Privatization

Everyone knows I’m  a bit skeptical of all the hoopla around “selling off large swaths of public lands” (except for small areas around communities.) Some of the stories refer to an E&E News story which is behind a paywall.  A generous TSW reader shared that piece with me, and I thought it would be helpful to share with you all.

First let’s back up.  The idea of selling of “large swaths” has been a drumbeat of some of each party (what we might call “cumulative grandstanding.”)

In the words of our friends at Center for American Progress

As questions swirl about the Trump administration’s new federal lands and housing initiative, the extreme proposals gaining traction in Congress to sell off large swaths of public lands represent a clear and dangerous attack on America’s great outdoors.

As it happens, in February the same folks were warning that the Prez’s idea of a sovereign wealth fund “may make selling out and selling off public lands irresistible.”

But back to the current iteration.  Yes, some Republicans are discussing selling some federal lands for housing, but it appears not “large swaths.”   If I had a dollar for every bad idea someone was discussing in Congress, I could afford to fund a Chair in Heterodox Thought at the University of Montana within a week.

So let’s go to the  comprehensive story on this over at E&E News.. (April 2,story 1)

In story 2, April 3, the reporter summarized in another story.

Despite the outraged reaction from Democrats, it remains unclear just how firm or ambitious Republican plans are on the matter. Westerman has suggested any sales would likely be used to promote housing. And some Western Republicans say they are staunchly opposed to any public lands sales.

Hmm. But back to story 1. Note that Politico is not thought to be biased towards R’s.

The discussion, according to lawmakers interviewed by POLITICO’s E&E News, is still in the early stages and is far from guaranteed to make it into a final package. According to one top Republican, concepts under discussion include the sale of some lands around Western cities or national parks to build more housing.

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“It would just be in areas where you can’t get affordable housing, like for gateway communities,” said Bruce Westerman, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, “so you could actually have people to work in the national parks, maybe around some big metropolitan areas in the West.”

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Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines has already made his objections known to leaders. “Senator Daines has never and will never support the sale of public lands,” an aide said in a text message.
Another Montana Republican, Rep. Ryan Zinke, who served as Interior secretary in Trump’s first term, said he’s told House leadership public land sales are a red line for him.
“I have made clear: There are some things I won’t do,” he said. “I will never bend on the Constitution, and I won’t bend on selling our public lands.”
Indeed, Zinke in January reintroduced a bipartisan bill, H.R. 718, that would ban the sale of most public lands.

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The budget reconciliation process allows the majority party to secure fiscal policies by simple majority. But the GOP’s thin majorities in both chambers means leaders can’t afford to alienate members.

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Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) confirmed there’s been “some discussion” of public land sales in addition to oil and gas lease sales.
“The federal government owns a lot of lands — a lot of lands,” he said. “I think it’s a great idea. We’re looking at different options for revenue raising.”

Zinke did allow there could be small exceptions, like small land swaps that are in the public interest. “But the idea we are going to sell our public lands to pay for our debt, ain’t happening with my vote and I will use my influence,” he said.
The issue of public lands emerged last year in the Montana Senate race, with then-Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) casting Republican challenger Tim Sheehy as a proponent of selling off or transferring federal land to local control. Sheehy pushed back, saying he would expand public access and consider local voices. Tester lost to Sheehy.

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So I looked into this “pushed back”, and there is a Politifact story about what Tester said about Sheehy in a Tweet.

“But Tim Sheehy called to transfer them off, so the ultra-rich can buy them up.”

The reporter at Politifact looked into the claims.

Sheehy’s campaign website says: “I believe strongly that public lands belong in public hands. As your next U.S. Senator, I will work to preserve and expand access to our public lands, and listen to the voices of local communities when considering public lands policy. I will oppose any federal transfer or sale of our public lands. Above all, I want to keep Montana special for my children and yours, and that’s why I will always protect our right to hunt, fish, and recreate on our public lands.”

The reporter looked at the different stories (including the part that alluded to Sheehy having been on the Board of PERC)

Sheehy is no longer on the group’s board, and it’s not clear that full privatization of public lands is on the group’s agenda.

It is pretty clear to me that it’s not because you can read Brian Yablonski’s post.

