- Changes to Congress's tax bill could make 18.7 million acres of public land in Utah eligible to be sold.
- Sen. Mike Lee supports land sales for housing development in an effort to address high costs.
- Outdoors advocates argue sales threaten public access and lack affordable housing provisions.
SALT LAKE CITY — Millions more acres of public lands across Utah could be eligible to be sold off under a recent change to the Senate's budget bill made in a committee chaired by Utah Sen. Mike Lee.
The change, adopted Saturday by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, would significantly expand the land eligible for sale under the bill to include 18.7 million acres of land in Utah. The eligibility expansion includes land in major canyons in Salt Lake and Utah counties, as well as in the Wasatch and Uinta mountain ranges, and land near all five of Utah's national parks, according to an analysis by The Wilderness Society.
Lee has said the proposal aims to disburse some federal lands to be used for housing development in an effort to lower housing costs. The bill directs cabinet secretaries who oversee the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to sell between 0.5% and 0.75% of federal land, or between 2 million and 3 million acres.
"We're opening underused federal land to expand housing, support local development and get Washington, D.C., out of the way of communities that are just trying to grow," Lee said in a video released last week. "Let me be clear: This does not touch national parks, national monuments or wilderness. We're talking about isolated parcels that are difficult to manage or better suited for housing and infrastructure."
"To our hunters, anglers and sportsmen, you will not lose access to the lands you love," he added.
Outdoors advocates have balked at the proposal, however, and more than 100 organizations penned a letter to Senate leadership Wednesday urging that the provision be removed. They argue the sale of the lands will primarily benefit developers without materially impacting the need for more housing, pointing out that the bill doesn't contain provisions that the developments meet any standards for affordable housing.
"Selling off public lands is short-sighted, self-serving and irreversible," the letter states. "These lands belong to all Americans. Once they're sold, they're gone for good — fences go up, access disappears and they are lost to the public forever."
The Wilderness Society — which encourages voters to tell senators to vote against the bill — created a map showing all 250 million acres of land eligible for sale in Utah and 10 other Western States. While there are some parcels eligible near population centers along the Wasatch Front, the vast majority of Utah land is located in remote areas far from where the fastest population growth is occurring.
"Sen. Lee's never-ending attacks on public lands continue," said Travis Hammill, the D.C. director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "In Utah and the West, public lands are the envy of the country — but Sen. Lee is willing to sacrifice the places where people recreate, where they hunt and fish and where they make a living — to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy."
The issue has also become a hot topic among businesses set up at Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City this week, reopening old wounds. The outdoor product trade show pulled out of Utah over the state's stance on public land issues like Bears Ears National Monument nearly a decade ago.
It has since returned to the Beehive State, where it's here to increase dialogue on these types of issues, says Sean Smith, the show's director. He said the latest wrinkle — conversations on a federal level — makes it difficult to relocate somewhere unimpacted by what's proposed.
Instead, companies are speaking out about the potential loss of outdoor recreation space, which could impact the $1.2 trillion outdoor recreation industry in addition to any potential environmental impacts.
"The biggest thing we can do to get the lawmakers to see what's happening is to make noise," Smith told KSL.com. "This is how important public lands are to this country, to so many people who access it. … This is the time, more than ever, for us to gather and talk about public space."
If the bill passes, secretaries of the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior would have 30 days to publish notices asking for nominations of land to be sold, which could come from "interested parties," including local and state governments. The bill states that tracts of land sold "shall be used solely for the development of housing or to address associated infrastructure to support local housing needs."
Proposals to sell some public lands have gone through several changes in the past two months as the Republican-controlled House and Senate work to pass President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy initially proposed to sell roughly 11,000 acres of land in Utah and Nevada to offset costs in the tax package. Those provisions were stripped from the final version passed in the House, though Lee said he planned to reintroduce some version in the Senate.
