Over 3 million acres of public land could be sold in the next five years, after Senate Republicans on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee reintroduced land sales into the party’s major spending bill.
Released on Wednesday night, the megabill text includes a proposal for extensive transfers of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, supposedly for housing but with leeway for other uses. The new bill text escalates a recent GOP push to sell federal land. In May, the House Natural Resources Committee passed a version of the spending bill that called for 500,000 acres of public land sales in Nevada and Utah.
The Senate bill instructs the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to dispose of 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent of all BLM and Forest Service lands, respectively. While the percentage appears small, each agency manages huge swaths of land, mostly in the Western U.S. The BLM oversees 245 million acres, equating to 1.23 million to 1.84 million acres for sale under this proposal. The Forest Service manages 1... Read more