Specifically, a false accusation emerged alleging that our organization advocates for selling off public land — an accusation made by a politically slanted online news outlet discredited by Politifact, and yet embraced by the Senate campaign.

But Tester’s claim was fairly silly on its face. You can be on the Board of an organization and not agree with all the positions of the organization let alone positions of people taken in the past that no longer have an affiliation with the organization.  And what’s with PERC-o-phobia anyway?

Politifact rated Tester’s statement “false” but interestingly the headline was  Tester “exaggerates.”

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Here’s what Westerman, House Natural Resources chair said:

Westerman, the House Natural Resources chair, said his committee is looking into small land sales around urban centers in the West that are “landlocked” by federal lands to build affordable housing.
He also suggested the committee could unlock for sale some lands around national parks to build housing, so National Park Service employees could afford to live in the “gateway communities” near the park. “I think it’s reasonable if something’s landlocked and everybody knows we’re having trouble getting affordable housing for workers in our national parks, you’ve got cities like Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, big cities in the West that are somewhat landlocked,” the lawmaker said.
Westerman ruled out any sort of mass public land selloff that public lands supporters have feared for decades. he cautioned that the sales may not make it into the final reconciliation bill. “It would be a rounding error on the scale,” Westerman said of the size of any sales. “There’s not going to be any lots on the rim of the Grand Canyon for sale … and I’m not even sure any of that will be in the reconciliation bill we have.”

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My bold

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When asked, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said discussions were “not necessarily about the sale as much as opening up areas for production and exploration that were closed by Biden.”

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It does appear that the reporter found possibly two Senators in favor of selling federal lands, Mike Lee of Utah.

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Even Grist reports that this isn’t going to happen, and the media folks have moved on to other things: “weakening safeguards” and “offering up for oil and gas development” and reducing Monument sizes.

The last time conservatives ventured down the public land privatization path, it didn’t go well.

Shortly after Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, then-Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican representing Utah, introduced legislation to sell off 3.3 million acres of public land in 10 Western states that he said had “been deemed to serve no purpose for taxpayers.”

Public backlash was fierce. Chaffetz pulled the bill just two weeks later, citing concerns from his constituents. The episode, while brief, largely forced the anti-federal land movement back into the shadows. The first Trump administration continued to weaken safeguards for 35 million acres of federal lands — more than any other administration in history — and offered up millions more for oil and gas development, but stopped short of trying sell off or transfer large areas of the public domain.

I hope that’s the last we hear of the “selling large swaths” accusation.

Martin was the co-founder of The Smokey Wire’s predecessor A New Century of Forest Planning back in 2009.  Note: it arrvied in my inbox nicely formatted, any formatting issues are my fault.

Martin Nie is Professor of Natural Resources Policy and Director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests at the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of
Montana. He writes here as a public citizen and is in no way representing the University of Montana or the Montana University System.

A post in response to the Smokey Wire’s coverage and criticism of the op-ed written by former Chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), as published in the Denver Post on April 13, 2025. I
was heartened by this letter and the willingness of former Chiefs to speak out and defend our National Forests and public lands writ large. I was dismayed, however, in how the piece was
covered and the statement that widespread fears of divesting and privatizing public lands is standard “fear-mongering” that so exhausts some contributors to the blog.

“Oh for Gifford’s sake! Here we go again with the standard privatization fear-mongering…State’s don’t want them [i.e., public lands], and the private dog (except for local housing) won’t hunt,” states Sharon Friedman, making clever reference to the first Chief of the USFS Gifford Pinchot.

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Cambridge on Fearmongering: “the action of intentionally trying to make people afraid of something when this is not necessary or reasonable.”

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Current fears about the divestiture and privatization of federal public lands are anything but fearmongering. I hope to write more substantively about this when given a moment, but a few
scattered comments and observations.

First is to at least recognize the history of public lands and the centrality of this debate through the years. Public anxiety is deeply rooted in the past. We could go back to where most public
land histories begin—not with Indian Title—but with the story of federal acquisition, disposal, and retention of federal public lands. Or to the gilded age or progressive-era to see the tensions
between public goods and concentrated wealth and the implications for our shared lands (as told in meticulous detail by John Leshy in Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public
Lands.).

