The sale of federal public lands in the West is back on the menu as the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources released its portion of the chamber’s budget reconciliation package. 

The committee released its text on Wednesday night, which includes a proposal that mandates the sale of between 2 million to 3 million acres of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, purportedly for housing and other “associated community needs.” It gives the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior latitude to define this latter category. 

The sale of around half a million acres of public land in Utah and Nevada was introduced at the last minute as part of the House Natural Resources Committee budget reconciliation proposal. However, the sales were stripped from the final bill that passed the House in May after facing significant opposition. 

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As written, the Senate bill would impact significantly more federal land in nearly every Western state. 

“Senate Republicans have doubled down and done something far, far worse,” said Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse during a Friday press conference decrying the Senate bill. Neguse represents 11 counties in northwest Colorado where the federal government manages 60% of the land. 

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If passed, the Senate bill would direct the Department of the Interior to sell between 0.5% and 0.75% of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands over the next five years. It would enable sales in all Western states, except for Montana. 

Nationwide, the Bureau manages 245 million acres, and the Forest Service oversees 193 million acres. The proposal would designate between 1.2 million and 1.8 million acres of Bureau land for sale, and between 811,000 and 1.2 million acres of Forest Service land. 

In Colorado, the sales could impact the 16 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the 8.3 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management. 

The proposal would exclude the sales of land with designations such as national monuments, national parks, wilderness areas, and national recreation areas. It also precludes lands with existing rights and claims for mining, grazing, mineral leases, and more. It would give priority to land near existing development areas and infrastructure or isolated pieces of land that are “inefficient to manage.”  

A one-page summary of the proposal indicates that the land sales would fulfill President Donald Trump’s housing and public lands agenda. 

“America needs more affordable housing, and the federal government can help make that happen by making federal land available to build affordable housing stock,” said Doug Burgum, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, in his testimony supporting the proposal. 

However, opponents of the land sales argue that vague language — and the administration’s other priorities — leave the door open for other uses for private entities. Among the concerns is that the bill sets no parameters around what constitutes affordability. 

“There is no reason to believe that this idea is anything other than a political stunt disguised to ‘solve’ a housing problem to enrich wealthy individuals while fulfilling a wish list for extractive industries,” said John Stavney, executive director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments.

In its summary, Committee Republicans claim that the sales could generate between $5 billion to $10 billion between 2025 and 2034 and create “thousands of jobs.” 

Burgum testified that the department would work to “pinpoint areas where housing needs are most pressing,” take inventory of “underused” federal land, and rely on the input of local communities, with the proposal granting states, local governments and tribes the “right of first refusal” to purchase lands.

As written, it does not include any requirements that the federal government gain consent from local entities for the sales — something critics have noted. 

“This administration, already, in four months, demonstrated that it does not act collaboratively with local communities, in good faith, or in the public interest,” Stavney said. “The management of federal lands needs significant overhaul … There has to be a middle ground between local control, public input and speeding up sclerotic processes, but this administration is not about consulting the natives.”

Those in opposition said the proposal is out of touch with Western communities that value public lands, recreation and conservation. 

“This is a great example of the weakness of top-down decision making,” Stavney said. “People in Washington D.C. have rarely understood how fiercely those of us in the West value our public lands.” 

The 2024 Conservation in the West Poll — which surveyed over 400 registered voters in eight Western states, including Colorado — found that 70% of Western voters, regardless of political affiliation, want Congress to focus on conserving public lands rather than energy development on public lands. In Colorado, 84% of the voters polled saw the loss of natural areas as a “serious problem.”

Several Colorado Democrats — including U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, U.S. Reps. Jason Crow and Brittany Pettersen as well as state Sen. Dylan Roberts —  joined Neguse in calling out Senate Republicans on Friday. The lawmakers referred to the proposal as radical, shameful, deeply unpopular and reckless. 

“Public lands are so important to our economy and to the character of these communities in the mountains and across the Western Slope,” said Roberts, who represents Colorado’s District 8, adding that selling these lands would have a “devastating impact.” 

Roberts — with his fellow Western Slope lawmakers, Republican Sen. Marc Catlin, Democratic Rep. Julie McCluskie and Republican Rep. Rick Taggart — introduced a resolution this legislative session opposing any national legislative effort to sell or dispose of Colorado’s public lands. It passed nearly unanimously in both chambers. 

The Senate committee’s reconciliation package also proposes the repeal of unspent Green New Deal handouts, expansion of energy leasing, increases to timber production and more.

In a statement, Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper, the only member of Colorado’s congressional delegation on the committee, called the proposal “a top-down tyrannical execution of authority that strips Colorado and our local communities of our ties to some of our most sacred landscapes.”

“Our public lands are not for sale now, or ever,” he stated. “We stopped a similar effort in the House- we’ll stop this one, too.”

The congressman introduced a failed amendment to attempt to block public land sales in the budget process. 

A better way for public land sales, housing projects on public land

The use of federal public lands for housing and community needs is not a new concept. The Bureau of Land Management has an established process to sell small parcels of public lands. 

The 2018 Farm Bill enabled the federal government to lease U.S. Forest Service land, which already had some form of development, to local governments to build housing. The ability has since been redacted from the Farm Bill but re-established under the EXPLORE Act, garnering the attention of several Colorado mountain communities. 

In Summit County, a parcel on Forest Service land just outside of Dillon became what local officials hoped would serve as a national model for this type of partnership and project. The project has since stalled over budgetary concerns. 

Summit County declined to comment on the Senate reconciliation proposal to sell public lands for housing, but did note that outside of the Dillon land, most of the county’s Forest Service land is not viable for housing. 

Steamboat Springs eyed a similar project on an 8-acre parcel of U.S. Forest Service administrative land where it began plans to build workforce housing. 

The Senate proposal differs significantly from the established processes, Stavney said, noting that the biggest difference is that these previous sales for local uses occurred “after being carefully vetted at the Forest Supervisor level.”

A spokesperson for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that while the governor supports “more public land collaboration between Colorado and the federal government on building housing, improving access for all Coloradans, and protecting our public lands and wildlife, this bill in its current form is not the way to do it and he continues to urge the Senate to start over from scratch.”

The statement called this one problem in a bill with “many problems stacked upon more problems.” 

Bennet said Friday that the difference is the “narrow ways that exist to go about it … value local discussion and local planning.”

“These are not decisions that should be made from Washington, D.C. They should never be made from there, he said.