How Seriously Should We Take the Sale of Federal Lands? Very Seriously, Experts Say
At his confirmation hearing last month, incoming Interior Secretary Doug Burgum pegged the value of America’s federal land at between $1 and $2 trillion, and suggested that developing public land is one way to pay down the estimated $36 trillion national debt.
The former software executive and North Dakota governor told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that reconsidering America’s federal land as a balance-sheet asset to generate revenue could provide both short- and long-term economic security. Under-performing public land is a stranded asset in Burgum’s accounting.
“When we restrict access, we don’t use [public land] for recreation, and we don’t develop the minerals sustainably and in a smart way, then we are getting super low return for the American people,” Burgum told the senators. “It’s our responsibility for getting a return for the American people.”
Burgum was later confirmed as the 55th Interior Secretary by the full Senate. He will serve concurrently as the head of the National Energy Council, “a cornerstone in the Trump Administration’s pursuit of unleashing American energy,” according to a White House news release.
One of Burgum’s first actions as Interior Secretary was Feb. 3’s Secretarial Order 3418, which gave department officials 15 days to develop an “action plan” that would suspend, revise, or rescind protections for federal lands, especially those with fossil fuel development potential. Plan details haven’t yet been made public, troublingSenator Martin Heinrich (D-NM), who yesterday wrote to Burgum noting that the delay of details “suggests an attempt to evade Congressional oversight, public scrutiny, and accountability, fueling concerns that the Administration is moving to undermine public lane protections and sell our natural resources to the highest bidder in secret.”
Meanwhile, one of the incoming Congress’s first acts was a rule change that relieves the House of Representatives of lost revenue if it gives federal land to states or other interests. That action “is intended to create the illusion that disposal of these lands does not come as a financial loss, streamlining misguided legislative proposals that benefit special interests over the American people,” observes Backcountry Hunters & Anglers.
On the judicial front, while the Supreme Court declined to hear the State of Utah’s claim that federal land is unconstitutional, that case is likely to be filed in federal district court later this spring and could work its way back to the high court.
State legislatures are rallying around Utah’s claim. A resolution in Wyoming’s legislature calling for Congress to hand over all federal lands in the state, with the exception of Yellowstone National Park, died on a tie vote.
Will the destabilizing efforts by Elon Musk’s DOGE team, to impose “efficiencies” across the federal government, turn next to federal land, which generally doesn’t generate enough revenues to make it a profitable sector? Might wholesale land sales be used to pay for the $5-11 trillion tax cuts the Trump administration has proposed?
“I think everything is on the table,” says John Todd, executive director of Wild Montana, the state’s largest and oldest public-land advocacy organization. “We’re seeing monumental shifts not only in norms of governance but actions that might seem like small potatoes when you consider them individually, but they add up to a seismic reconsideration of the public value of our public land.”
Todd vacillates between interpreting decision-makers’ positions on public land as “nonsensical distraction to potentially existential.”
“Who would have guessed three years ago that the U.S. would be siding with Russia and shifting away from Europe?” observes Todd. “Three years ago you saw as many Ukrainian flags flying in Montana as you saw American flags. So I think we have to imagine that our public lands are in play right now.”
Land Tawney, co-chair of American Hunters and Anglers Action Network, cited Burgum’s confirmation-hearing statements for his conclusion that large chunks of the federal estate might be sold or traded away as early as this year.
“Looking at our public lands as part of a balance sheet? That’s shit that’s never been said out loud before. Now you have a sitting Interior Secretary saying that, and the administration saying that. I think it’s definitely in the sphere of things that can happen and maybe even will happen,” he says.
Sources are buoyed by a Feb. 19 survey of 3,300 Westerners that showed the highest support for public-land conservation in the poll’s 15-year history. That poll, conducted by Colorado College, surveyed the views of voters in eight Mountain West states. Given a choice between protection and development of public lands, 72 percent of respondents “prefer their elected officials place more emphasis on protecting clean water sources, air quality, and wildlife habitat while providing opportunities to visit and recreate on public lands,” according to poll authors.
Would federal and state officials really buck such strong public support for public-land conservation?
David Willms thinks they might, and he observes that Congress might not have to pass new laws in order to do it.