“For Gifford’s sake”? No. Pinchot would be all over the Chief’s letter, just as he warned his peers about the dangers of privatization, corporate control, the “Economic Royalists,” State
ownership of National Forests, and “concentrated wealth’s…strangle hold over the general welfare” back in his day (Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, 1947, p. 508). My lord, his
third principle of conservation is “to see to it that the rights of the people to govern themselves shall not be controlled by great monopolies through their power over natural resources.” (Ibid;
see also the collective work of Char Miller, including Gifford Pinchot: Making of Modern Environmentalism).

Pinchot also saw the relationship between state ownership and control and the move towards privatization. He writes in 1920:

“It has been my experience that a Legislature can seldom be induced by considerations from outside to take action against the opposition of interests dominant in the State” [and] “[j]ust as the waterpower monopolists and grazing interests formerly clamored for State control, well-knowing they could themselves control the States, so now the lumbermen will be found almost without exception against Federal and for State control, and for the same reason.” Gifford Pinchot, “National or State Control of Forest Devastation,” Journal of Forestry (Feb. 1920).

The general period of disposal, goes the usual narrative, ends with passage of the Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976, where Congress declares a national policy that:

The public lands be retained in federal ownership, unless as a result of the land use planning procedure provided for in this Act, it is determined that disposal of a particular parcel will serve the national interest.

Some limited options here for disposal, which are now being fully exploited. 1976 is still a good demarcation point for the Sagebrush Rebellion, where most histories and contemporary writing
about privatization begin.

But calls for land transfers to States and related privatization schemes start way earlier and these earlier battles are a more helpful guide for today’s variation. They were most famously tracked
and analyzed by the writer and historian Bernard DeVoto, whose writing for Harpers is just as relevant today than it was when he was targeted by the FBI and McCarthy for being a public
lands-loving Communist. He traced all the innovative land grab schemes of his day, many of  which were framed as federal transfers to States: “The plan is to get rid of public lands altogether, turning them over to the states, which can be coerced as the federal government cannot be, and eventually to private ownership.” (“The West Against Itself,” Harpers, 1947).

My sense is that DeVoto was the first to expose the strategy of defunding, defaming and discrediting public land agencies as a pretense to sell the idea of why it is necessary to fix the
(manufactured) problem by transfer or divestment. It’s the story of the old Grazing Service, whose budget was slashed by 60 percent at the end of its days, what DeVoto called a “classic
demonstration on how to assassinate a federal agency.” He also detailed how the “skinning knife” would be used on the USFS: “The idea was to bring it into disrepute, undermine public
confidence in it by every imaginable kind of accusation and propaganda, cut down its authority, and get out of its hands the power to regulate…” (“Two-Gun Desmond is Back,” Harpers, 1951).

It’s also part of a larger story brilliantly told by Nate Schweber in This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the World.  My point here is that these are not new tactics or concerns. The case for and against the privatization of public lands and National Forests was also a major theme of scholarship and wonky policy analysis throughout the 1970s and 1980s. This had a particularly economic-oriented flair (see e.g., the collective work of Marion Clawson, including The Federal Lands Revisited (1983). Heated exchanges in the scholarly literature, conferences and symposia, and elsewhere were common and provided some of the ideas and reasoning now being used by those pushing transfer or privatization (see e.g., Adrien Gamache, Selling the Federal Forests (Symposia at College of Forest Resources, University of Washington, 1983). Here is where you find unsettling discussions of how best to convey our public lands to private interests, from highest-bidder to first-in-time, first-in-right.

But let me pick up the pace to get to present-day:

*Instead of an economic framing and arguments for efficiency, different legal strategies are used post-FLPMA to challenge the Constitutionality of public lands in the 1980s through 2000s, all to force their transfer or sale. From Equal Footing and Enclave Clause to Tenth Amendment and everything in between. They fail.

*Utah passes a resolution seeking the transfer of public lands to State ownership in 2012. The language comes from the American Lands Council, providing template cookie-cutter bills and
rhetoric that spread throughout the West and are introduced into every State legislature other than California. How would transferred lands be managed? As State trust lands (which are not public lands)? Will there be protections against disposal and conveyance to private interests? Most fail to say and those that do fail.

*Political protest and confrontation. The Bundy’s and Bunkerville. The occupation and seizure of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. A district court in Nevada calls it “simply delusional to
maintain that all public land within the boundaries of Nevada belongs to the State of Nevada.” (Bundy v. Nevada, 2019).

