Public Lands and Waters Deserve Better than Reconciliation Package
Lawmakers are fast-tracking a reconciliation bill that reads like a blueprint for handing public lands over to extractive industries. And while public land sell offs were initially not part of the bill, in the middle of the night, the House Natural Resources Committee introduced and passed public land sell offs to pay for tax cuts. The remainder of the reconciliation bill, also passed, includes mandatory oil and gas leasing, rollbacks to public input and environmental safeguards, and provisions that undermine public land management. The bill takes one of the most cynical approaches to public lands in recent memory.
The land sales affect parcels managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, many of which are near or overlap recreation resources, including mountain biking and climbing around St. George, Utah and mountain biking, bikepacking, climbing, and paddling around southern Utah. In Nevada, even local representatives and Clark County officials opposed the amendment, but their concerns were ignored. These lands deserve careful, transparent review—not a fire sale to offset tax cuts.
Lawmakers voted for these sell offs in the middle of the night—literally at midnight—through a last-minute amendment that was introduced without notice, barely discussed, and passed without opportunity for public comment or review. Ultimately, every Republican except Jeff Hurd (CO) voted for this amendment, and every Republican and one Democrat, Adam Gray (CA), voted to pass the final package.
Congress is using a process known as reconciliation, a special process that allows certain tax, spending, or debt legislation to pass with just 51 votes in the Senate instead of the usual 60. It can only be used once per fiscal year and must focus solely on budget-related items.
On Friday, the House Natural Resources committee released draft text for their portion of this megabill. Though the draft text did not contain explicit land sales—initially something we reported as a big win for the outdoor recreation community—the committee passed public land sales in the middle of the night. And in every other way, the legislation will be devastating for the outdoors. It includes significant increases in oil and gas drilling, mining, coal, extraction, and timber production, stripping protections from recreation gems like the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, and ways for industry to literally buy its way around environmental reviews and the public process through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
This isn’t just about a few bad provisions. It’s about a worldview. The proposed legislation reflects an impoverished vision for public lands—one that sees forests, mountains, coasts, and canyons as little more than coal pits and commodity stockpiles. It ignores the broader benefits of these places: clean water and air, local economic vitality, outdoor access, and climate resilience. At its core, the bill prioritizes short-term extraction over long-term prosperity, stewardship, and public ownership.
Outdoor Alliance and our partners outlined the most concerning parts of the bill in a letter to lawmakers. These include:
Weakening the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA): The bill allows project proponents to pay to expedite environmental reviews, bypass judicial review, or avoid public input—threatening the heart of what makes public lands public.
De facto privatization through timber provisions: Long-term contracts would give timber companies control over public lands for up to 20 years, sidelining local input.
Invalidating public planning efforts: The bill would erase five finalized or in-progress BLM land use plans—plans that recreationists and communities have invested years into shaping and that protect more than 975 climbing sites, 1577 trail miles, and 127 miles of whitewater paddling.
Mandated offshore and Arctic drilling: The bill pushes forward oil and gas leasing in the Gulf, Cook Inlet, and the Arctic Refuge, despite bipartisan opposition from coastal communities and the clear climate risks.
Reinstating mining leases near the Boundary Waters: Undoing protections for America’s most-visited Wilderness area is not just bad policy—it’s a rejection of decades of public engagement.
Pulling the plug on restoration and staffing: It cuts funding for staffing at the National Park Service; for old-growth protections; and for climate resilience, conservation, and restoration.
Outdoor recreation generates $1.2 trillion in economic output, supports nearly 5 million jobs, and is crucial to building livable communities across the country. Public lands and waters and outdoor recreation are valued by Americans of every stripe, who want to see the outdoors protected—not stripped for parts. While Outdoor Alliance supports balanced use on public lands and waters, the current reconciliation text amounts to a giveaway to industry that threatens both short- and long-term values on public lands.
Read our full letter to lawmakers and take two minutes to write your lawmakers about this bill. The House Natural Resource Committee will be voting on these provisions this week, and leadership hopes to move a final bill by Memorial Day, so there is little time to prevent the worst affronts to public lands and waters, and it will take our voices to get there. The outdoor community was instrumental in stopping direct land sales from being included in the reconciliation bill, and we can act again to defend public lands and waters from the worst outcomes in this bill.