Protect Our Public Lands: Vote NO on the SENR Reconciliation Bill

I urge you to vote NO on the Senate Energy & Natural Resources (SENR) Committee's budget reconciliation bill. This bill includes extraordinary provisions that threaten the privatization of our precious public lands and prioritize energy interests at the expense of our natural resources. This proposed legislation would make over 250 million acres of public lands eligible for sale. This vast acreage encompasses critical areas, including local recreation areas, wilderness study areas, inventoried roadless areas, vital wildlife habitat, and big game migration corridors. It mandates the arbitrary sale of at least 2 million acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands across 11 Western states over the next five years, giving Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture broad discretion to choose which places are sold. This is poised to be the largest single sale of national public lands in modern history. It appears designed to disproportionately benefit the privileged and well-connected and aims to cut taxes for the richest people in the country, trading ordinary Americans’ access to outdoor recreation for short-term payoffs. The updated version of the bill even makes land with grazing permits eligible for sale. The process for selling off these lands is alarmingly fast, demanding nomination of tracts within 30 days, then every 60 days, all without hearings, debate or public input. This process unfairly disadvantages under-resourced state and local governments, making them likely to lose open bidding wars to well-heeled commercial interests. Furthermore, it fails to give sovereign Tribal Nations the right of first refusal to bid on lands, even for areas that are part of their traditional homelands or contain sacred sites. Adding to the concern, 13.5 million acres of our most cherished national monument lands could also be threatened with sell-off, especially following a recent Department of Justice opinion that dubiously claimed unprecedented legal authority to revoke national monument protections. While the public lands sell-off provision masquerades as a way to provide more housing, it lacks safeguards to ensure land is used for that purpose and has no mechanism to enforce covenants. Research suggests that very little of the land managed by the BLM and USFS is actually suitable for housing, and land agencies already possess methods to identify public lands for community needs. Forcing this "disposal" through a budget reconciliation process sets a dangerous precedent to quickly liquidate huge chunks of America’s treasured lands in the future. Protect our natural heritage, public access, and the future of our shared lands. Please vote NO on the SENR reconciliation bill and oppose these harmful public lands sell-off provisions.