Utah Senator Mike Lee's plan to sell off public lands is still alive in the Senate budget bill despite widespread opposition from hunters, anglers, and other public-land advocates. Yesterday afternoon, as sell-off opponents were flooding senators with calls and messages, a leaked version of his revised plan showed he still wants to sell off up to 1 million acres of BLM land.
The opponents of Lee's plan have been clear. Speaking through social media and hundreds of thousands of messages to lawmakers, they say that not one single acre of federal land should be sold in a budget bill. In response, Lee scaled it back slightly after the non-partisan Senate Parliamentarian voided the original provision via the Byrd Rule.
The revised version of Lee’s plan can be viewed here. Like the first version, it still requires the Secretary of the Interior to dispose of a certain percentage of public land. Though the acreage formula Lee used the first time around has been reduced, opponents say it still puts more than a million acres on the chopping block.
"In the first version he mandated that between one-half of one percent and three-quarters of one percent of all BLM lands be sold, but here he has lowered that to between one-quarter of one percent and one-half of one percent," says Dave Willms, Associate Vice President of the National Wildlife Federation and the co-host of the Your Mountain Podcast. "When you apply that against the total surface acreage of BLM land in the 11 western states still listed in the bill, the high end requirement reaches roughly 1.2 million acres."
Lee now says that the lands he wants to sell are “within 5 miles of population centers,” but what actually qualifies as a population center isn't clear. "Because it’s not defined it’s going to be left to the Secretary of the Interior to define what a population center is when they're executing the law and selling these lands," Willms says.
He's also quick to point out that the vast majority of revenue generated from these land sales will go to the Treasury—not back into conservation or public land management agencies. That’s because Lee's provision circumvents the Federal Land Transfer Facilitation Act (FLTFA), a law passed by Congress 25 years ago that directs as much 90 percent of revenue from public land sales back into conservation efforts.
Lee previously claimed that he would exempt foreign buyers from public-land purchases, but that pledge didn’t make it into the revised version either. "As it’s written, it's still open to all 'interested parties',” says Willms. “It could be a foreign corporation or individual. That will ultimately be left to the Secretary of the Interior to decide.”
There’s also nothing in the provision that would prevent private equity firms from buying up public hunting grounds. And it reduces royalties for oil and gas producers operating on public lands by almost 30 percent, which would gift the industry with billions of dollars in savings. “Lee is using public lands to try to pay for the political debt that he owes some really big donors in the oil and gas industry,” said Randy Newberg in a recent episode of Fresh Tracks Weekly. "If we let him do that, then shame on us."
Read Next: 10 Ways You Can Help Kill Mike Lee's Land Grab
It's believed that the Senate would like to vote on the budget bill by July 4 if not this weekend. There's little more than speculation about wether or not Lee's new sell-off provision still violates the Byrd Rule. For now, hunters and anglers should continue to contact senators, representatives, and even state-level politicians. The capitol switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
