Welcome to the Landline, a monthly newsletter from High Country News about land, water, wildlife, climate and conservation in the Western United States. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
Jumbo Mountain’s sandstone cliffs look out over the mesas and irrigated valleys of western Colorado’s North Fork Valley. Jumbo’s lower slopes tumble down into sage, juniper and piñon-strewn ridges and valleys — Bureau of Land Management public land that abuts residential neighborhoods in nearby Paonia, a town that runs on agriculture and, increasingly, tourism. Deer, elk, coyotes, bears and even mountain lions share this space — however grudgingly — with mountain bikers, runners, hikers, hunters and solitude-seekers taking advantage of the network of single-track trails.
This 120-acre parcel would be among the BLM land that would be available to be nominated for “disposal” under a provision in the Republicans’ “Big, Beautiful Bill” that is currently being debated in Congress. As it stands now, the provision would mandate the sale of up to about 1.9 million acres of public land over five years, theoretically for housing, and set a dangerous precedent for future privatization. The pool of eligible land is vast. A previous version included thousands of acres of remote, wilderness-quality tracts, but after a ferocious public backlash, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee appears to have backed off. On Monday, he tweeted that the bill would propose no sales of Forest Service land, limiting sales to BLM land within five miles of “population centers.” That would include beloved local areas like the slopes of lower Jumbo — undeveloped acreage on the fringe of public-land gateway towns and cities that is of immeasurable value to the people of those communities and the wildlife they share it with.
After a smaller land sale proposal was stripped from the House version of the bill in May, Lee resuscitated the sell-offs in the Senate, in a much broader and even more destructive form. Rather than targeting specific parcels, Lee’s initial amendment would have required the secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to “select for disposal not less than 0.50 percent and not more than 0.75 percent” of BLM and National Forest System land, and “dispose of all right, title, and interest of the United States in and to those tracts selected for disposal under this section.”*
In other words, it ordered the agency to sell off between 2.2 million to 3.3 million acres of land, to be taken from a pool that The Wilderness Society estimated to be about 258 million acres (that before Lee announced the removal of Forest Service parcels.). Excluded from this would be all the public lands in Montana — likely in an attempt to guarantee support from Republican Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Ryan Zinke while sheltering them from political blowback. Other federally protected lands, such as national monuments and conservation areas and wilderness areas, will also be exempt from sale.
Also excluded are lands “subject to existing rights,” including active, valid mining claims and oil and gas and other energy leases. An earlier version of the amendment specifically included grazing allotments in this category. But Lee’s revised version deliberately left it out, vastly enlarging the pool of available land and, apparently, clearing the way for public-land ranchers to have their allotments sold out from under them to real estate developers. Lee’s betrayal of his cowboy constituency has given new relevance to the old saying: “I’d rather see a cow than a condo.” It’s not clear how Lee’s latest update will affect grazing leases.
The amendment has spurred outrage among Westerners, along with more than a bit of confusion. In his newsletter, outdoor journalist Wes Siler reported that the bill would have “authorized” the sale of the entire 258 million-acre pool — a figure later enlarged to 295 million acres. This language was then repeated by historian Heather Cox Richardson in her widely read newsletter, giving her many readers the false impression that federal agencies would sell off nearly half of the nation’s public lands over the next five years. For now, at least, the agencies will be limited to disposing of “not more than” .75% of the public’s land — or about 1.9 million acres. Still, Siler is surely correct in saying that if this land sell-off makes it through Congress, it will open the door to future sales and mark the biggest shift in public-land management since the Federal Land Policy Management Act passed nearly 50 years ago.
In any case, rather than speculating and fretting about potential future sell-offs, or worrying about some of the more remote and rugged parcels that appeared on The Wilderness Society’s maps, public-land lovers might want to stay focused on the nearly 2 million acres that would likely hit the auction block within weeks if the bill became law.
Those tracts, according to the latest version of Lee’s amendment, “shall be used solely for the development of housing or to address associated infrastructure to support local housing needs.” The affordability of that housing, however, is not addressed; the amendment carefully avoids mentioning any such requirement. Priority would be given to tracts that are nominated for disposal by states or local governments, adjacent to existing developed areas, have access to existing infrastructure and are suitable for residential housing.
In other words, we could soon be looking at a fire sale of millions of acres of public open space on the fringes of housing-constrained amenities communities across the West. Once privatized, those spaces could be flooded with residential developments. And since no restrictions apply to the type of housing, much of that once-public land could be dotted with lone multimillion-dollar mansions and estates, surely enclosed by fences and protected by security. That won’t solve any housing crises, but it will certainly line the pockets of a chosen few real estate developers.
That won’t solve any housing crises, but it will certainly line the pockets of a chosen few real estate developers.
Lower Jumbo Mountain fits the bill perfectly, meaning that the people of Paonia might not only lose their prized trail system, but also access to any BLM lands beyond those available parcels. On either side of Moab, vast slickrock landscapes — note that wilderness study areas, or WSAs, and areas of critical environmental concern are also eligible for disposal under the amendment — could be sold off and transformed into luxury developments. Durango, Colorado’s Animas Mountain and upper Horse Gulch could go up for auction. Vast tracts of desert tortoise habitat between Las Vegas and Mesquite, Nevada, would be made available to developers of Freedom Cities. Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef and Zion national parks are all surrounded by BLM lands within several miles of population centers, meaning they could be privatized, too.
There is a certain irony here. The West’s most picturesque and therefore gentrified communities, the ones with the most intense housing affordability crises, are as desirable as they are largely because of their proximity to public lands. Lee’s effort, which purports to address this crisis, would simply take those same lands out of the public’s hands and cover them with pavement and buildings, cutting off all access to everyone else, including the myriad wildlife that call these places home. If this legislation succeeds, it won’t be long before tall fences and “NO TRESPASSING” signs pop up on many a cherished hiking trail. This isn’t just about these ecologically rich lands, but also about the communities — human and otherwise — that rely on and are nourished by them. They, too, may all soon be sacrificed to the insatiable Growth Machine.
*This is a fast-moving and constantly changing story. At about the same time Lee made his latest changes to the provision, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the land sell-off provision and several other energy related sections of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” would be subject to a 60-vote threshold, making it more likely they would be dropped from the final legislation. Nevertheless, Lee vowed to fight on and to push the bill through in one form or another.
We want to hear from you!
Your news tips, comments, ideas and feedback are appreciated and often shared. Give Jonathan a ring at the Landline, 970-648-4472, or send us an email at landline@hcn.org.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