*Okay, States can’t force the disposal of federal lands. So Utah’s Representative Jason Chaffetz introduces congressional legislation authorizing the disposal of 3.3 million acres of federal land.

*He loses big. #Keep It Public and related campaigns go bigger.

*The transfer and privatization movement learns a lesson and changes tactics. Instead of directly seeking land title and ownership, the movement produces bill after bill that would transfer
control over public lands to States and non-federal actors. Control instead of ownership. The power to make decisions without the costs of firefighting, roads, culverts, and so on.

*Along the way, Republican Party platforms, as a matter of course, contain planks calling for the sale and/or transfer of public lands. At the federal and state level. Do party platforms matter?
Not really but Project 2025 most certainly does. It says little about the National Forest System but its chapter on the Department of Interior was written by William Perry Pendley, the (sort-of)
Director of the BLM during the first Trump Administration and author of “The Federal Government Should Follow the Constitution and Sell Its Western Lands” (2016).

Fearmongering? States don’t want them?

*Let’s jump to present-tense and start with Utah’s Hail Mary throw to SCOTUS and now the lower court in State of Utah v. U.S (2025). Building on decades of futile legal arguments, the
State changes course and challenges federal ownership and management of ~18.5 million acres of “unappropriated land” in the State. “The time has come to bring an end to this patently
unconstitutional state of affairs” says the State. Utah is joined by several others, including Idaho, Alaska, Wyoming and the Arizona legislature….and other public land powerhouses like
Nebraska and Texas. The lawsuit now covers tens of millions of acres of public land.  What lands are “unappropriated,” a term not used in the Constitution or found in the major public land statutes? Answer: Those lands managed as multiple use. My elk camp is on “unappropriated public lands.”

*The zone is flooded with Executive and Secretarial Orders that wreck purposeful havoc on our public lands. Engineered chaos. The civil servants hired to fulfill the tasks required by statute are
let go, rehired, lather, rinse and repeat. The agency is given new marching orders in Executive Order 14225 (Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production) and related step down
guidance, but not with the resources and personnel. The press releases and talking points of the future: the USFS can’t get the job done and that’s why it’s necessary to transfer or privatize these lands or their management.

*Who now has special access in the Department of Interior? The Political Economy Research Center (PERC), a think tank out of Montana that just can’t seem to escape the views of its prior
leadership and his calls for the privatization of federal public lands (Terry Anderson, “How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands,” Cato Institute, 1999).

*For Senator Mike Lee, Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and long-time champion of land transfer to the States and privatization, public lands are better viewed as
“Underutilized Space.” His HOUSES Act (the Helping Open Underutilized Space to Ensure Shelter Act) aims to privatize federal lands to increase available housing in the West. (Not as
sweeping of plan as is Homesteading 2.0, a similar vision advanced by the American Enterprise Institute and one that would auction off 850 square miles of developable BLM land.)

*Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark) debate sales of public lands in the budget reconciliation, as a way to fund tax
cuts and build housing. It dies in the Senate. (E&E Daily, 4.2.2025).

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I’ll stop here and will fill in the details and gaps later. Or Maybe we crowdsource this chronology?

But this isn’t fearmongering. The public has every right and reason to be twitchy as hell when it comes to the transfer and privatization of public lands. It’s like when I had to eat lunch with bullies at my cafeteria table in grade school, I always kept my elbows up and one fist free. At the very least, I was aware of my surroundings and the context in which I ate. And context matters here too because the privatization threat is like knapweed and cheatgrass and not limited to auction-like proposals or threats via arcane budget rules and processes. The corner-crossing case in Wyoming is illustrative and you couldn’t get a better cast of characters to illustrate the new gilded age and what it means for our public lands (see Iron Bar Holdings v. Cape et al., 10 th Cir. 2025).

Now some might say that I need to relax because these proposals are deeply unpopular and keep losing in venue after venue and that the past is not prologue. But this is only because of constant public pushback and organizing—what some call fearmongering. It isn’t. It’s the latest chapter, and the most serious chapter, of public lands in my lifetime.

It’s baaack!  We had this discussion during Trump I.
We even have a category for privatization.

I first got a hint of  the Trump 2 discussion when Senator  Heinrich posted on X.

