The Federal Government Owns Too Much Land. Selling It Helps Rural Communities.
Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah) recently introduced an amendment to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would require the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior to identify 3 million acres of public land to be sold for housing and community development over the next five years. Conservationists have denounced the move, saying that America’s natural beauty is not something that should be up for sale.
The Wilderness Society calculated that the amendment would open up 258 million acres of public land for sale, more than 94 million acres of which are managed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and 164 million acres that are overseen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This eligible land excludes national parks, monuments, wild rivers, grazing- and mining-leased lands, and right-of-way lands, explains Backcountry Magazine. The amendment requires 2.2 million to 3.3 million of these acres to be put up for auction, per The New York Times. That means only 0.85 percent to 1.28 percent of eligible public land would be privatized. This represents 0.42 percent to 0.63 percent of all the public land managed by the federal government, including that managed by the National Park Service.
Benji Backer, founder and CEO of Nature is Nonpartisan, a conservation organization, told CBS News that “the e
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