Public lands were just saved from becoming real estate.
Mike Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, announced Monday that he is revising his proposal to sell off public lands after the Senate’s parliamentarian ruled that it cannot be included in the Republican budget package, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The provision would have mandated the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to sell off more than three million acres of public lands in 11 western states. Conservationists on both sides of the aisle were vehemently opposed to the idea. Environmental organizations were also quick to voice their criticism, including Los Padres ForestWatch, which noted that the proposal would have put a price tag on 875,000 acres of Los Padres National Forest.
The group called the proposal a “terrible idea,” saying that it would cause irreparable damage to open spaces, impede wildlife movement, and put more homes into the path of future wildfires.
To their relief, the Senate’s referee did not allow it to move forward in the budget reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to pass limited provisions with a simple majority, side-stepping the need for any Democrats’ votes. The provision did not comply with the Byrd Rule, which says “extraneous matters” cannot be included in a reconciliation bill.
“We’re glad to see the Senate parliamentarian reject Senator Lee’s proposal to sell off millions of acres of America’s public lands,” said ForestWatch Director Bryant Baker. “These wild places are an integral part of our region and should never be placed on the chopping block. While our public lands face a variety of other threats from the Trump administration, this most recent threat seems to have dissipated for now.”
After the ref blocked his original proposal, Lee backtracked on X, saying his new plan would only market land owned by the Bureau of Land Management — taking the Forest Service off the hook. Additionally, he said he would “significantly reduce” the amount of land in the bill, limiting it to lands within 5 miles of “population centers.”
Supportive Republicans claim that the proposal would help solve the nation’s housing crisis. It would be the “barren land next to highways” — to quote Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum — that would be provided for new affordable units. “Housing prices are crushing families,” Senator Lee said on Monday. “We need to change that.”
Environmentalists say that’s a smokescreen. “This proposal is not about housing — it’s about privatizing public lands for short-term gain,” said Baker.
Santa Barbara Representative Salud Carbajal criticized the reconciliation bill as a whole, noting that it is axing funding for multiple social programs, including Medicaid and SNAP. Even though the public lands sell-off was nixed, he warned that the bill could still be painful.
“If Republicans were truly committed to solving our housing crisis, they would work with Democrats on meaningful, bipartisan solutions — not gut protections for working families and bulldoze our country’s natural heritage,” Carbajal said. “This bill will hurt Americans from all walks of life in order to reward billionaires, and for this reason, I’ll continue to oppose it.”
Conservationists are not taking a breather, either. Also on Monday, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that her agency is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, which was meant to provide lasting protections for 58 million acres of roadless areas on US Forest Service lands. (Editor’s note: The U.S. Forest Service’s web page for the 2001 Roadless Rule originally linked to in this article was taken down on Tuesday. An archived version of the page can be found here.) Her office called the rule “outdated,” and stated that those areas of forest will now be open to “fire prevention and responsible timber production.”
“The Trump administration’s disdain for nature knows no bounds,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, vowing to “fight like hell” against the decision. “It’s a prescription for more wildfires so logging companies can make a buck.”