Overview

• Senator Mike Lee’s amendment would require the Agriculture and Interior departments to dispose of 2.1 to 3.2 million acres managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in 11 Western states for housing or infrastructure projects.
• Senator Steve Daines and several other Republican senators have publicly opposed the measure, with Daines calling it unlikely to pass in its current form.
• Governors at a Western summit split on the proposal, with New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham rejecting sales without state input and Wyoming’s Mark Gordon endorsing targeted transfers to relieve landlocked communities.
• Conservation and hunting groups warn that selling more than 250 million acres of federally managed lands could undermine public access, threaten wildlife corridors and risk water quality.
• The land sales provision is part of a budget reconciliation package that also features major tax cuts, deep Medicaid reductions and rollbacks of clean energy incentives.