Washington, DC – Late last night, Chair of Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced budget reconciliation bill text that mandates the sale of as much as 3.2 million acres of public land across the West to help fund tax cuts primarily benefiting the ultra-wealthy. The bill requires the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to sell off lands in 11 states that include California. If sales are as extensive as allowed in the bill, an area 29 times the size of Lake Tahoe would be lost to private exploitation.
Unlike past proposals, this bill puts many Forest Service and BLM lands up for grabs, including areas such as Cow Mountain and South Yuba River Recreation Areas; Areas of Critical Environmental Concern like the Sacramento River Bend, Cosumnes River Preserve and Pinto Mountains; Wilderness Study Areas like Bodie Mountain; Inventoried Roadless Areas like Caples Creek in the El Dorado National Forest, Castle Peak in Tahoe National Forest or Fox Mountain and Sespe-Frazier in Los Padres National Forest; and designated critical habitat for endangered species like the desert tortoise in the Mojave Desert.
“Mendocino County’s national public lands like the Cow Mountain Recreation Area and Mendocino National Forest are too important to be privatized,” said Mendocino County Supervisor John Hachak. “These lands are critical for tribal cultural access, recreation, watershed protection, fire resilience, wildlife habitat, and other purposes and shouldn’t be privatized. I urge Congress to oppose any public land sell-offs, especially here in California.”
Although the bill references “housing,” it places little constraint on what’s sold or why. Overall it prioritizes development and industry profits over public access to the places we love—all to help pay for tax cuts primarily benefiting large corporations and billionaires. It does this by:
- Ramping up oil, gas, and timber extraction on public lands with fewer safeguards.
- Reducing opportunities for public participation in development decisions on these lands, and allowing developers to pay to skip environmental review and public input.
- Mandating long-term timber contracts that lock up public lands for private interests.
CalWild has communicated strong opposition to this ill-conceived and destructive proposal directly to key Washington offices in the Senate. Our public lands are not only one of our country’s wisest investments but core to who we are as Americans, as Californians, and to our way of life. California and our nation could lose a shared heritage that provides jobs, clean water, clean air, outdoor experiences and a thriving recreation economy today and into the future.
“Senate Republicans’ bill is a slap in the face to every American who likes to hike, camp, hunt, fish, travel, offroad, watch wildlife or even just see their tax dollars used appropriately,” said CalWild Executive Director Mark Green. “This giveaway of our national public land treasures for private exploitation is just wrong, period. And, Californians could have the most to lose. With so much of our state made up of public lands, and an administration targeting our state more broadly, all of these selloffs could possibly happen in California.”
Founded in 1976, CalWild (formerly the California Wilderness Coalition) is the state’s leading voice for protection of wild places and waterways on public lands. CalWild organizing campaigns have permanently protected more than 13 million acres of the California wild, and 1,500 linear miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers. For more information, visit calwild.org.