The Mechanics of Land Disposal
“Most people don’t realize that the BLM already has the authority to dispose of smaller parcels,” says Willms, associate vice president of public lands for the National Wildlife Federation, a legal scholar, and a Wyoming hunter and angler. “The law requires that the BLM has to go through a land-use planning process and identify the acres for disposal. The agency has to show that it’s in the national interest and must sell parcels for fair-market value, but there’s a clear pathway for this.”
Willms says that the disposal of much larger chunks of BLM land similarly doesn’t require congressional approval. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) only requires that Congress doesn’t disapprove of disposal of properties over 2,500 acres in size.
“Think of it more as a right of refusal,” explains Willms. “The Secretary of Interior must send a notification to Congress that the BLM wants to sell X number of acres, and each house has 90 days to pass a resolution of disapproval. If Congress takes no action in 90 days, the sale proceeds. But if only one body – either the House or the Senate – passes a resolution of disapproval, then the sale cannot move forward.”
Given that Republicans have a slim majority in both houses, “you could see a pathway for a proposal to sell [BLM land] that isn’t opposed by Congress, and since it doesn’t require the approval of Congress, it makes it a little easier for a sale to proceed.”
We may see implementation of just such a process later this year. In December, after years of negotiations, the State of Wyoming sold a single 640-acre section of wildlife-rich state property inside Grand Teton National Park to the federal government for $100 million. Proceeds from that sale, plus another $62 million from the sale of other state parcels, are being considered as the state’s ante to buy a portion of about 121,000 acres of BLM land in the energy-rich Powder River Basin. The congressional inaction that Willms describes could make just such a purchase likely.
Related: Feds Fire 4,400+ Public-Land Employees, Including Forest Service Workers, National Park Staff
What about Forest Service ground? Could some or all of the 193 million acres of National Forest similarly be sold off?
“Under the Forest Management Act of 1976 it’s a lot harder to sell Forest Service land, especially large parcels, without an additional act of Congress,” says Willms. “Instead of sale, land exchanges are the favored way of disposing of Forest Service land. But land trades are tricky, because you’re not trading acre for acre, or even like acre for like acre. You’re trading appraised value for appraised value, and some trades result in net loss of public land. Others result in net gain of public land. But if there were motivated people looking for ways to shrink the federal estate, the land exchange process can achieve that.”
Unbalanced valuation is at the root of criticism of a controversial land exchange in Montana, where the Forest Service traded 3,855 acres to private landowners for 6,110 acres of private land that will become public land that the Forest Service will administer. Critics of the Crazy Mountain land exchange say the property that was gained by the government, high-elevation “rock and ice,” was traded away for high-value wildlife habitat in lower elevations that had provided generations of public access to the cherished Crazy Mountains.
Wild Montana’s Todd highlights another mechanism that could degrade public land while keeping it in the public estate. The landmark National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was weakened by a court decision last year that ruled the administration doesn’t have the authority to issue regulations that implement NEPA.
With the law weakened that requires the federal government to consider environmental consequences — and solicit public input — before approving projects as small as public-land bridges and roads to as sweeping as solar farms and oil and gas pipelines, public land could become more industrialized.
Adding to the degradation of public land is the decades-long squeeze of land-management agencies. Last year, Congress cut the BLM’s $1.4 billion budget by $81 million. The Forest Service’s budget dropped by nearly a half-billion dollars from 2010 to 2014.
“This has been their plan all along,” says Nick Gevock, Northern Rockies field organizer for the Sierra Club and former Montana Wildlife Federation policy lead. “Dismantle. Defund. Divest. Starve a government agency until it’s worthless, then get rid of it. That’s exactly what we’re seeing right now with our public-lands agencies. The Trump administration is going on an all-out assault on government, and one of the easiest ways you make people mad at government is to make it dysfunctional.”
Willms notes that even if federal-land disposal plans materialize, there are important public processes that can slow or stop sales or transfers.
“The firewall is the process,” he says. “The BLM can’t sell a parcel if it hasn’t been identified in a land-use plan, so the land-use planning process creates an opportunity for public notice and comment and opportunity to legally challenge the outcome of that land-use plan. That’s your first firewall. The second is when the land-use plan is finalized. If it’s over 2,500 acres, Congress has to be notified and there’s an opportunity to weigh in with your members of Congress and encourage them to pass a resolution that says no, they don’t support the disposal.”
