Update: Due to overwhelming opposition from hunters, anglers, and other public land users, House leadership opted tonight to pull the portion of the budget reconciliation bill that authorized these public land sales. Read more here.
Editor’s Note: This article originally reported on analysis from onX that found the proposed land sales in the Republican budget reconciliation bill totaled nearly 1.5 million acres. onX has since published an update lowering that estimate to over 500,000 acres. A representative from the company said onX analysts misread the legislation and did not discover the error until after the report had been published. The article has been updated with the new number.
The budget reconciliation bill currently before the U.S. House could dispose of over 500,000 acres of public land, according to new analysis released today by the digital mapping company onX.
Republicans added the public land sale with an amendment proposed during a midnight session of the House Natural Resources Committee. Initial reports suggested that only about 10,000 acres would be subject to disposal. Later analysis increased that estimate, but the correct number was unclear.
Now, an extensive review by onX researchers has revealed that the actual number could be as many as 539,526 acres in Utah and Nevada.
“Our public lands are not a line item in a budget deal,” said onX CEO Laura Orvidas. “They belong to the American people, and the people deserve full visibility into decisions that could affect public land access and outdoor recreation opportunity. We ask Congress to protect that legacy—not dismantle it.”
The bill’s language made it difficult to pinpoint which acreage the sales would incorporate. Some parcels, especially those in Utah, were named specifically. But others in Nevada were described in much more general terms. The team at OnX began by collecting PDFs of all the maps referenced in the legislative text.
“Some of these maps were already tied to real-world locations, which let us trace the parcels by hand. Some we had to manually align to real-world locations and then extract the parcel information. Others had embedded data that we could pull straight from the files,” the company explained on its website.
The result is the only known digital map of all affected parcels.
“Before I saw the disposal map, it felt distant. But once I did, I was floored,” Ben Brettingen, hunt marketing manager for onX, said in a video on Instagram. “These weren’t throwaway acres. This is prime country. Places I know. Places I’ve bled and sweat and watched dogs lock up on rock outcroppings. And if these lands are considered disposable, what’s next?
“Because here’s the truth. They don’t always look like National Parks. There’s no paved road, no welcome sign. But to those who have climbed them, who’ve hunted them, they are sacred… Whether you’re a deer hunter in New York, a squirrel hunter in Kentucky, or chasing birds in the sagebrush basins of the West, this matters to you. If they can dispose of this land, what’s stopping them from coming for yours?”
Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah proposed the public land sale amendment in the May 6 meeting of the Natural Resources Committee.
“Nevada population centers are all encumbered by federal land that can’t meet their housing and development needs without disposal of federal lands,” Amodei said of the Nevada acreage.
Rep. Bruce Westerman, the chairman of the committee, assured public land advocates that the parcels in question were “small.”
“The sales from these small parcels of land will generate significant federal revenue, and have broad local support. It’s a tailored, parochial budgetary measure,” a spokesperson said at the time in a statement to MeatEater.
MeatEater reached out to Rep. Westerman’s office asking whether he believed the bill should be amended in light of onX’s analysis. A spokesperson told us to direct our questions to Rep. Amodei’s office.
The bill is currently stalled in the House Rules Committee, but Majority Leader Rep. Mike Johnson has said he wants to pass it through the full House before Memorial Day. If it gets through committee and to the House floor, there will be no more opportunities to amend it.
If it passes the House, it must then pass the U.S. Senate, whose members will construct their own version of the legislation. The public land portions of the bill will most likely be assigned to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is chaired by Utah Sen. Mike Lee.
Lee has pushed for the sale of federal public land for many years, but other members of the committee, including some members of his own party, have come out against the sales. Montana Sen. Steve Daines, for instance, told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in April that he “never has, and never will support the sale of public lands.”
Public land adovacy groups are encouraging concerned citizens to call the U.S. Capitol switchboard operator at (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak to their senators. Contact information for U.S. senators can also be found here.
Read the full article here