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u.s. forest service
The Senate GOP’s Great Western Land Heist
A buried budget clause could force the largest public land sell-off in modern history, without a vote, a hearing, or a warning.
Jun 21, 2025
The Owyhee Canyonlands still wake to the hush of sage wind and canyon light, where bighorns navigate basalt ledges and silence is a kind of song. That song, and many others, may soon be gated.
Buried in the Senate reconciliation package lies a directive to the Interior and Agriculture secretaries. They are ordered to sell off up to 3.3 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land across 11 Western states within five years.
This is no minor bureaucratic maneuver. It is a mass land transfer on a scale most Americans cannot imagine. We are talking about 227 Manhattans, nearly as large as Connecticut, six times the size of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Every acre could vanish behind a fence, a lease, or a luxury gate, permanently removed from public access.
What they see as inventory for extraction or speculation, we know as wildlife corridors, ancestral sites, and living ecosystems.
And the damage may not stop there. In addition to this directive, an amendment advanced by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) dramatically expands the scope of what land can be targeted next. That amendment opens up as much as 258 million acres, more than half of all public land managed by the BLM and Forest Service, as eligible for future sale. The amendment does not raise the total acreage that must be sold now, but it vastly expands the pool of land that could be nominated for disposal, setting the stage for further mass privatizations.
The sheer scale of the amendment, expanding eligibility to 258 million acres, raises questions about intent. While the bill still caps mandated sales at 3.3 million acres, the broadened eligibility pool may serve several strategic purposes. It positions the smaller number as a “reasonable compromise,” creating the illusion of moderation while setting the legal stage for far greater disposals in future bills. It also appeases private-sector interests by offering a vast catalog of public land to lobby over, speculate on, and nominate for sale. For lawmakers like Sens. Lee and Daines, long committed to shrinking federal land ownership, it advances a deeper ideological goal: redefining public land as provisional and disposable. Even if not all of it is sold now, marking it as eligible redraws the line between what belongs to the people and what can be taken.
Even national monument lands, while currently excluded, may be at risk. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has argued that a president has the authority to revoke monument protections unilaterally. If that view prevails, another 13.5 million acres of previously protected lands could be opened for sale with the stroke of a pen. That is nearly as much land as the entire state of West Virginia. It is the equivalent of more than 10 Grand Canyon National Parks or over 15,000 Central Parks. All of it currently protected for future generations. All of it just one legal argument away from the auction block.
The Map They Will Not Show You
Behind closed doors, agency and congressional staff, working closely with industry allies, are drawing lines around timber-rich slopes, mineral-heavy ridges, and land primed for private development. What they see as inventory for extraction or speculation, we know as wildlife corridors, ancestral sites, and living ecosystems. These are not forgotten or idle lands. They are part of a shared inheritance now being marked for liquidation.
The bill does not define these parcels as protected, but instead excludes only national parks and formally designated wilderness areas as essential for continued public stewardship. This opens the door to the disposal of millions of acres that remain critical for wildlife, water, and people. At risk are places like:
- Tensleep Canyon, Wyoming: granite walls long sought for magnesite and limestone extraction;
- The Owyhee Canyonlands: This expansive public land, encompassing deep desert canyons across three states, has already been highlighted by several groups most notably the Friends of the Owyhee as a site directly threatened by the Senate land-sale proposal.
- Molalla River, Oregon: a century-old timber corridor still featured in BLM logging plans; and
- Grand Staircase region, Utah: red-rock mesas stripped of nearly 1 million acres of monument protection in 2017, now eyed for coal and uranium leases.
These are only the best-known examples. Many more have already been, and are likely still being, quietly marked by developers, oil and gas firms, and mining consortia.
No hearings. No vote. No chance to object.
The provision does not merely authorize these sales. It mandates them. Each agency must sell between 0.5-0.75% of its total land base through competitive auction within five years. That adds up to between 2.3 and 3.3 million acres. That so-called small fraction still equals more than 3 million acres, roughly the size of Connecticut or nearly one-and-a-half of the area of Yellowstone National Park.
States are granted a “right of first refusal,” but it is a hollow gesture. There is no requirement that land be offered at fair value, no obligation to preserve public access, and no mandate for consultation with Indigenous nations. There are no environmental reviews or affordability conditions. The public has no voice in what is sold or to whom.
These are our lands. Yet we are being shut out of the decision entirely.
Who Wants It, and Who Is Fighting Back
The provision’s primary backers include Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, several Republican members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, large residential developers, fossil fuel and mining companies, and private equity firms that see public land as cheap inventory.
