'Incredibly Short-Sighted': Land Conservation Groups Rally Against GOP Proposal to Sell Off Public Lands Like Tahoe

Update, 12 p.m. Monday: Sen. Mike Lee announced late Saturday that he had formally withdrawn his federal land sales provision proposal from the budget bill, saying that the “strict constraints” of the reconciliation process had prevented him from securing “clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families.” Lee said he “looke[ed] forward” to working with President Donald Trump to “put underutilized federal land to work” for this group.

Original story below:

Congress’ controversial budget bill, formally known as the “One, Big Beautiful Bill,” originally included a proposal to allow the sale of large swaths of federal lands in 11 western states — including more than 15 million acres in California.

After public backlash, that proposal was struck from the bill this week. But Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, who proposed the sell-off as part of Congress’ reconciliation bill, is still working to bring parts of the idea back — albeit with a few changes. On Wednesday, The Hill reported on the latest, scaled-down version of the plan, which Lee hopes to restore to the budget bill.

While President Donald Trump and Lee laud the idea as a solution to the West’s housing crisis, land conservation groups and lawmakers have pushed back against the proposal, criticizing it for targeting the very places people value the most.

“It’s incredibly short-sighted,” said Karen Kong, mayor of the small mountain city of Bishop in the Eastern Sierra. Kong said she saw more than 800 residents (“a ginormous number for Inyo County”) show up for its “No Kings” rally earlier this month — many in protest of the potential sale of public lands.

“It’s incredibly demoralizing for those of us who love vacant land and free land,” she said.

Here’s what you need to know about the proposal to sell off public lands, the places in California it could still affect and what you can do to have a say in what happens next.

Jump straight to:

• What is the latest on the proposal to sell off public lands?
• What California land is included in the bill?
• What will happen to the land if a version of the proposal becomes law?
• What can you do to have a voice?

What was the original proposal to sell off public lands? 

After the House of Representatives passed its version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last month, the Senate is now negotiating the ins and outs of its version of the bill — which is aimed at formalizing tax cuts on Social Security, includes cuts to federal Medicaid spending and SNAP benefits and would increase spending on the military and immigration enforcement.

One provision of the bill would have made millions of acres of land in 11 states, including California, not only eligible — but required to be sold — in the next five years. Any “interested parties” could nominate the lands to be sold, and while states and local governments would have the right of first refusal to buy the property, the text of the bill encourages the Secretary of Agriculture to dispose of the land via “competitive sale, auction, or other methods designed to secure not less than fair market value.”

“This is how we make government smaller, freer, and work for Americans,” Lee said when introducing the proposal.

In the original plan, lands that would have been eligible for purchase included those managed by both the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. While national parks and monuments were not included, the surrounding areas — like much of Tahoe National Forest, the Trinity Alps and even bits of Big Sur — were.

“I was alarmed that they would consider selling off that range of lands,” said California’s Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot.

“It’s quite possible that people could literally wake up in months and find that the place that generations of their family went to … is gone forever,” he said.

Which lands were included in the original sell-off proposal?

• Parts of the Lake Tahoe basin, including an overlook of Emerald Bay and the lands surrounding Fallen Leaf and Marlette Lakes.
• The Eastern Sierra, including land around Mono Lake, Mammoth Lakes and the entrance to Mount Whitney.
• The Sierra Foothills, including around Oakhurst, the South Yuba River and Tahoe National Forest near Donner Pass.
• Lands surrounding Lassen National Park and Mount Shasta, plus the Trinity Alps.
• Mendocino National Forest, Plumas National Forest and Klamath National Forest.
• In Southern California, parts of Los Padres National Forest, the Santa Lucia Range, the Santa Ynez Mountains, the San Bernardino Mountains, Santa Ana Mountains, Indio Hills, Cleveland National Forest and land around Mount San Jacinto.

The proposal was met with sharp opposition from Democrats and land conservation groups (Crowfoot called it “radical,” saying he doesn’t use the term lightly) and Republican lawmakers, too, were split on the idea.

Proponents of the bill argued it could provide much-needed land for development to address the housing crisis, while opponents worried that the language of the bill, which allows “any interested party” to bid for the land without public input, could threaten many of the West’s most iconic wild places.

“These are areas that are adjacent to rural communities, gateway communities to Yosemite, and river access and campgrounds in and around Sierra National Forest, Sequoia National Forest — even Don Pedro Reservoir,” said Katie Hawkins, California program director for advocacy group Outdoor Alliance, which mobilized opposition to the proposal.

Why was the public lands sell-off proposal just cut from the bill?

To avoid needing a supermajority to pass the budget, Republicans are working via the “reconciliation” process, which subjects the bill to the scrutiny of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.

MacDonough can now strike certain provisions that are considered “extraneous” to the budget at will, and on Monday night, she struck the land proposal from the bill.

While MacDonough’s rulings are technically only advisory, they are usually accepted in order to get the bill approved. The two chambers of Congress will then have to agree on a final version to send back to Trump to sign.

