You might have seen the social media posts: “Not for sale” or “Worth protecting” scrawled over dramatic scenes of mountain ranges, forests, rivers and other wild places across the U.S.
“As it turns out, this place right here, the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River could be put up for sale,” Fox 13 reporter Lauren Donovan said as she sunk a for sale sign in the dirt for an Instagram reel.
The sentiments are part of the wide-reaching blowback to a proposal from Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, to sell off public lands across the West, a longtime goal of some Republicans. It was nestled in a draft provision of the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
While the original proposal was dropped this week, Lee pledged to refashion his plan and do “everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward.”
From day one in office, President Donald Trump has pledged to open up public lands for private companies. The Trump administration has been working to increase logging and expedite the leasing process for fossil fuel companies, among other things. This week the administration announced plans to roll back some protections for nearly 60 million acres of national forests.
Hunters and fishers, hikers and climbers, and conservation groups were among those who rallied in opposition, citing threats to wildlife, clean water, tribal treaty rights, public access and concerns about the precedent it would set. Republican Sens. Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, of Idaho, came out in opposition to the provision to sell public lands, narrowing its window for success.
On Sunday Lee hinted that he heard at least some of those concerns, posting, “Hunter Nation: You spoke, and I’m listening,” and suggested that he’d be making changes.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., was skeptical.
“While I appreciate that Sen. Lee has been forced to backpedal and is reportedly now trying to shrink the number of available access to these acres,” Cantwell said Tuesday on a press call, “I don’t trust him, and I don’t trust this process.”
What’s in the proposal?
Lee’s earlier proposal would have required federal agencies to identify and sell at least 0.5% and up to 0.75% (roughly 2 million to 3 million acres) of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land in the West (excluding Montana) over the next five years.
The proposal also would’ve created a separate process to allow for potential buyers like developers, states and local governments to come in and nominate additional lands to be sold, drawing from a pool of more than 250 million acres eligible for sale, according to Cantwell’s office.
The sale of public lands was identified in the provision as a mechanism to provide more housing. It gave federal agencies broad discretion to define “housing” or “infrastructure to support local housing needs.”
The proposal did not allow the sale of national monuments, parks and other federally protected areas.
Within 60 days the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management would be required to select lands and start a rolling series of sales until each has met the acreage requirements.
The proposal provides no opportunity for public input, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress, which criticized the proposal; though it requires some consultation with local government, governors and tribes.
What could this mean for the Northwest?
In Washington state, an estimated 5.4 million acres (mostly Forest Service land) would have been eligible for these sales, according to an analysis by The Wilderness Society (which opposes the proposal) based on bill text updated June 14.
That included swaths of the Methow Valley; forests along Lake Cushman and the Mountain Loop Highway; places people flock to see the arrival of golden larches in the fall, like Heather Pass; and prime backcountry skiing and climbing areas like Washington Pass.
Federal lands targeted in Senate proposal
A proposal from Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, would have opened up for sale an estimated 5.4 million acres in Washington, according to an analysis by The Wilderness Society. The Senate parliamentarian has since ruled out the proposal.
The eligible lands included parts of the Mountains to Sound Greenway — the product of a multigenerational vision to reduce sprawl, restore and connect habitat and provide recreational opportunities along Interstate 90 from Seattle to the Cascades. The Forest Service manages almost 40% of this 1.5 million acre heritage area.
The sale of these lands could be the unraveling of a more than three-decade effort to reassemble a checkerboard of land ownership, said Jon Hoekstra, head of the Greenway Trust.
“It’s ecologically and environmentally more sustainable when you can manage by watersheds instead of by these arbitrary square-mile surveys,” Hoekstra said. “We’ve very, nearly done it.”
These National Forest lands are like a long-term savings account, said George Geissler, the Washington state forester. They protect and provide wildlife habitat, clean drinking water, recreation, timber and rangelands.
“We would be just basically dumping our savings account, so to speak, for a one-time influx of cash,” Geissler said. “You have to ask yourself whether or not that’s something that we would want to do.”
States and local governments were supposedly given the right of first refusal for land put up for sale in the proposal, but as written, it wouldn’t be possible, Geissler said. The window for selecting and bidding on these lands is too short for the state’s legislative approval process and other requirements, and the state doesn’t have the funding for these purchases.
“States are mentioned like we are a solution, but they’re not talking to us about it,” Geissler said.
The state has authority to conduct thinning, prescribed burns and other activities intended to benefit forests and reduce wildfire risk on federal lands, and coordinates with the Forest Service on everything from wildland firefighting to road construction and maintenance.
As land becomes fragmented between ownerships, that wildfire risk reduction and suppression work becomes more complicated and potentially less efficient.
A Headwaters Economics analysis this year found that less than 2% of federal land analyzed is close enough to the places that need housing to be practical for development, and more than half of the federal land near communities with housing needs has high wildfire risk.
That leaves, according to the analysis, only about 1 million acres “realistically available for safe development.”
If the bill were to be enacted and deliver on its promise of providing additional housing, it has the potential of growing the state’s so-called wildland-urban interface — or the area where wildlands like forests and grasslands meet and intermingle with human development.
“That, in and of itself, means that you’re taking lands from just pure forest firefighting or structural firefighting, and you’re now working in that area that’s challenging to both structural firefighters and wildland firefighters,” Geissler said.
The state’s Growth Management law empowers counties to make land-use decisions, so even if these lands were sold, it’s unclear whether a change of use could occur without local support.
What’s next?
The Senate parliamentarian on Monday found Lee’s proposal ineligible under budget reconciliation rules.
Lee responded on social media, pledging to push the proposal forward.
He said he would remove all Forest Service land, and “significantly reduce” the amount of Bureau of Land Management land to that only within 5 miles of population centers.
If Lee were to limit the bill only to Bureau of Land Management lands, Cantwell said, that would still include hunting grounds along the Columbia River, and parts of the Methow Valley, which she said contributes $150 million annually to Okanogan County’s economy.
This story includes reporting from The Associated Press.
