proposed public land sale bill

The Senate must vote on the Reconciliation Bill by July 4th. 

Some of these areas that meet the eligibility criteria for sale are immediately adjacent to wilderness areas like the Pusch Ridge Wilderness or the Superstition Mountains.

Take Action: Stop the Senate’s Plan to Sell Off Public Lands.

The Senate just released its version of a massive spending bill—and it includes a proposal to sell off more than 3 million acres of public lands. The bill also prioritizes drilling and logging, slashes environmental safeguards, and lets developers bypass public input. Just a few weeks ago, the outdoor community helped remove 500,000 acres of land sales from the House version of this bill. Now the Senate is back with an even more extreme version—and we need your voice to stop it. Here are the maps of the nearly 300,000,000 acres of lands that could be open for these proposed sales.

You can use the easy-action form below to write your Senators about how this package will affect the outdoors. Lawmakers need to hear that public lands should be managed for people and the future, not sold off for tax cuts or given away to developers.

Help protect the public lands you love. Send a message to your Senators today.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key takeaways about lands eligible for sale in Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee text:

• The bill mandates arbitrary disposal of between 2.02 million-3.04 million acresof BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands in 11 states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming) over the next five years.

• In all, more than 250 million acres will be eligible for sale under the June 14 version of the bill (see table below). The legislation exempts certain federally protected lands like national wilderness areas from potential disposal, but it leaves many administratively designated lands on the table.

• The sell-off provision in the bill would leave tens of millions of acres of lands with wilderness characteristics, wilderness study areas, areas of critical environmental concern and inventoried roadless areas eligible for sale.

• Though national monument lands are exempted from the disposal provision in the bill, an opinion issued by the Trump Justice Department last week argues the president can revoke national monument protections. If the administration acts on that unprecedented and legally dubious finding, it could render an additional 13.5 million acres eligible for sale. 

• The bill’s process for selling off lands runs at breakneck speed, demanding the nomination of tracts within 30 days, then every 60 days until the arbitrary multi-million-acre goal is met, all without hearings, debate or public input opportunities. It gives the secretaries of the interior and agriculture broad discretion to choose which places should ultimately be sold off.

• The bill sets up relatively under-resourced state and local governments to lose open bidding wars to well-heeled commercial interests. It also fails to give sovereign Tribal Nations the right of first refusal to bid on lands, even for areas that are a part of their traditional homelands or contain sacred sites.