But opposition is accelerating. Sens. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Ron Wyden of Oregon, both senior Democrats on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, have pledged to fight the inclusion of the land-sale mandate in the reconciliation bill. Even some Republicans from traditionally pro‑development states, such as Sen. James Risch of Idaho and Sen. Steve Daines of Montana—who cosponsored the amendment enabling large‑scale land sales, but later sought to distance himself by emphasizing narrow scope and expressing opposition—have acknowledged public concern over the lack of transparency and long‑term risks.
It is worth asking whether this land policy is a public act or a private arrangement with public consequences.
Tribal governments, conservation groups, small recreation businesses, and national advocacy organizations like the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, and Outdoor Alliance have publicly opposed the public land sell-off provision. They warn that the measure bypasses hearings and public input, threatens access to public lands, and endangers sacred sites, wildlife corridors, and rural economies. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called it a direct threat to Utah’s redrock country, and multiple Indigenous groups have condemned the lack of tribal consultation.
And the land grab is happening in a political context where the Trump family, once again in the White House, is expanding its business empire, including foreign real estate deals. According to Eliot Brown of The Wall Street Journal, India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is one of many international investors pouring money into Trump Organization developments. These include projects in real estate, cryptocurrency, and other sectors that stand to benefit from relaxed land-use and ownership rules. It is worth asking whether this land policy is a public act or a private arrangement with public consequences.
Why You Should Care, Wherever You Live
Public lands do more than store carbon. They store stories. They teach children the sound of a free-running stream. They preserve the last unbroken skies. They support a $1.2 trillion outdoor recreation economy that sustains 5 million jobs and helps recharge watersheds that irrigate crops across the American West.
The land they’re targeting is not empty. It is not surplus. It is alive. It is where the land still speaks in the languages of those who came before. Where every ridge holds a name, every stream a story. It’s where people go to breathe again. To walk without noise. To teach a child how water sounds. It’s where we remember we are small, and that smallness is sacred.
What’s being auctioned is not just land. It is access. It is silence. It is memory, future, belonging, and the last wild chance some people have to feel whole again.
Privatizing these lands is not only an economic and environmental betrayal. It is a moral one. This is not about housing. This is about extraction. This is about raw power, inherited greed, and the open theft of the commons. To do so is to erase the covenant between people and place, to sell the inheritance that binds generations.
And when it’s gone, it’s gone. You don’t replant a thousand-year-old forest. You don’t buy back a clean river. You don’t resurrect what you sold to a bulldozer.
What You Can Do Today
Congress is moving fast, and the window to stop this is closing. The provision to force the sale of public lands is buried deep in a massive budget bill, shielded from public debate and poised to pass quietly behind a smokescreen of competing headlines. This is the moment to act. Delay means disappearance. Once these lands are gone, they do not come back.
- Call your senators. Encourage family and friends to do the same. Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121. Urge them to strike the land-sale mandate from the budget bill.
- Text RESIST to 50409 to send messages to your senators through Resistbot. Resistbot has delivered over 35 million letters, with congressional staff confirming they receive and read them. Independent research shows the tool can boost civic engagement and influence legislative awareness.
- Download and share the Wilderness Society’s interactive “public lands at risk” map and policy alerts. These tools are available through their Media Resources page and recent press releases. Use them to spark conversations at trailheads, town halls, and farmers’ markets.
- Submit a letter to your local paper and help raise public pressure before the bill advances further. Letters to the editor are widely read and often monitored by congressional staff. You can also share your message through neighborhood forums, community Facebook groups, or organizations you’re part of.
- Support those on the front lines, including the Wilderness Society, Native American Rights Fund, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the Outdoor Alliance, and the Intertribal Timber Council.
Rep. John D. Dingell, America’s longest-serving member of Congress, often reminded us that public lands are more than state assets. He believed they are held in trust, stating plainly, “In democratic government, elected officials do not have power. They hold power in trust for the people who elected them.”
We were never meant to sell the sacred. But if we stay silent now, the lines on the map will be redrawn without us. The land will forget we were ever part of it.
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Green Groups Applaud 1 Million Public Comments Urging Biden to Protect Old-Growth Forests
"The Forest Service should listen to the public and finalize policies that truly safeguard our oldest forests," a coalition of environmental organizations advised.
Sep 21, 2024
Green groups on Friday pointed to the more than 1 million public comments urging the U.S. Forest Service to protect old-growth forests from logging in urging the Biden administration to increase what critics say are inadequate protections for mature trees in a proposed federal amendment.
