Battles over public lands loom after sell-off proposal fails

Alex Brown, Tribune News Service

Hunters, hikers and outdoors lovers of all stripes mounted a campaign in June against a Republican proposal to sell off millions of acres of federal public land. a. But even though the land sales proposal was defeated, experts say federal lands face a slew of other threats from President Donald Trump’s administration. Agency leaders have proposed rolling back the “Roadless Rule” that protects 58 million acres from logging and other uses. Trump’s Justice Department has issued a legal opinion that the president is allowed to abolish national monuments. Regulators have moved to slash environmental rules to ramp up logging and oil and gas production. And Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of the agencies that manage federal lands.

“This is not over even if the sell-off proposal doesn’t make it,” said John Leshy, who served as solicitor for the US Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration. “The whole thing about leasing or selling timber or throwing them open to mining claims, that’s a form of partial privatization. It’s pretty much a giveaway.” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has repeatedly described public lands as America’s “balance sheet.” He has argued that some lands could be used to provide housing, while calling for an expansion of mining and oil and gas drilling to increase their economic output. “President Trump’s energy dominance vision will end those wars abroad, will make life more affordable for every family in America by driving down inflation,” Burgum said before his confirmation hearing.

Public lands advocates are bracing for ongoing battles for the rest of Trump’s term in office. They expect Republicans to add last-minute public lands amendments to other bills moving through Congress, and for land management agencies to attempt to strip protections from other federal lands. Given the vocal backlash to the initial sell-off plan, advocates expect future attempts to be shaped behind closed doors and advanced with little time for opponents to mount a defense. Meanwhile, they expect states to play a key role in shaping those battles. In Western states, where most federally owned lands are located, many leaders from both parties view public lands as special places open to all Americans and critical for clean water, wildlife and tourism. But some conservatives resent the fact that large portions of their states are managed by officials in Washington, DC, limiting development and private enterprise.

Officials in some states, including Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, have pushed lawsuits or resolutions seeking to force the feds to hand over huge amounts of land. Public land experts say the lawmakers behind those efforts will likely press harder now that Trump is in the White House. Such state-level takeover attempts could shape the proposals that emerge from Trump’s allies in Washington.

The firestorm over federal lands exploded when US Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, introduced legislation that would force the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 3.3 million acres of land. The measure also would direct the agencies to make more than 250 million additional acres eligible for sale.

“We’ve never seen a threat on this magnitude ever,” said Devin O’Dea, Western policy and conservation manager with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. “There’s been an overwhelming amount of opposition. We’ve seen record-breaking engagement on this issue.” Lee, a longtime federal lands opponent, claimed the lands were needed for housing and argued the government has been a poor manager of its land.

“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land,” Lee said in June when announcing the proposal. “This bill puts it in better hands.”

But a wide-ranging coalition of opponents argued that the proposal had no protections to ensure the lands would be used for affordable housing, and that many of the parcels eligible for sale had little housing potential. A furious social media campaign highlighted cherished hiking trails, fishing lakes and ski slopes that were in danger of being sold, urging people to call their lawmakers to oppose the measure. In recent days, Montana Republican US Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, as well as Idaho Republican US Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, came out in opposition to the land sale proposal. That put into question whether Lee’s legislation could earn even a simple majority.

Then the Senate parliamentarian ruled the sell-off could not be included in the reconciliation bill without a 60-vote majority. That ruling came a day after Lee posted on social media that he would be making changes to the bill in response to concerns from Hunter Nation, a nonprofit whose board includes Donald Trump Jr. Lee released a scaled-back measure last week that would exempt national forest lands but would direct the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 1.2 million acres. It would require land for sale to be within five miles of a population center and developed to provide housing. Public land advocates say Lee’s changes did little to assuage their concerns. They argue that federal land sales or transfers should happen through the current, long-standing process, which requires local stakeholder input and directs the proceeds from land sales to be reinvested into conservation and public access on other parcels.

“It’s the overwhelming belief of hunters and anglers that the budget reconciliation process is not the appropriate vehicle for public land sales,” said O’Dea, with the hunting and fishing group. On Saturday evening, Lee announced that he was withdrawing the proposal, saying that Senate rules did not allow him to include protections that land would not be sold to foreign interests. But he pledged to continue the battle over federal land ownership, working with Trump to “put underutilised federal land to work for American families.” While the sell-off proposal aligned with some state officials’ goal of taking over federal lands, some lands experts say private developers would have been the real winner.

“If the lands are transferred to the states without money, the states lose,” said Leshy, the former Interior Department official. “It’s a hit on their budget, which means they’re gonna have to sell them off. If states got a significant amount of public lands, a lot of that would end up in private hands.” In Utah, where leaders have made the most aggressive push to take over federal lands, lawmakers argue that they could raise lease prices for oil and gas operations, bringing in enough revenue to cover the state’s management costs. “The policy of the state is to keep these lands open and available to the public,” Speaker Mike Schultz, a Republican, told Stateline.

O’Dea pointed to an economic analysis of what it would cost Montana to take over federal lands. The report found it would cost the state $8 billion over 20 years to take on wildfire management, deferred maintenance and mine reclamation. He noted that many Western states have sold off a majority of the “trust lands” they were granted at statehood, undermining claims that a state takeover would leave lands in the public domain.

While Lee’s land sales proposal has gotten the biggest headlines, public land advocates are fighting a multifront battle against the Trump administration’s moves to roll back the protected status of certain lands, slash environmental rules, and expand logging, mining and drilling operations.