Of course, Congress could pass a law that supersedes FLPMA, or Congress could, for instance, use the budget-reconciliation process to dispose of federal lands without a traditional stepwise process.
“Conceivably Congress could say that it wants to dispose of 1.5 million acres of public land to offset proposed tax cuts,” says Willms. “They would then identify a process to do that. If that happens, your firewalls look a lot different.”
The Mineral Rights Implications Are Huge
While most public-land recreationists rue the thought of sacrosanct landscapes being sold, the real asset in play isn’t the land. It’s what’s beneath it, says a federal employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because they didn’t have approval to speak publicly.
“The BLM has 245 million acres of real estate in the U.S.,” they say, “but the BLM manages 700 million acres of mineral estates. And it’s not just under BLM land, but also under Forest Service, state, county, and private land.”
About 58 million acres of BLM mineral rights are split estates, where the surface is privately owned but the BLM owns the minerals.
“States like Utah aren’t really interested in the surface,” the source says. “The surface has trees that burn, and grass that dries up in drought, and it takes money to manage the surface. The real value, for the states but also for the feds and for industry, is the mineral revenue, and I think you could see the administration’s full-throated rush to develop these resources affect a whole lot more than the BLM’s surface ownership.”
The source notes that states may be interested in cutting deals with the federal government, agreeing to take surface ownership, for instance, in exchange for allowing the minerals to remain in federal ownership.
“This is a terrifying proposition, because the states could maximize revenue by developing and then selling the surface, but the feds get to keep the [mineral] royalties and the industry gets a green light to drill and mine. It’s literally the worst of all worlds for those who want to keep the surface not only in federal [ownership] but unindustrialized.”
The source takes consolation in the recognition that land transfers, disposals, and transfer of mineral rights takes time — often years.
“With all the firings and reductions in force at agencies, there simply aren’t the people to process these permits and activities,” they say. “This administration has less than three years to accomplish what ordinarily would take a decade. I think they’ll be able to nibble around the edges of public-land ownership, and it will be pretty disruptive, but I don’t think they have the time to get rid of the entire federal estate.”
Taking Advantage of the Disruption
If traditional conservation groups alternate between anger and anxiety with the all-of-government reassessment of public lands, Brian Yablonski sees an opportunity. The CEO of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Montana, Yablonski says the disruption is not only an expression of the muscular energy of a new regime, but also a symptom of persistent problems with federal-land management.
“If the message is not business as usual, how can we take advantage of this moment to bring in some of the reforms that could help federal land, and do it in ways we haven’t done before?” says Yablonski. That fits PERC’s market-based conservation ethic. “The message is to throw the playbook away if the playbook isn’t working, and clearly this discussion over the disposal of public lands wouldn’t be happening if our public lands were getting A grades. The default position from most of the conservation community has been to steadfastly defend the status quo, but we see this moment as an opportunity to honestly assess what’s broken and come to the table with ideas for better conservation outcomes. Disruption means this should be a time for creativity and innovation.”
Yablonski isn’t in favor of reducing the federal estate. Instead, he supports more responsive land management.
“The federal government is never going to make a profit off their lands, nor should they,” he says. “The multiple-use mandate isn’t limited to revenue generation. And the mission of our parks is preservation. But our land managers could do a better job of generating revenue for conservation rather than just relying solely on general taxpayer dollars.”
PERC wants our most popular national parks to charge international visitors a market-based entry fee. The organization supports conservation leasing of BLM lands so that wildlife conservation and recreation are considered on equal footing with oil and gas development and livestock grazing.
“We think there’s room for more local co-management on federal lands,” he says. “PERC has been bullish on tribal co-management. We’re interested in these lands staying in federal ownership but allowing locals more management authority. That’s not divestment. It’s not privatization. It’s allowing locals more of a voice in how federal land in their community is managed.”
An early trial of this public-private co-management, that of New Mexico’s Valles Caldera National Preserve, failed to thrive, but Yablonski says the current discussion of disposal of public land versus encouraging more responsive management should revive the idea. The BLM’s Public Land Rule, which enabled private “restoration and mitigation leasing” of federal land, is a good start, he says. The rule has not yet been rescinded by Trump’s executive order.