The Forest Service (USFS)—a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture—received massive input during four rounds of public comment on the National Old-Growth Amendment Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
The USFS' proposed national old-growth amendment follows a 2022 executive order by President Joe Biden that directed the agency to draft policies to protect mature trees in national forests, which are imperiled by but also play a critical role in fighting fossil fuel-driven climate change.
"The national old-growth amendment should be a transformative policy that positions the United States as an international leader in harnessing nature to confront the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis."
Climate campaigners panned Biden's order as "grossly inadequate." Since the executive order, the Biden administration has allocated $50 million for old-growth forest conservation under the Inflation Reduction Act, which the president signed in August 2022.
In June, USFS announced a draft environmental impact statement for a proposed amendment to Biden's directive. Environmentalists called the draft a "step forward" while urging the administration to do more to protect mature forests.
"Since 2022, hundreds of thousands of people have called for an end to logging old-growth and urged that our mature forests also be protected. The Forest Service should listen to the public and finalize policies that truly safeguard our oldest forests," a coalition of green groups including the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Earthjustice, Environment America Research and Policy Center, National Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and WildEarth Guardians said in a joint statement.
"As the Forest Service reads the comments it has received over the last 90 days, it will find a common theme. The old-growth policy proposed in June fails to meet the central mission of the executive order—it does not protect old-growth trees from logging and allows projects that would log old-growth forests out of existence through numerous loopholes. The policy also does nothing to protect mature forests, which are needed to increase the abundance and distribution of old-growth trees and forests."
As CBD explained:
Mature and old-growth forests are carbon storage powerhouses. With thicker protective bark and higher canopies than younger trees, mature and old-growth trees are more resilient to wildfire. They also provide critical wildlife habitat, filter clean drinking water for communities, provide countless outdoor recreation opportunities, and capture the imaginations of Americans young and old.
Federal forest management prioritizes timber production and routinely sidesteps science to turn big, old trees into lumber and wood chips. Logging releases a significant amount of stored carbon, which can take centuries to be recaptured. It also eliminates older trees' ability to sequester additional carbon and damages the other ecosystem services and biodiversity values these forests provide. Many older stands and trees have no enduring protection, and hundreds of thousands of acres in national forests are at risk of being logged.
"The national old-growth amendment should be a transformative policy that positions the United States as an international leader in harnessing nature to confront the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis," the groups' statement asserted. "We hope to see the nationwide old-growth amendment strengthened so it can become a centerpiece of our nation's climate and conservation legacies."
In a separate statement, Environment America public lands campaign director Ellen Montgomery said that "the Forest Service should listen to the more than a million people who have commented over the last two years, urging it to end logging of old-growth trees."
"The response from the public to our on-the-ground efforts to build support for a strong national old-growth amendment has shown that people want to see older trees protected," she continued. "These trees and forests are home to wildlife that we love from birds to bears. They are our allies to fight back against climate change, and all we have to do is make sure they stay upright."
"We hope the Forest Service recognizes the truth that the public knows: old-growth trees are worth more standing," Montgomery added.
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'Groundbreaking' Study Stresses Need to Protect Global Forest Carbon Sink
"Despite facing regional threats like deforestation and wildfires, the world's forests continue to be a powerful weapon in the fight against climate change."
Jul 18, 2024
In what one researcher's group on Thursday hailed as a "groundbreaking" study, scientists from 11 countries highlighted "the critical role of forests in mitigating climate change" and how various threats are imperiling Earth's vital climate sink.
"Despite facing regional threats like deforestation and wildfires, the world's forests continue to be a powerful weapon in the fight against climate change," the U.S. Forest Service (USFS)—which co-led the study published in Nature—said Wednesday in a statement announcing the paper. "These vital ecosystems have consistently absorbed carbon dioxide for the past three decades, even as disruptions chip away at their capacity."
The study shows how the world's forests have consistently absorbed carbon dioxide over the past three decades, "even as disruptions chip away at their capacity."
Researchers examined long-term ground measurements combined with remote sensing data and found that "forests take up an average of 3.5 ± 0.4 billion metric tons of carbon per year, which is nearly half of the carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels between 1990 and 2019."
According to USFS, other key findings from the study include:
- Boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere, spanning regions like Alaska, Canada, and Russia, have experienced a significant decline in their carbon sink capacity, dropping by 36%;
- This decrease is attributed to factors including increased disturbances from wildfires, insect outbreaks, and soil warming;
- Tropical forests have also seen a decline, with deforestation causing a 31% decrease in their ability to absorb carbon;
- Regrowth in previously abandoned agricultural lands and logged areas has partially offset these losses, keeping the net carbon flux in the tropics close to neutral; and
- Temperate forests, on the other hand, have shown a 30% increase in their carbon sink capacity, a rise largely due to extensive reforestation efforts, particularly in China.
