Plan to auction millions of acres of federal land hits roadblock, but don't count it out

Plan is un-American and would just make the rich richer

Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin signed away their nation’s vast mineral and natural wealth to a rich few oligarchs. That’s one reason the world’s largest nation is politically and economically stuck in the middle ages.

America is on the verge of taking steps in the same direction.

As Lower Columbia Currents and other media reported last week, Senate Republicans want to make 250 million acres of federal land across 11 Western states eligible for sale, according to the Wilderness Society. The land includes 5 million acres in Washington and most of the 1.4 million acre Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Southwest Washington.

Although wilderness areas, national parks and monuments would not be sale-eligible, the amount of land at stake is staggering — an area more than half the size of Alaska and more than twice the size of California.

The bill hit a setback this week. The Senate parliamentarian ruled it cannot be included in the giant spending bill President Trump is demanding because it violates the “Byrd Rule,” which prohibits provisions considered “extraneous” to the federal budget.

The lands legislation is unlikely to pass on its own, but don’t consider it down for the count.

Conservatives have been pressing for legislation like this for years. Making more public land available for logging, mining, oil drilling and other development is part of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a playbook that the Trump Administration appears to follow slavishly.

Under the bill, developers could nominate public land parcels to be put up for auction and would have to use them for infrastructure, housing and “associated needs” — a vague directive that certainly means roads and parking lots and most probably swimming pools, golf courses and hotel resorts.

The bill would direct the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management to begin the “mandatory disposal” of between 2 million and 3 million acres, with sales starting within 30 days of passage, laying out a timeline to meet the quota by 2030.

The auction plan is based on myths and misnomers. It is not just an assault on conservation. It’s a strategy to make the rich wealthier. It’s an assault on American ideals.

Writers throughout our nation’s history have commented on the intrinsic connection between wild land and public values, between public stewardship and national character. Wallace Stegner famously called our national parks “the best idea we ever had” and extolled the value of wild places as an antidote to the pressures of modernism and technology.

As demand for recreation grows and overcrowds our national parks, other public lands will have to take up the demand for hiking, camping and other outdoor recreation. We shouldn’t shrink that land base,

Federal lands already support local and national economies through timber production, oil and gas leasing and other activities. They are sources of recreation, genetic diversity, clean water and clean air, scientific discovery, artistic appreciation and achievement, character development, mental and spiritual health.

In a word, they’re managed for multiple uses; selling the land for “housing” is permanent single use.

By attempting to put public land in private ownership, the legislation is a backdoor effort to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act and other laws that protect the land, waterways and ecosystems that sustain us all.

Sales advocates suffer from the notion that public lands should be more intensively “managed” for public benefit. It’s the same attitude that old-growth forests are “decadent” and that nature must be used or wasted.

Selling the land, the bill summary claims, would “create thousands of jobs, allow millions of Americans to realize the American dream, and reduce the deficit and fund our public lands.”

Horsefeathers and poppycock.

Only companies or individuals with lots of money — people like the Trumps and their rich allies — will be able to afford buying and developing these lands. They’ll be interested in the best parcels — those with the largest and ecologically valuable forests, the most dramatic views and best resort potential.

And they’ll likely acquire properties largely outside public view because of the diminished oversight of the press and resources agencies. Despite terms in the bill that the land should be sold at market value, parcels are more likely to go at fire sale prices.

Most of these lands are far outside urban areas. No one is going to build housing in these areas that is affordable to the average-income earner. You’re talking vacation homes for the well-to-do. This is not the stuff to create the American dream.

One could argue that land sales might make sense in a few urban areas — such as Salt Lake — where federal land ownership constricts development and drives up home prices. But even there, selling off public open space to build more dwellings encourages urban sprawl, contributes to climate change and overtaxes the carrying capacity of the land,

Remember, the factor that limits development in most of the West is a lack of water, not a lack of land.

As far as helping reduce the federal deficit? More balderdash. The government estimates it would take in $10 billion— or $3,000 an acre — with the sale of the first 3.3 million acres. The national debt is nearly $37 TRILLON, or about $106,000 for every single American.

If the Trump Administration truly wants to cut the deficit — and boost housing stock — the president should abandon his plan to give trillion-dollar tax breaks to the rich. By reducing demand for borrowing, deficit reduction would lower mortgage interest rates and spur a lot more home construction than land sales.

Some sales of public lands may make sense. A small community landlocked by public land ownership might need room to expand, for example. And there are certainly cases in which public land trades for private lands make sense to “block-up” ownerships to improve land management.

But it’s essential that we call out this proposal for what it is: A brutal attempt to open up America’s wild lands to development and to make the rich richer at the expense of our national heritage.