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“Public lands eligible for sale in the bill encompass over 250 million acres, including local recreation areas, wilderness study areas, inventoried roadless areas, critical wildlife habitat and big game migration corridors.” The bill would allow for the sale of these lands, with a specific mandate to sell 2 to 3 million acres within five years, according to The Wilderness Society Analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as of 6/16 2025.
NOTE: On June 23, the Senate parliamentarian flagged the public lands’ sale for removal from the [Sen R. Reconciliation] bill because it “contains material extraneous to the budget reconciliation process” under the Byrd Rule.
In my last post, I wrote a bit about the idea of loss, and what we have lost as Americans in just the last 6 months — our values and ideals, and even the ray of hope we need to pursue our American Dream. Unfortunately, the losses continue.
I’m sharing the latest updates on the proposed budget reconciliation bill because it is such an incredibly important piece of legislation to all of us, not just to the millions of Americans who will be directly impacted by the likely cuts to SNAP (food stamp) benefits and Medicaid that will hurt the poor, elderly and disabled for decades to come.
The bill, officially titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), is currently under review by the Senate, with a target date of this Friday, June 27 for revisions and a vote before sending it back to the House. The White House is demanding that the finalized legislation be on President Trump’s desk for his signature by July 4, a little over one week away. But the contents of this bill and what it’s selling and slashing are being obscured by other news and the constant chaos that surrounds this administration—none of which may be as impactful to the average American as the passage of this bill.
There has much focus on the new Medicaid work and documentation requirements, cuts to food stamps and Affordable Care Act subsidies1, but little talk about the proposed sell-off of public lands currently owned and managed by the federal government. And make no mistake, if even a partial sell-off of our precious public lands is allowed, the collective loss to current and future generations will be as vast as the millions of acres of forest, mountains and streams we open for logging and development.
The Hill reported on June 25 that the mandated federal land sell-off has been reduced from as much as 3.3 million acres to an upper limit of 1.2 million acres and only from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property. The previous House version also included the sale of millions of acres managed by the National Forest Service, that has been at least temporarily stripped from the bill by the Senate parliamentarian ruling noted above.
The map below prepared by The Wilderness Society shows lands originally designated for sale under both the BLM and National Forest Service.
Even this revised number of 1.2 million acres of your land and my land to be auctioned off under the auspices of housing development is 1.2 million acres too much. No word yet on what type of housing will be built (multi-million dollar homes or perhaps subsidized housing for the poor) or what the specific restrictions, if any, on the development will be. This provision leaves some Republicans and many Democrats worried:
“Lands like these are supposed to belong to every single American,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.)…“Some of my colleagues are very serious about taking these places away and giving them to someone else…we will not let them sell our birthright to build luxury condos or second homes or to pay for tax cuts,” Heinrich added.
But the Trump Administration is attacking our national forests from another angle with the opening of 58.5 million acres of National Forest land to development, and it will be much easier to accomplish.
In the last days of his administration in 2001, President Bill Clinton put in place a National Forest Service rule that restricted the construction and reconstruction of roads, logging, mining, drilling and other development on over 58 million acres of National Forest Service land, primarily back country, pristine, American treasures that according to a recent New York Times article, include:
The unspoiled land in question includes Tongass National Forest in Alaska, North America’s largest temperate rainforest; Reddish Knob in the Shenandoah Mountains, one of the highest points in Virginia; and millions of acres of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho.
The pending rescission of the 25 year old “Roadless Rule” is decried as ruinous to our most sensitive public lands:
“The Trump administration’s disdain for nature knows no bounds,” Ms. Spivak [public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity] said. “The roadless rule is one of our country’s most important conservation achievements, and we’ll fight like hell to keep these protections in place.”
“If an individual is denied coverage or disenrolled because they do not meet the Medicaid work requirements, they would be ineligible for subsidized marketplace coverage.” CNBC Analysis published June 25, 2025.
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What about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (that’s its official name, by the way), and its proposal to mandate the sale of over a million acres or more of our public lands, and the rescission of “the roadless rule” that will open up over 58 million acres of pristine National Forest land to development? Is this OK with you? Should we “fight like hell”? Let me know in the Comment Section below:
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