Public Lands Are at Risk as Congress Looks for Ways to Raise Money

Since the beginning of the year, President Trump has urged Congress to pass “one big, beautiful bill,” referring to a budget reconciliation package that would allow Congress to extend and expand his 2017 tax cuts. House lawmakers floated the idea of selling public lands to help achieve this goal just weeks later. Their proposal kicked off a wave of actions among conservation groups and public land advocates who felt that America’s public lands would suddenly be sold off to help balance the nation’s debt.

On Thursday, those plans failed to materialize in an initial version of the House budget proposal. Instead, lawmakers focused on expanding fossil fuel development. Among their ideas are increasing oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, allowing mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, reviving a road project through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, and offering companies a way to pay for expedited environmental reviews. 

However, many public lands advocates say the threat of public land sales remains very real. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources [ENR] Committee has yet to unveil its plan, where some say public land sales could still be included. And the White House released President Trump’s budget proposal on Friday, asking Congress to approve the sale of some national park and national forest lands.

The potential public lands sale has united Americans across ideologies and the political spectrum, ranging from sportsmen to wildlife advocates. The National Wildlife Federation unveiled a digital campaign in April called “#HaltTheHeist,” encouraging people to defend public lands in social media posts and op-eds, and by contacting lawmakers. That same month, the Outdoor Alliance generated roughly 50,000 letters to lawmakers, asking them to specifically keep public lands out of budget conversations. Another organization, the Conservation Alliance, created a coalition of over 60 businesses called Brands for Public Lands. Forty-five of the groups signed on to an April 9 letter addressed to leaders in Congress, stating that under no circumstances should public lands be included in the budget process as a line item. Now, these coalitions are shifting their focus to the Senate.

“It'll be a sprint through the month of May to make sure that folks are hearing from on-the-ground advocates for public lands, making sure that senators know that this is important to them, especially Western senators,” Jordan Schreiber, government relations director at the Wilderness Society, said of keeping public lands out of the budget process. “We are expecting a markup in Senate ENR as early as the first week of June, so advocating before, during, and after that ENR markup on continuing to keep this out will be a priority for the campaign.” 

At the state level, groups such as Oregon Wild, the Idaho Conservation League, and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance are encouraging lawmakers to support public land protections and keep public land sales out of budget reconciliation. In the case of the Idaho Conservation League, outreach to Idaho Representative Mike Simpson has been somewhat successful. Representative Simpson joined Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) earlier this year in sponsoring the Public Lands in Public Hands Act. The law would prevent large-scale public lands sales without the authorization of Congress. And last Thursday, Simpson announced that he’ll co-chair a new congressional coalition called the Public Lands Caucus, which will advocate for keeping public lands out of budget conversations.

John Robison, the public lands and wildlife director at the Idaho Conservation League, said his group will now focus on getting the state’s senators to oppose public land sales as the budget reconciliation process transitions to the next phase. “We've got really three asks,” Robison said. “One is to support the Public Land Public Hands Act. The second is to make sure that the budget reconciliation process does not include public land sell-offs. And then third, we're also asking them to make a public statement that public lands need to stay in public hands.”

Why sell off public lands?

Since the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s, when a motley crew of anti–public lands agitators tried to wrest control over public lands from the federal government, the idea of usurping federal authority has appealed to the ultra-right wing of the Republican Party. While this was more a rebuke of environmental regulations, attempts to take over public land in recent years have seemed to focus on finances. For example, Robison said that if America’s public lands were transferred to the state of Idaho, they would be managed for profits, not wildlife or public access.

“You can recreate on many state … lands up to a point until that recreation or that wildlife management starts to conflict with the real goal of producing revenue,” Robison said. "The real concern is that the state cannot afford to manage the firefighting and management costs of lands and would be forced to sell them off to private interests.”

The idea of transferring public lands to states or selling them is deeply unpopular. In 2005, California Republican Richard Pombo tried and failed to mandate public lands sales in a budget package. Less than a decade later, lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to get all federal lands in Utah turned over to the state. Utah Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz, who said some federal lands “serve no purpose for taxpayers,” introduced legislation in 2017 that would have required the first Trump administration to sell over 3 million acres to Western states. The idea was seen as so toxic that he refused to advance the bill following public outcry. He left Congress, citing the pushback as one of the reasons for his departure.

