Can I interest you in some pristine acreage up in the Cascades, adjacent to the famed Pacific Crest hiking trail?
How about some alpine lake frontage on the north side of Mount Pilchuck east of Marysville?
Or consider staking your claim on some lots up above the legendary Queets River valley, out on the westernmost edge of the wild Olympics. It’s unspoiled — for now.
This is, believe it or not, the latest money-saving idea to come out of the nation’s capital: A fire sale on some of the West’s national forest lands.
Republicans heading the U.S. Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee have proposed to force the “disposal” of up to 3.3 million acres of public lands across the West, including in Washington state.
It’s being added to a must-move budget bill, as a way to cut the deficit — by selling off a portion of the country’s land assets for development.
A new map of the areas eligible for sale includes everything I described above, as well as big swaths of the Olympic National Forest and the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in the Cascades.
“The bill directs what is likely the largest single sale of national public lands in modern history,” said the Wilderness Society, which created the searchable online map.
Parts of the Mountains to Sound Greenway, between Seattle and the Cascades along Interstate 90, would be eligible for possible sale.
“This includes areas we’ve spent decades working to protect,” warned Jon Hoekstra, head of the Greenway Trust.
A new map of the areas eligible for sale include swaths of the Olympic National Forest and the Mt. Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in the Cascades. (Sources: Map and analysis by The Wilderness Society using source data from BLM, USFS, USGS, NPS, and SENR reconciliation bill text as of June 16th 2025.)
A new map of the… (Sources: Map and analysis by The Wilderness Society using source data from BLM, USFS, USGS, NPS, and SENR reconciliation bill text as of June 16th 2025.)
The bill doesn’t direct that any particular parcel be sold. Rather it sets up a process by which interested parties — i.e., developers — can nominate public land parcels to be put on the auction block. 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 sold off more than a million acres.
The bill specifies the land should be used to build housing, or for other “associated needs.” This is undefined, but presumably means things related to housing such as roads, utilities, shopping areas, community centers and so on.
Local conservationists say there are loopholes big enough to allow everything from data centers to golf resorts. National parks and wilderness areas are off-limits for land sales, but not most national forest lands.
“There’s nothing in here to stop the development of the top of a mountain,” says Mitch Friedman, director of Seattle-based Conservation Northwest.
He said the prospect of building housing alongside the Pacific Crest Trail adjacent to Snoqualmie Pass is “a great example of what the public stands to lose.”
“You’re not going to get affordable housing in that spectacular location,” he said. “You’re going to get trophy homes in a resort setting. It’s a very Trumpy idea.”
Friedman said selling surplus Forest Service land is a legitimate concept. But not in such large quantities, with such broad rules, at such quick turnarounds.
A fact sheet for the plan says it could earn the government as much as $10 billion. That may sound like a lot, but it pencils out to roughly $3,000 an acre, assuming all 3.3 million acres are sold.
“It’s just a bad deal, even by their own metrics,” he said.
This is a dangerous moment for dicey deals. Republicans are scrambling to come up with ways to cut the deficit in order to pay for the No. 1 priority, the huge tax cuts proposed in President Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
Some of the ideas for cutting back are so extreme they seem destined to fail. And yet, like this selling of millions of acres of public land, they’re in the mix and can’t be discounted.
Here’s another: The Trump administration has proposed slashing funding for the Indian college system by nearly 90%.
That’s not a misprint. Trump’s budget, released earlier this month, suggests cutting funding for 37 Native American colleges and universities from $182 million this year, to just $22 million for 2026.
This includes the 1,000-student Northwest Indian College in Bellingham. It gets three-fourths of its budget from the federal government. It would almost certainly have to close down if this cut goes through.
Why propose such an evisceration? It’s true the federal deficit is enormous and needs to be reduced. But the obvious way to shrink it is with gradual trims to spending plus some targeted tax increases. Suggesting a death-level cut to a system of colleges, especially tribal ones where the federal government has treaty obligations, makes no political sense.
The public lands sell-off proposal is similarly a “hot-stove issue,” Friedman said.
“It’s too hot to touch, so it seems like in normal times there’s no way it could survive,” he said. “And yet here it is, sitting in a larger bill that’s a must-pass bill this summer. So it seems like they’re going for it. You have to take it seriously.”
The heat is by design. As everyone is prepping to fight over Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the rich, surprising new battlefronts keep popping up.
You’re scrambling to get a handle on the health care cuts and suddenly everyone’s “riled about selling off the West,” one congressional lobbyist told me. “It’s a flood the zone type atmosphere.”
That’s Trump style. All you protesters who were out on the streets last weekend? Better keep the signs handy. It’s going to be one hot summer in politics.