"Our research team analyzed data from millions of forest plots around the globe," USFS researcher Yude Pan said in a statement. "What sets this study apart is its foundation in extensive ground measurements—essentially, a tree-by-tree assessment of size, species, and biomass. While the study also incorporates remote sensing data, a common tool in national forest inventories and land surveys, our unique strength lies in the detailed on-the-ground data collection."
The study's other lead author, Richard Birdsey of the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said that "the persistence of the global forest carbon sink was a surprise given global increases in wildfire, drought, logging, and other stressors."
"But it turns out that increasing emissions in some regions were balanced by increasing accumulation in other regions, mainly re-growing tropical forests and reforestation of temperate forests," Birdsey added. "These findings support the potential for improving protection and management of forests as effective natural climate solutions."
The study's recommendations include reducing deforestation, promoting reforestation, and "improving timber harvesting practices to minimize emissions from logging and related activities."
The world lost around 3.7 million hectares of primary tropical forests last year—a rate of approximately 10 soccer fields per minute, according to data from the University of Maryland's Global Land Analysis and Discover Lab. While this marked a 9% reduction in deforestation compared with 2022, the overall deforestation rate is roughly the same as in 2019 and 2021. Felling trees released 2.4 metric gigatons of climate pollution into the atmosphere in 2023, or almost half of all annual U.S. emissions from burning fossil fuels.
In the United States, green groups cautiously welcomed the USFS introduction last month of a draft environmental impact statement for the proposed national old-growth forest plan amendment, which followed President Joe Biden's 2022 directive to protect old-growth forests.
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Protecting Forests Can Help Us Combat the Climate Crisis–If Done Right
If we are to restore old growth, combat climate change, and preserve wildlife habitats and have forests for future generations to experience, we must change the way that we manage our public forest lands.
Mar 30, 2024
In December, the Biden administration took a redwood-sized step toward protecting old-growth trees and forests. Following a presidential executive order in April 2022, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it intends to amend all 128 forest land management plans to conserve and expand old growth in national forests. That move clears the way for us to stop chainsaws from felling our oldest trees, which are worth more standing than as lumber. We commend Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (who presides over the Forest Service) and his team.
As with any policy proposal, the devil is in the details. To truly prevent timber companies from chopping down our old-growth trees and forests, the final version of this proposed amendment, expected in January 2025, must be stronger in a few specific areas.
- The amendment as announced would limit the logging of old growth for commercial motives. The Forest Service must go further and prevent the commercial exchange of old growth cut down for any reason. There’s no reason for old-growth trees to ever be sold to timber mills.
- All protections enacted must apply to the entire National Forest System, especially to Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The Tongass was exempted from the plan announced in December. There is more old growth in the Tongass than anywhere else, and leaving the crown jewel of our National Forest System out of a plan to protect old growth is nonsensical.
Environment America and our allies with the Climate Forests Campaign have been and will continue to advocate for the strongest possible protections for these trees and forests.
While it is a strong step in the direction of protecting critical trees and forests, even if the Forest Service’s final amendment includes the robust protections described above, it will still omit many important trees and forests.
Some of these forests are managed by another federal agency, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Interior Secretary Deb Halaand and BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning should propose their own plan to protect older trees and forests on BLM’s lands.
We’re facing twin crises—climate change and biodiversity loss. To combat both, we need more “climate forests”—vibrant ecosystems full of older trees that absorb and store carbon.
Old-growth forests are irreplaceable and worthy of elevated protection, but there are hardly any left. To recover even a fraction of what was lost to logging over the centuries, the United States must act to protect mature trees and forests, the future old growth, from commercial logging. These forests are still developing and will turn into old-growth ecosystems, supporting biodiversity and storing more carbon if we let the trees grow. The solution to our shortage of old-growth forests is to nurture these future ones, but the Forest Service’s proposed amendment would not confer meaningful safeguards for mature forests.
Humans have built wooden homes, fences, furniture, and other products for centuries. The problems started when people began to believe that trees were most valuable when chopped down. We started industrial-scale logging to clear land for agriculture, cities, railroads, and highways. We’ve managed our forests accordingly, accepting a Forest Service mission that includes the “productivity of the nation’s forests.”
