The Republican majority on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is calling for the U.S. government to sell up to three million acres of public land in order to hit revenue goals in the federal budget.
That’s the astonishing high end of acreage of BLM and U.S. Forest Service land that would be required to be sold or transferred, the revenues from which would go to the U.S. Treasury. The low end of the spectrum is just over 2 million acres of federal land.
Language requiring the government to “dispose” of millions of acres of land was inserted in the committee’s draft bill, which was released this evening by committee chair Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). The bill would require consultation with the governor of each state affected, and would require consideration of “the extent to which the development of the tract of Bureau of Land Management land or National Forest System land would address local housing needs (including housing supply and affordability).”
The bill lists BLM and Forest Service land in most Western states as “eligible for disposal.” Conspicuously absent from the list is Montana, whose Congressional delegation has been vocal in their opposition to land sales or transfers. When the House Natural Resources Committee considered a version of the budget that included for sale some 500,000 acres of BLM land in Nevada and Utah, Montana congressmen Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing were among the few Republicans to oppose the measure.
Given the slim Republican majority in the House, Republican leadership stripped the land-sale provision from the bill before passing it to the Senate.
Montana Senator Steve Daines (R) has said he opposes sales of federal land, and in an emailed statement today his office reiterated that “Senator Daines is against the sale of public lands and is making his strong concerns clear to his colleagues.”
Federal land protected from sale, according to the committee bill draft, includes national parks, national monuments, national wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas. But the number of acres at play is significant, and is by far the biggest proposed federal land sale in modern U.S. history.
The bill draft requires the BLM to divest itself of between 1.18 million and 1.77 million acres, and the Forest Service to sell or transfer between 686,000 and 1.03 million acres. That’s about 2.8 million.
“The Secretary shall select for disposal not less than 0.50 percent and not more than 0.75 percent of Bureau of Land Management land, and shall dispose of all right, title, and interest of the United States in and to those tracts selected for disposal,” the bill draft reads.
The Secretary of Agriculture (acting through the Chief of the Forest Service) is required to sell a similar percentage of Forest Service lands.
Without Montana’s contribution, the amount of BLM land in the West totals a little over 251 million acres. Forest Service holdings total about 146 million acres.
In a video accompanying the committee’s bill draft, Sen. Lee noted that about a third of American real estate is owned by the federal government, and about 70 percent of his state is in federal landownership.
“That’s not sustainable,” he says in the recording. “It’s not fair. It’s not serving the Americans who actually live here. “We’re opening underused federal land to expand housing, support local development, and get Washington, D.C. out of the way of communities that are just trying to grow.”
In the video, Lee assuages the conservation community, which has been almost unanimously opposed to smaller land sales proposed in earlier budget drafts.
“To our hunters, anglers, and sportsmen, you will not lose access to the lands you love. Washington has proven it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands.”
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