July 1st, 2025 update: The addition to the “Big Beautiful Bill” that would sell off millions of acres of public land has officially been withdrawn from the bill! While this is a temporary reprieve and a win, there are still many other threats to our public lands, environment, and climate, like Trump rolling back the 2001 “Roadless Rule” for some forests. Public lands and wild spaces still face numerous threats but this news is proof that public pushback matters.
July 3rd, 2025 update: The bill has officially passed both chambers of Congress and while the selling of public lands was not included in it, there are still so many worrying things about it. Safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid are lifelines for millions of Americans and to gut these programs will result in many, many people going without food and hospitals closing. These cuts will have ripple effects that will be felt by families, communities, and states around the country for years to come. The need for pet food pantries has, for example, increased as inflation has risen and while SNAP and TANF both do not cover pet food, the gutting of these programs will mean families that rely on them will have fewer resources. The bill also ends federal tax credits for clean energy, increases spending on border control and ICE, and increases the budget for the Pentagon. All of these actions will have severe impacts on wildlife, the environment, and climate change.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” currently working its way through the US Congress includes many, many things, like major cuts to Medicaid, food assistance programs, tax breaks, and gutting green energy funds. The slashing of safety net programs, particularly now that everything is more expensive and DOGE has fired many, many federal workers, is a slap to the face of the average American. And a new addition to the bill from Utah Senator Mike Lee? Selling off a conservative three million acres of federally managed public land across eleven states in the American West, with some estimates saying that more than 250 million acres are at risk.
The alleged goal of selling this land to the highest bidder and privatizing it within the next five years is to both help increase the supply of housing while generating at least $5 billion from the sales. Speaking to fellow conspiracy loon (as The Rolling Stone justifiably calls them) Glenn Beck, Sen. Lee attempts to justify the provision by saying that the bill “puts land in the category of eligibility for sale, it doesn’t mean for sale… It just means there’s a process by which it could be transferred.” So the justification is that the land could be put up for sale but that doesn’t mean it would be sold. Sen. Lee also attempts to justify the sale by saying that a vast majority of federally managed lands have zero recreational value and doing so will help “the next generation … afford a home … [making it] a common sense solution to a national problem”.
There are many things wrong with this provision and the attempted justifications, with the most important being the sale would permanently damage the land being sold and public input is being intentionally ignored. In addition to providing beautiful, natural places for any to visit, we, as the American public, rely on these federally managed lands for environmental and cultural resources, clean drinking water, clean air, and the survival of many endangered species, making areas not open for recreational use still important. There would be no recovering from these lands being sold, particularly for wildlife. These areas, much like anything, do not exist in isolation and wildlife, particularly migrating wildlife, need unfettered access to wilderness like public land to survive.
Additionally, the idea that selling three million acres of federally managed land would result in affordable housing for younger generations is laughable and quite frankly, disrespectful. First and foremost, public land can play an important role in beating climate change and more development in vital ecosystems can increase the rates of global warming, making more housing ultimately fruitless in the long run. And the distinction of affordable housing is important here. More housing doesn’t necessarily mean younger generations and marginalized communities are going to suddenly be able to afford to buy or even rent. Most federal land isn’t where housing is needed, is unsuitable for housing to begin with, and exists in places where higher paying jobs do not exist.
What would actually help is, among many other things, the investment in federal safety nets like Medicaid and food assistance that this same bill is slashing. Additionally, investing and even expanding programs like JobCorps would help the next generation of Americans gain stability, experience, and education needed for their future. But the recent suspension of this program from the Labor Department means thousands of current students will go without the vital investment in their future and lose their housing at the same time.
All of this also assumes that the bill and provision are acting in good faith, but the truth is far from that. It lacks the safeguards to ensure that the land sold is actually used for housing and fails to give Tribal Nations the right of first refusal to the very land that was stolen from them. The selling of the land won’t even reduce federal spending to any significant degree, as Deborah Sivas, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law, told Newsweek. Her exact words:
“The percentage of acreage being discussed is too small, in my view, to have any real effect on either the agencies’ management budgets or the national debt. … Most of these lands, especially remote lands managed by BLM, don’t need or receive substantial or intensive management effort by the agencies; instead, they function largely as some of the last remaining ecological habitat for our dwindling wildlife.”
Washington, Oregon, and Alaska are all threatened by this bill, with iconic areas like Mount Hood, Hoh Rainforest, and Tongass National Forest having land that could be sold. These lands make the American West what it is and to lose them would mean losing what makes this place beautiful. To see the areas that could potentially be sold under this provision, visit this map from The Wilderness Society.
So what can we do? Well, contact your House Representatives and Senators to start, even if they’ve gone on the record against this bill. The Wilderness Society has made this part easy with an online form dedicated to the opposition of selling public land. But the Big Beautiful Bill is flawed in so, so many ways beyond selling public land. It also includes funding cuts to Planned Parenthood, tripling the budget for ICE, adding $150 billion to the extremely bloated Pentagon budget, the elimination of tax on gun silencers, a block on state level AI regulation, and so much more. All of these things are horrific and are individually enough to oppose the bill outright. So contact your elected officials and tell them to oppose the bill. Senate Republicans want to pass their version of the bill by July 4th so we have a week and a half to make our voices heard!
If you don’t like phone calls, which the organization 5 Calls can help make easier, there are other ways too. You can write letters, send postcards, or even send faxes! And the lack of a physical fax machine doesn’t mean you can’t fax someone, with online resources like HelloFax available to send the fax for you. Others have started upcycling cardboard into postcards to send to officials.
The current administration is actively making life more difficult for Americans while simultaneously killing others around the world, kidnapping folks off the street, and burning the world around us. We cannot and should not give up.