After the provision was removed from the bill, Lee asserted his commitment to nonetheless “move this forward.” His new version, The Hill reports, removes all Forest Service land from the bill and reduces the BLM land subject to sale to only those within 5 miles of “the border of a population center,” but did not specify how those locations might be determined.

Lee’s office did not return requests for comment.

Lee also said he plans to establish “freedom zones to ensure these lands benefit AMERICAN FAMILIES” and would prioritize protecting farmers, ranchers and recreational users. While the original proposal encompassed 250 million acres of land across the United States — including more than 15 million of which were in California — and required the sale of more than 2 million acres over the next five years, the new version could mandate the sale of as much as 1.2 million acres, The Hill reports.

“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,” Tracy Stone-Manning, president of land conservation nonprofit The Wilderness Society, said in a statement. “We trust the next politician who wants to sell off public lands will remember that people of all stripes will stand against that idea. Our public lands are not for sale.”

But to Hawkins, the fight isn’t over, and her group prepares to combat additional attempts to sell off public lands.

“We’re not out of the woods yet on this,” she said — something Crowfoot agreed with. “It’s clear to me that certain federal leaders are hell bent on selling off public lands. And if it’s not one proposal, it will be another,” he said.

“This is one of the most concerning attacks in a generation on the environment.”

What would happen to places like Tahoe or the Eastern Sierra if the proposal returns and moves forward?

If Trump and Congress follow through on the proposal, “even close to home, green space and park access could be sold to the highest bidder,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins is particularly concerned by the text of the bill that allows any “interested party” to nominate the land for sale. “So that could be for timber sales, could be oil and gas leasing,” she said. “It also could be for developing.”

In California, any such development would normally have to go through a lengthy public process that would include a review of the environmental impacts of the project, via a process outlined under the California Environmental Quality Act. But the bill, which also would have made changes to the National Environmental Policy Act at the federal level, would have superseded CEQA, eliminating public input in this process altogether.

“This proposal throws out all of that transparency and all of those checks and balances out the window and gives this administration’s officials the ability to nominate places and then execute these land transfers very quickly,” Crowfoot said. “I don’t know what that would mean if this bill passes, but we are not going quietly in the night. We’re gonna protect public access to these lands at all costs.”

For Bishop’s Mayor Kong, her city is a stark example of how the Trump administration’s actions and proposals can — and have — impacted a region.

Public lands surround Bishop and are home to the many federal employees working on that land — the BLM and Forest Service are the area’s fourth-largest employer — and its economy survives off of tourism to the wild places nearby. Since Trump’s second inauguration, the White House’s attempts to lay off thousands of public employees, including National Park Service staffers, and now its threats to federal lands have all been a major concern.

The health of a place like Bishop depends on both locals and visitors “keeping a good and close eye on the public lands,” Kong said. ”Selling off the public land would decimate us.”

As for Lee’s assertion that selling off this land could address California’s housing crisis, California leaders have actually proposed a similar move themselves, around state-owned land in the past. His new version of the bill, unlike the original, specifies that the land must be used “solely for the development of housing or to address any infrastructure and amenities to support local needs associated with housing,” according to The Hill.

Still, Hawkins said its remoteness, fire risk and lack of infrastructure for new housing could make it unsuitable for development regardless.

And while she acknowledged that Bishop is facing its own housing crisis, “people don’t just move to Bishop to move to Bishop,” said Kong — noting that without the surrounding public lands that define the town, a community like hers may not exist at all. She’s also concerned about how many Forest Service or BLM staff already plan to leave the city after the Trump administration’s attempt to shrink the federal workforce by firing federal employees en masse.

“Are we going to need the same amount of housing as we would if those people were here?” she asked. “Our whole entire town is tourism. Nobody wants to build industry out here in the middle of what people consider nowhere.”

What can you do to have a voice?

With the original sell-off proposal now struck from the bill (and the new version still pending official release) — which lawmakers aim to sign by July 4 — the initial urgency urged by advocates and supporters of public lands has lessened somewhat. But Hawkins and Kong say even Lee’s proposed new iteration could still have a devastating effect statewide.

“Maybe Bishop is saved,” Kong said. “But what does that mean for Big Bear and all the other areas that may be at risk?”

After ample public and private pushback against the bill, some lawmakers — including Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley, whose district covers the entire Sierra Nevada mountain range — took a stand against it.

“I will not support legislation that excludes local leaders from having a meaningful seat at the table for these important decisions,” Kiley said in a statement.

Hawkins said so far, the pushback against the proposal has been loud and clear, and it’s important to “keep the pressure up.”

If you want to contact your elected officials to express your opinions — on any issue you feel strongly about — read our KQED guide to identifying your representatives and how to call them. 

“We don’t want to set the precedent that this could be done again every time that we have to do budgets and reconciliation,” said Hawkins. To people who have already contacted their elected officials about the proposal, she said: “Continue to do what you’re doing; it’s working. The lawmakers are hearing and getting pressure from all over the country.”

“There’s no negotiation on this,” she said.