“Why shouldn’t we allow people to bid to encourage conservation work on the land just as we allow people to bid on timber or oil and gas or grazing?” Yablonski says. “That puts PERC crosswise with a lot of Republicans and conservatives, but we think people will recognize a market-based approach to land management is more appealing than disposal of those lands.”
Donald Trump Jr.’s Take
The president’s eldest son was a close advisor to Donald Trump during the presidential campaign. While Don Trump Jr. isn’t working for the administration, his views on public-land disposal resonate because of his relationship with the president and his own activity as a hunter, angler, and outdoor adventurer. In an October interview with Outdoor Life, he described a middle way for federal-land management.
“We like the idea of some of the states being involved in the management of those federal lands,” Trump Jr. said. “We want the states to be involved but we don’t want states faced with a [revenue] shortfall to sell off a bunch of these lands only to be faced with a shortfall again in a couple of years, and now they don’t have that land.
“We think there’s a happy medium, where you make sure those lands stay public and aren’t sold off for a quick fix in an otherwise failed budgetary environment, but where states are still involved in some management of those lands.”
Trump Jr. said land-management decisions should be taken out of Washington, D.C.
“There’s a reason [environmentalists] argue wolf issues in D.C. courts and not out in the states,” he said. “It’s because they can play on the heartstrings of someone in D.C. much more effectively than they can someone who lives with and deals with wolves.”
What Should Hunters and Anglers Do?
There’s so much angst in the national conservation community that paralysis has replaced pragmatism.
But the National Wildlife Federation’s Willms sees an opportunity to revisit public-land management that’s not so different from Yablonski.
“Throughout the last months you hear the refrain that these public lands are not managed well,” says Willms. “This could be a moment — a way to turn the temperature down — and say we need to have a conversation about federal land management as a whole and are we doing it right? What should our priorities be and how should we do it? We had this conversation 60 years ago that led up to FLPMA and the National Forest Management Act. Maybe it’s time to reconvene that conversation and talk about these land-management statutes and consider what we can do differently.”
Todd is ready for that discussion, as long as land ownership isn’t on the table.
“I’m not into this talk of resetting norms, but I get it. I also want government to be efficient and effective,” he says. “In a time when all our systems, whether natural or social systems, are in crisis, this is a time to look for ways to make things work better, not make them work worse or to junk them altogether.”
Tawney thinks sportsmen should pay closer attention to the votes of elected representatives and hold them to community expectations. He cites as an example the inconsistent messaging and voting record of Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke, Trump’s first Interior Secretary. In January Zinke announced that he would reintroduce a 2023 bill, “Public Lands in Public Hands” that would ban the sale or transfer of most public lands managed by the Forest Service and Interior Department. The bill, which hasn’t been formally introduced, requires congressional approval for disposal of publicly accessible federal parcels over 300 acres and for public tracts larger than 5 acres if accessible by public waterway.
But just days earlier Zinke, who wasn’t available for comment for this story, voted for the continuing resolution that enables federal land transfers.
“Zinke likes telling people that he’s a Theodore Roosevelt Republican,” observes Tawney. “So he has to know that Roosevelt bucked his own party. That’s why he formed the Bull Moose Party, because the Republicans didn’t want him anymore. I think it’s fair to ask Zinke: are you willing to buck your own party? If he did that, especially as a former Interior Secretary under Trump, there’s nobody who could be more powerful than him. But if he continues to toe the party line, I think he could preside over the loss of the greatest legacy Americans ever had, their public land.”
Gevock puts an even sharper point on the choices before the nation.
“This is the last bit of wealth that the average working-class American has, their public lands,” he says. “And the billionaires are coming for it.”
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Willms, for his part, notes that federal land is valuable to all Americans, whether they recreate there or not.
“Something like 85 to 90 percent of all this country’s winter vegetables come from Arizona, California, and Nevada. That’s an economy that’s supported with water from public land. Our food and water and energy security in this country, three things fundamental to having a free society, are based on healthy public land. We’re going to hear a lot more in the coming months about the fundamentals of our economy and our food and water supply, and if you care about the strength and resilience of those, then you have to thank all of the things that public lands provide well beyond recreation.”
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Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/federal-land-sale-movement/
