Senator Mike Lee Revives Push to Sell Public Lands—Targeting Close-to-Home Recreation Areas
Hartman Rocks, Colorado.
Today, Senator Mike Lee introduced new legislation to sell off public lands through the Senate budget reconciliation bill that is expected to get a vote as soon as this week.
His previous attempt to dispose of up to 3.3 million acres was rejected by the Senate parliamentarian earlier this week, with the backdrop of unprecedented outreach from Americans of all stripes urging lawmakers to reject public land sales. Despite this, his office has pivoted to introduce a narrower set of sales focused more closely on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands.
Click to read Outdoor Alliance’s letter to lawmakers.
Outdoor Alliance and our GIS Lab are currently analyzing and mapping the legislation, which calls for mandatory sale of 0.25-0.5% of BLM land, or between 1.05 and 2.1 million acres. The bill focuses on lands within five miles of a “population center,” a vague term that, if based on U.S. Census definitions, could include towns as small as 2,500 people. That narrower geographic focus means the pool of eligible land is much smaller—making it more likely that cherished recreation areas near communities will be targeted for sale. According to initial analyses, the land eligible for these sales is somewhere between 600,000 acres and 4.8 million acres, and land sales would be mandatory, meaning that sales of valued outdoor recreation landscapes would be nearly inevitable. You can read Outdoor Alliance’s full letter to lawmakers here.
The mapped areas, some of which you can view at bottom, include recreation gems like:
Bald Mountain in Ketchum, ID (pop. 3,600)
Hartman Rocks climbing, mountain bike, and OHV area outside Gunnison, CO (pop. 6800)
Lunch Loops mountain bike trail system outside Grand Junction, CO (pop. 69,000)
Cline Butte mountain biking trails, hiking, wildlife viewing, and OHV routes near Redmond, OR (pop. 37,000)
The American River near Placerville and Diamond Springs, CA (combined pop. 22,000)
Porcupine Rim Trail near Moab, UT (pop. 5200)
“Senator Mike Lee’s new proposal would sell off an unprecedented amount of public lands. Outdoor Alliance’s preliminary analysis of the bill shows that the overlap between lands for sale and outdoor recreation resources is considerable,” said Adam Cramer, CEO of Outdoor Alliance. “The outdoor recreation community has already spoken loud and clear: we don’t want our public lands sold off. But Senator Lee just won’t take no for an answer. This proposal puts close-to-home BLM recreation at extreme risk. Lawmakers should listen to their constituents and the outdoor recreation community and reject this misguided proposal.”
