Midnight Land Sales in Reconciliation Megabill
Hurricane Cliffs in Utah, some of the recreation threatened by efforts to sell off public lands. Photo credit: Leslie Kehmeier via BLM.
Last week, Republicans in the House Natural Resources committee advanced a bill that could put more than 500,000 acres of public land up for sale. The land sales were passed as an amendment to a massive budget reconciliation package, a sprawling bill that also includes rollbacks on conservation efforts and the public process.
The public land sales were introduced—literally at midnight—during the committee markup. The amendment, introduced by Reps. Mark Amodei (R-NV) and Celeste Maloy (R-UT) authorizes land sales managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, with little explanation of why the parcels were chosen or how the sales would benefit the public. By all accounts, the land sales will pay for tax cuts and spending.
Many of these lands are popular recreation areas, overlapping climbing, mountain biking, paddling, and camping zones. In southern Utah, the maps include Hurricane Cliffs, the Plateau Passage, a long-distance bike route, climbing in Coral Canyon Ridge, the Green Valley race course, and the Virgin River. In Nevada, even local Clark County officials opposed the amendment, but their concerns were ignored.
Maps of a selection of proposed sell offs in Nevada. Click to enlarge.
Maps of proposed sell offs in Utah. Click to enlarge.
While Outdoor Alliance is not opposed to carefully targeted land transfers on a modest scale, selling off half a million acres in the middle of the night without any review or input for the purposes of paying for tax cuts rather than being used for conservation purposes, as it would under the Federal Lands Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA) is a far cry from being reasonable. The amendment was introduced without notice, barely discussed, and passed with no opportunity for public review or debate. Every Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee except Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-CO) voted for the sell-off. Rep. Adam Gray (D-CA) joined Republicans in voting to advance the full reconciliation bill.
Outdoor Alliance’s GIS Lab ran a preliminary analysis of the parcels, which shows that the proposed sell offs aren’t forgotten places—they’re places where people ride, climb, hike, and paddle. They deserve careful, transparent stewardship, not a midnight fire sale.
Unfortunately, the land sell-offs are just one part of what’s wrong with this bill. The larger reconciliation package includes language that allows industry to pay to immunize environmental documents from judicial review under NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act)—a bedrock environmental law that ensures public involvement and science-based decision-making on projects affecting our lands and waters. This megabill would also invalidate BLM land use plans that protect more than 975 climbing sites, 1577 trail miles, and 127 miles of whitewater paddling; it would mandate offshore oil and gas drilling that threaten coasts and coastal recreation; it would give timber companies greater control over public lands; it cuts funding for staff at the Park Service as well as for conservation and recreation; and it would open up the Boundary Waters for mining, putting America’s most-visited Wilderness at risk.
As our VP of Policy and Government Relations, Louis Geltman, put it, “In all sincerity, this reconciliation bill is the worst thing we’ve ever seen that actually has a legitimate shot of passing.”
What’s next?
This bill still needs to move through the full House and Senate. That gives us a window to act. If lawmakers hear loud and clear that their constituents oppose public land giveaways and NEPA rollbacks, there’s a real chance to strip some of the most damaging provisions from the bill.
If you haven’t already, take two minutes to write your lawmakers and tell them: public lands are not a piggy bank, not assets on a balance sheet, not a blank check.