After more than a century of management for “productivity,” many of our nation’s “forests” are rows of trees of uniform species and age that we let grow only to chop down in a few decades. They resemble fields on a farm. Two-thirds of our country’s forests are “timberlands,” designated for industrial logging. If you embrace the concept of a forest as a fully functioning ecosystem, developing over decades or centuries without large-scale human interference, then it’s clear that the public forests of the United States mostly come up short.
This shortage is unfortunate because we’re facing twin crises—climate change and biodiversity loss. To combat both, we need more “climate forests”—vibrant ecosystems full of older trees that absorb and store carbon. Our national forests and grasslands are home to 3,000 species of wildlife, and according to the Forest Service, “forests in the U.S. remove the equivalent of about 12% of annual U.S. fossil fuel emissions.” No other technology can match forests for carbon removal at this scale. We don’t even have to invest in research and development to spin up new forests. We simply have to let our existing forests grow.
Approximately 38% of forestland in the United States is publicly owned, most of that is managed by the federal government. If we are to restore old growth, combat climate change, and preserve wildlife habitats and have forests for future generations to experience, we must change the way that we manage our public forest lands.
The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have their work cut out for them. Step one should be to finalize this proposed amendment so that it protects as many trees as possible. The administration must simultaneously be working on step two: developing durable policies for protecting the rest of our “climate forests.” We’ve heard too many trees fall in our forests. Now, it’s time to keep them standing.
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Don’t Offer Up Our National Forests for Industrial Carbon Waste Dumping
The Forest Service now seems to think that it can throw away decades of policy preventing “forever” permits that privatize forests for corporate use.
Oct 23, 2023
In my 34-year career at the U.S. Forest Service, the agency worked to support American industry while also maintaining public lands and the renewable resources they foster. That’s why I am shocked to learn that the agency plans to make a fundamental change to how it manages our public lands: allowing private parties to permanently dump industrial pollution in national forests.
While I was serving as Siuslaw National Forest Supervisor in Oregon, and deputy chief for all U.S. national forests, the agency updated its Special Use permit rules in 1998. At that time, the agency was adamant that no industry—no matter how useful to society—had the right to permanently use or occupy national forest lands. The agency was clear that it opposed “an exclusive and perpetual use of Federal land.” To do otherwise would undermine longstanding policy meant to protect national forest ecosystems and recreational uses.
Now, in an alarming contradiction, the Forest Service proposes to blow a pipeline-sized hole in its regulations, quoting here “to allow exclusive or perpetual right of use or occupancy... of National Forest System (NFS) lands” for carbon waste injection and storage. This carbon waste, in addition to requiring pipelines and injection wells, can cause people and animals to suffocate or even die. This I know: Once gases are piped underground, there are no do-overs. What’s done is done. And I wouldn’t want to be a Forest Service ranger working anywhere near these dangerous operations.
The agency has a golden opportunity to elevate the value of carbon sequestration by protecting mature and old-growth forests.
Why the abrupt change? Nothing in laws establishing our national forests has changed since the rule was updated in the 1990s, but the Forest Service now seems to think that it can throw away decades of policy preventing “forever” permits that privatize forests for corporate use.
Maybe the answer comes—as it often does—from following the money. The carbon would likely come from smokestacks of facilities like coal-fired power plants. Fossil fuel companies are eager to adopt carbon capture and storage as a way perpetuate business as usual in the face of our need to transition to renewable energy. After capturing their pollution, these industries have to put it somewhere. Sending the waste through pipelines to national forests is surely more appealing than dealing with landowner opposition to carbon pipeline companies’ efforts to take private property by eminent domain. To add icing to the cake: the federal government is offering companies massive tax subsidies to dispose of their carbon waste, even though research has shown this program is wrought with fraud.
Some national forests will be targeted sooner based on their geology, but this rule change puts all of them at risk of future applicants’ desire to make quick profits and spoil public lands permanently. Impacts of this rule change could spread across our landscape: National forests are widely distributed throughout America, and highly valued for recreation, domestic water sources, crucial fish and wildlife habitat, and outstanding scenery.
Ultimately, policy questions turn on values. Forests store tremendous amounts of carbon–naturally! The agency has a golden opportunity to elevate the value of carbon sequestration by protecting mature and old-growth forests. Isn’t this a better values choice than chasing tired polluting industry practices that are squarely opposite where our climate change battle should be heading?
The Forest Service should abandon its proposal to permanently privatize the public’s land and endanger our shared renewable resources and ecosystems, which only benefits a small group of rich companies and investors. National forests have a huge role to play in protecting biodiversity and storing carbon in forested landscapes. Allowing polluters to permanently industrialize these lands will only rob the public of real climate solutions in order to chase after fraught, false ones.
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