communities surrounded by federal land, and even in cases where federal land sits within city boundaries and could be better used for homes.”
If the proposal is passed, land eligible for sale would come from 11 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
There was bipartisan opposition to the previous proposal, and opposition is already growing to this new one.
“Hunters and anglers need to continue to reach out to lawmakers urging them to remove all public land sales from this legislation,” said the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a hunting and fishing group. “We have their attention, and we must see this through.”
Many businesses have also jumped on the bandwagon, with a coalition of 45 national hunting brands signing on to a letter stating their opposition to the sale of any public lands.
“Selling public land at the scale of millions of acres will result in a loss of public access to the outdoors, which will have a negative impact to the undersigned businesses,” the letter said. “We strongly urge you to consider these businesses and our employees by not including any public lands sale provisions in the budget reconciliation process.”
