Wyoming opposition intensifies against public land sell-off

Opposition to a Republican plan to sell millions of acres of federal public land in the West intensified over the weekend, with politicians, individuals and scores of businesses criticizing the budget proposal.

The groundswell of opposition has grown beyond green groups, tree huggers and naturalists after the Wilderness Society published a map of the federal properties eligible for sale, including iconic western landscapes at New Fork and Green River lakes.

Eighty-five Wyoming businesses representing myriad entities from small-scale loggers to international brands called the proposed sell-off “a non-starter for Wyomingites and all Americans.” In letters to Republican U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, they said the state’s outdoor culture “is under threat by a concerted movement to transfer or sell federal public lands.”

Politicians, including former Wyoming Speaker of the House Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale, weighed in. The plan will affect “literally everyone in Wyoming, as well as out-of-state visitors our tourism industry depends on,” Sommers wrote Barrasso.

Another former speaker warned that “billionaires and corporations, and perhaps foreign countries,” will be the successful bidders if the measure passes. Those rich and powerful entities will use their purchases to control public access, locking up public lands “tighter than a miser’s fist on a handful of pennies,” former Rep. Tom Lubnau, R-Gillette, wrote in an op-ed in the Cowboy State Daily.

The way the bill is written “will not benefit the people of Wyoming,” state Democrats in the Legislature said in a statement Friday. “We are strongly against,” the eight lawmakers wrote.

“The bill provides very little if any guardrails or transparency,” Rep. Mike Schmid, R-LaBarge, president and CEO of a well-services company, wrote in another opinion piece. “That should alarm every single American who values public access and national security.”

Teton County asked to be exempted from any sales.

“Disposal of public land in Teton County, as contemplated in the reconciliation bill, is much more likely to worsen our housing crisis rather than to mitigate or address our housing shortage,” county commissioners said in letters to Wyoming’s senators.

“The development of additional luxury homes, as almost certainly dictated by our real estate market, only creates more jobs and worsens the imbalance between local jobs and local houses that our workforce can afford.”

What it does

Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s proposed “mandatory disposal” of an estimated 2-3 million acres of land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management would fast-track the sales. The measure, which is expected to be part of the Senate version of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” would purportedly cure the twin problems of scant affordable housing and the national deficit. Critics say the measure would fund tax breaks for the wealthy.

The provision targets 11 Western states and would bypass existing laws and regulations, like those of the BLM, that allow public-interest land sales “developed with public involvement and environmental analysis.” It would funnel land sales proceeds into the treasury instead of the agencies themselves, as existing laws mandate.

Lee’s proposal would require agencies to quickly — within 60 days and regularly thereafter — start accepting nominations from individuals and entities for tracts to be sold. It gives sales authority to the secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture departments.

The measure would prioritize sales of parcels nominated by state or local governments near existing development and suitable for housing. It does not require or ensure that housing would be or remain affordable. It would also allow land to be sold and used for infrastructure.

A provision that put checkerboard-area holdings on the priority list was dropped in a rewrite. WyoFile did not receive a response from the GOP staff on Lee’s Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee as to why checkerboard lands were first prioritized, then removed.

Lee’s measure originally excluded lands on which the agencies had issued grazing permits, an exemption that’s also since been removed, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

The measure would exclude from the sale protected lands such as national parks, wilderness areas and so on. It also excludes Montana. Critics say that’s an effort to curry favor with U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, who opposes the sale of public lands and whose budget vote is critical.

In letters to constituents, Barrasso and Lummis sought to quell fears.

“Please be assured,” Lummis wrote one resident, “it is one of my top priorities to maintain and improve public access on public lands for activities such as hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, hiking and biking.”

She wrote that state citizens could better control the property belonging to all Americans. “I believe that the people of Wyoming are the best stewards of the land, not unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.”

Barrasso said he supports federal land sales “when they serve the interests of states, local communities and the public.” What’s on the table would impact “less than one percent of our federal lands,” he wrote.

“I am committed to efficient multiple-use management of our public lands to ensure continued public access, healthy wildlife, and productive ecosystems,” he wrote. Contrary to analysis by the Wilderness Society and the National Wildlife Federation, Barrasso said he believes the measure would not allow the sale of land permitted for grazing.

Barrasso’s staff did not immediately respond to an inquiry Monday regarding how the senator’s Wyoming Range Legacy Act might conflict with the land sales provision.

In 2007, Barrasso fulfilled a promise to push the act previously championed by the late U.S. Sen Craig Thomas of Wyoming, by successfully withdrawing more than 1.2 million acres in the mountains between Afton’s Star Valley and Pinedale’s Upper Green River country from new oil and gas leasing. Now, however, much of that country is open to be nominated for sale, according to the Wilderness Society map.

Hageman attacks “ecoterrorist”

U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, another Wyoming Republican, lashed out at the Wilderness Society in a Cowboy State Daily opinion column published Friday.

“There has been an awful lot of misinformation in recent days,” Hageman wrote, with “a lot of the talk surrounding [Lee’s] efforts … misleading or flat out untrue.” She said the Wilderness Society was “the biggest culprit so far … working overtime to misrepresent what [Lee’s provision] actually does.”

The TWS map is “a fundraising rant, attempting to scare us,” she wrote, calling TWS president Tracy Stone-Manning a “hypocritical ecoterrorist,” and the interactive map “hogwash.”

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The conservation group’s caterwauling, Hageman wrote, is “an effort to control these lands to ensure our amenities are used solely by the independently wealthy, who have little concern as to whether there is affordable housing available for the people who seek to make their lives in places like Kemmerer or Green River or Pinedale.”

But the map “accurately use[s] the exact criteria for eligible lands included in the most recent publicly available draft,” Wilderness Society Wyoming State Director Julia Stuble said in a statement Monday. “Broad sell-offs of public land are deeply unpopular in Wyoming and it is entirely understandable that laying out the lands eligible for sale in the bill, without exaggeration or bias, would elicit outrage.”

Lee’s provision is headed down a complex path in the Senate where it could be stricken, dropped, amended or adopted before the reconciliation bill moves back to the House. Meantime, former Wyoming Speaker of the House Lubnau wondered: “Why do the lifestyles of 11 Western states have to bear the burden of paying national debt created by the other 39 states as well?”