Public Lands Sell Off Continues in Budget Reconciliation

Dear EPIC Members,

Thank you for your continued advocacy and for staying informed as we continue to alert our membership about the ongoing risk to public lands in the budget reconciliation. The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (ENR) has submitted its language for the reconciliation package, and it is bad news for Americans. Senator Mike Lee (Republican of Utah) has reinserted public lands sales of up to 3.25 million acres across the West–an area the size of the state of Rhode Island. California could be heavily impacted.

These lands could not possibly be developed for affordable housing. They lack the necessary infrastructure and are far from employment centers. If “housing” is built on them, it will be mansions for the wealthy, at the expense of public access to beloved places throughout the state. We have to fight to protect the places that we love.

• Mandates West-wide Land Sales: The text mandates land sales of 2.3 million to 3.3 million acres of federal land to take place within five years of enactment.

• Disposal to be Identified by Federal Agencies: Federal Land throughout every western state, except for Montana, will be identified for sale by the Interior (Bureau of Land Management) and Agriculture (U.S. Forest Service) secretaries.

  • The number of sales or acreage to be sold is not limited per state, leaving some states to bear the brunt of sales more than others. 

• Anyone Can Nominate Land for Sale: The text states that “interested parties, including States and units of local government,” can nominate lands for sale, but lacks specificity on who is an “interested party.”

• Construction Stipulations:

  • The text stipulates that land disposal is for residential housing purposes and “any associated community needs.”

  • The text does not define “any associated community needs,” and leaves it to the Secretary to define, so this could be argued to mean just about anything.

  • The text is unclear about how it addresses other commercial development interests.

• Opens Development without Public Process: The indiscriminate directive to sell BLM land and National Forests allows land to be sold without input from local communities.

What You Can Do

At this time, we are asking folks to put pressure on their House representatives and tell them that you expect them to push back hard against any Senate attempts to sell off the public lands that belong to all of us. Asking our House Representatives to put pressure on the Senate is important because the House agreed to remove the public lands sell-off amendment in their version of the budget reconciliation. Additionally, you can directly ask your Senators to remove the public lands sell-off provisions in the Senate budget reconciliation language. The most effective way to communicate to our lawmakers about this issue is by:

1. Calling them! Find your U.S. House Representatives HERE and ask them to push back against the Senate attempts to sell off our public lands.

2. Call your U.S. Senators and ask them to strip the budget language of the public lands sell-off! For California residents, find yours HERE. For residents in other states, find your senators by state in the drop-down in the upper left hand corner HERE.

3. Make comments directly on their social media pages!

Talking Points

• This proposal would put California’s extraordinary natural resources on the auction block to fund tax cuts for the ultra-rich. Congress selling off millions of acres of national public lands through a backroom process with no public input is a massive breach of public trust.

• Selling off public lands is short-sighted and irreversible. These lands belong to every American, not to the highest bidder at the whims of a political agenda. Once they’re sold, they’re gone for good–fences go up, access disappears, and they are lost to us all forever. Imagine discovering that your favorite camping spot was now fenced off!

• Americans overwhelmingly support the protection of public lands and have consistently rejected attempts to sell them off. Time and again, the public has made it clear: our national parks, forests, and open spaces are not for sale. 

• Outfitters, ranchers, small businesses, and entire local communities rely on public lands to sustain their livelihoods, and they stand to lose everything if this sell-off moves forward. At the same time, the trillion-dollar outdoor recreation industry, which depends on public access for hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping, would be gutted. This isn’t just an attack on public lands–it’s an attack on the people, jobs, and way of life they support. 

• This provision should be stripped from the final package just like it was in the House. House leadership ultimately responded to tremendous public outcry and rejected sell-off provisions included in initial drafts of their Budget bill. Senate leadership, like leaders in the House, should reject any proposal that sells public lands as part of the budget package.

Thank you for your continued advocacy and support for the wild!