Public lands belong to all of us. Under the Republicans’ agenda, wealthy out-of-state landowners can turn our most beloved public lands into their private resorts.

I tried to track down what the Senators were responding to and reporter Kellie Lunney told me:

It’s being talking about as a potential pay-for in reconciliation. But there’s nothing “on paper” yet as far as an official proposal.

That sounded a bit out of the mainstream. Generally the fear is that R’s want to give federal lands to the States who generally don’t want them and can’t afford them.  If we look at the (bipartisan) Western Govs are about strengthening the federal/state relationships.

Certainly there were think tankers during 1.0  and probably now thinking about it. Of course, some can use a broad definition of “privatization” as in leases for oil and gas are, and leases for “conservation” aren’t.

Here’s what Wikipedia says:

In 2017, President Trump decreased the size of the Bear Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments by over 2 million acres.^[7] This allowed the land to be leased by oil, gas and mining companies^[8]

But indeed, there is some thought to selling or trading land for housing near communities.  But that’s not exactly  “wealthy out-of-state landowners.”  Anyway, this from Center for Western Priorities in today’s newsletter:

The Conservation Alliance announced Wednesday that over 60 businesses have joined together to send a powerful message to the president and Congress: protecting our public lands is critical to individuals, communities, and businesses across the country.

The new coalition, Brands for Public Lands, includes companies headquartered in 17 states representing varying industries and interests, from outdoor apparel and gear to media, retailers, and tourism. Overall the group represents over 48,000 employees and over $17.5 billion in revenue. Its members include REI, Patagonia, and the Outdoor Industry Association.

The group plans to focus on stopping the wholesale sell-off of public lands, defending national monuments, and protecting iconic landscapes from industrial extraction. It sent a letter Wednesday asking Congress not to sell off public land to pay down the national debt or offset tax cuts

Hmm.. “wholesale sell-off of public lands.”  I always wonder why if these folks have $17.5 billion in revenue, and are interested in federal lands, why don’t they spend their time beefing up federal recreation programs by… granting them funds directly.  It just seems to me that helping the Forest Service and BLM serve recreationists and protect the land better would be more direct than being one of many groups trying to get their way with Congress. They are always talking about the importance of the recreation economy, and how recreation is better than
“extractive” industries, but as far as I know only OHV  and hunting and fishing pay into a fund for recreation support.  Or even expanding donation programs like  the Ski Conservation Fund.

So much helpful, direct work could be done, but of course they are an industry looking out for their best interests as well.

It sounds like REI is generally against anyone in the Trump Admin since REI earlier signed a letter supporting Doug Burgum and had to backtrack:

“Many of you shared your disappointment and your frustration with that decision,” Laughton said. “Let me be clear: Signing that letter was a mistake. The actions that the administration has taken on public lands are completely at odds with the long-standing values of REI. While this happened before I arrived at the co-op, I’m here today to apologize to our members on behalf of REI, to retract our endorsement of Doug Burgum and to take full accountability for how we move forward.”

I don’t really understand why these corporations spend so much energy on political stuff. Another example: the Outdoor Retailer Trade Show.

 Denver announcement Thursday that it is the new home for the nation’s largest outdoor recreation trade show underscored an important aspect of modern business — politics matter.

The Outdoor Retailer trade show — actually two trade shows a year — confirmed that it is leaving Utah after 20 years and decamping east to Denver.

The change comes not because Denver has a bigger airport or extended a financial incentive. Organizers who made the announcement Thursday were frank that the reason they chose to move from Salt Lake City to Denver, starting in 2018, was because Colorado is more “progressive” and has a better “culture” for the industry.

Anyway, moving on from that particular puzzle.

In Outdoor Life, there was a fairly comprehensive article “How seriously should we take the sale of federal lands? Very seriously experts say.” I’ll take the scariest ones first.

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.

“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.”

How can these two statements both be true? Unless there’s an RMP process that could be started and finished this year.

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.”

Actually getting RMPs done and getting Congress to agree both sound fairly difficult. Later Willms makes this point.

“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.”

Close to the end of the article, Willms broaches the subject of reexamining FLPMA and NFMA

“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.”

Yup, it could happen but I’m sure there are other things to worry about.

Like losing federal recreation positions due to them having been recently hired or converted, for one.