A Plea to Protect Yosemite’s Public Lands

A Plea to Protect Yosemite’s Public Lands Yosemite National Park belongs to every American, not to any single administration or private interest. I am writing to urge Congress to reject the proposed land exchange involving an 83-acre parcel owned by Kingsbarn Realty Capital, just outside Yosemite’s western boundary. Kingsbarn’s CEO, Jeff Pori, seeks to build a private access road connecting his property to Yosemite’s central thoroughfares, effectively opening undeveloped land near the park’s ancient sequoia groves to hotel, resort, or private residential development. In exchange, the National Park Service would cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite itself, receiving unspecified “equal value” acreage elsewhere in California in return. This is not a new idea. A nearly identical proposal was pushed by a prior landowner in the early 2000s and was rejected. More recently, this current version was brought before Congress for approval — and Congress said no. Reviving a plan that lawmakers already declined, through internal agency maneuvering rather than public legislative process, sidesteps the very body meant to make this decision. The National Park Service exists to hold these lands in trust for the public, not to trade them away for private commercial gain. Selling, swapping, or granting easements through national park land for private development purposes undermines 150 years of precedent established at the birthplace of the national park system, and multiple park officials and legal experts have raised serious concerns about the legality of such a transfer. I urge Congress to close this loophole permanently: pass legislation explicitly barring the Department of the Interior from exchanging, leasing, or granting easements through national park land for private commercial development, ensuring no future administration can attempt this again without direct congressional approval. Yosemite is not for sale. None of our Public Lands are.