More recently, however, the idea of selling public lands has moved closer to the center of the Republican Party. Utah Republican Senator Mike sponsored the HOUSES Act in both 2023 and 2024, which was purportedly meant to address the nation’s affordable housing crisis. The bill failed to gain traction, but some say that Senator Lee may attempt to get public land sales included in budget reconciliation.

“Senator Lee is an anti-federal government, anti-public land ideologue, and he will take every effort to try to sell off public lands if he can,” Neal Clark, the wildlands director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said. “I absolutely would not put that past him, and I think everyone needs to be watching … what happens in the Senate.” 

While lawmakers eye a legislative package, some members of the Trump administration have already adopted Senator Lee’s messaging. Back in March, Doug Burgum, a real estate developer who is now the interior secretary, and Scott Turner, the housing and urban development secretary, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal announcing a plan to sell America’s public lands to create more housing.  

But according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the places that need affordable housing are near urban centers and are densely populated. If homes are built in remote areas—such as public lands—the cost of building roads, plumbing, and other essential services could quickly balloon, warned the Center for American Progress. The costs to build could put many of these homes out of reach for most Americans.

“The lack of affordable housing in America is a serious issue, but the administration and anti-public lands advocates in Congress are using this issue as a Trojan horse,” David Feinman, the vice president of government affairs at the Conservation Lands Foundation, said. “It’s just another cynical ploy to try to … offer up shared natural resources for sale to the highest bidder and take access to public lands away from the American people.” 

Who benefits? 

Perhaps more revealing than public statements are what lawmakers include, or fail to include, in their plans. In both the Trump administration’s plan and Senator Mike Lee’s HOUSES Act, for example, the proposals left out affordability requirements and specifics on who could buy land. For Burgum’s and Turner’s proposal, it only stipulates those areas be within 10 miles of population centers with over 5,000 people. 

“There is a huge contingent of developers who would love to get their hands on some of these places,” Clark said. “Certainly, in areas where there may be a shortage of available land or just the ability to build in really incredible places.”

Robison said this is what’s occurred in Idaho. In 2016, billionaire developers from Texas purchased nearly 200,000 acres of timberland. The public enjoyed access to the property from all the previous landowners—timber companies, the state, and the federal government. After the land was sold, Idahoans suddenly faced armed security and locked gates on formerly accessible roads. Last year, the same developers put 60,000 acres of the land they bought on the market for roughly $150 million.  

“We've seen this before, where trailhead signs, your favorite elk hunting camp, or fishing spot, or a place to harvest a Christmas tree, or backcountry ski area gets blocked off with ‘no trespassing’ signs,” Robison said. “In addition, the ecosystem services, whether it's for clean water protection or wildlife—those are at the whim of the owners.”

Similar stories exist in Montana, where a developer purchased thousands of acres of timberland to create the Yellowstone Club, which cost over a quarter million to join. The Yellowstone Club then negotiated a series of land trades with the US Forest Service to consolidate its lands. In February 2025, the club’s new owners entered a deal with the same federal agency to expand near the Crazy Mountains, an island mountain range that has attracted private interest. Now, outdoor recreationists and sportsmen fear they’ll suddenly be locked out. It “was a sad day for Montana and for all lovers of public land access,” Montana Backcountry Hunters and Anglers said in an Instagram post. “We are deeply disappointed that the [US Forest Service] has caved to big money and their never-ending goal to lock the public out of public land.”

With pending conversations to include public land sales in budget reconciliation, many advocates fear this could be the start of something bigger than just housing. Kristen Brengel, the vice president for government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, worries the Trump administration may use public lands to solve a manufactured emergency, such as the need to build data centers. Lawmakers have pitched selling a few select lands for housing, but if something like this were to pass, selling just a few areas would make the plan unviable, Brengel added.

“I've done some more research on it, and if they use budget reconciliation, they're not going to be able to be particular about what land gets sold,” Brengel said. “They're not going to be particular about who can buy it. This would have to be sort of a broad attack on public lands.”