A plan to sell off about millions of acres of public land for housing development has raised eyebrows among many Oregonians who say it threatens popular cycling routes in nearby forests.
The legislation is included in the Trump Administration’s budget bill and it was released last week by the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources (ENR). The proposal would require the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to identify between 2 and 3 million acres of land and sell it to the highest bidder. Any land sold through this process must be developed into housing or “community needs as defined by the Secretary of the Interior.”
According to the Wilderness Society, 21.7 million acres of public land in Oregon would become available for sale. A map shared on their website shows large swaths of land in the Cascade Range that could be sold. USFS tracts east of Portland between the Sandy and Columbia Rivers — including popular roads and trails around Larch Mountain and the Bull Run Reservoir — could be sold for development. And while the bill text says protected areas, national parks and national monuments would not be eligible for sale, the Trump Administration is also making moves to undo those designations.
The ranking Democrat on the ENR Committee, Sen. Martin Heinrich from New Mexico, said the legislation would, “Take a sledgehammer to our national public lands,” and that it’s not about housing: “It’s about giving their billionaire buddies your land.” The Wilderness Society says the bill would set an “extremely dangerous precedent” and that it, “includes a range of extraordinary giveaways aimed at privatizing public lands.”
Republicans who support the legislation reject these criticisms and say the total acreage sold would amount to just 0.5% to 0.75% of the total land currently held by the BLM and USFS. They say it would help solve the housing affordability crisis because only lands that are 1-5 miles from a major population center would qualify for the sale. A fact sheet published by the ENR Committee states that, “Unlocking federal land for housing will develop millions of single-family homes, resulting in greater housing supply and making housing more affordable.” (Note they mention “single-family homes,” which validates fears that any housing built on the lands wouldn’t be affordable.)
Outdoor advocacy groups are wasting no time organizing opposition.
If the bill were to pass, the current language says the Secretary of the Interior would have to consult with the Governor of the state were the land sale is proposed, as well as local government and tribal representatives. But given the track record of playing fast-and-loose with the law and major lack of trust in the Trump Administration in general, those provisions are no source of solace.
The public lands sale legislation is part of a package of proposals in Trump’s “big beautiful bill” that includes a vast overhaul of energy policy that would, “repeal billions in unspent Green New Deal handouts,” vastly expand timber farming and oil and gas leases, encourage coal mining, and more. Learn more about the bill at ENR’s website.
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Repeal the Green New Deal? What Green New Deal?
Ah yes meant to put that in quotes. The Rs said the bill would “repeal Green New Deal handouts”
That’s a wild statement, because barely any of that money ever even got applied for and everything else is getting cancelled and denied. There’s nothing left to repeal.
I know that members of GOP are allergic to honesty and integrity, but lying about this being about housing is just such a lazy lie, I don’t see why they bother.
They obviously don’t believe in climate change but increasing housing right next to/in forests that are going to burn more frequently and hotter is absolutely brain dead.
Oregon needs to reign in people living in high-risk areas. I see them rebuilding places like Mill City when its just going to burn again at some point. It’s unsustainable to have to protect housing built in the middle of the woods.
“The proposal would require the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to identify between 2 and 3 million acres …” –but 21 million acres in Oregon?
This regime should not be allowed to make these decisions about public land. The amount of corruption we’ve already seen disqualifies them from any notion of stewardship. If the Republican Party is able to push this through they’re going to wear it for a long time.
yes that’s correct. There’s several hundred million acres that are eligible, but only a much smaller amount will be mandated for sale after the specific parcels are identified by the agencies to be sold.
If I’m trying to be as rational as I can, it’s worth saying that the BLM does have some tracts of land that it probably should sell off – but most of the land in Western Oregon managed by the BLM dates to the Oregon & California Revested Lands (wiki link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroad_Revested_Lands). Until fairly recently, these lands were subject to special treatment since the Federal Government took them back from the O&C after a massive fraud case. There is a decent amount of that land which is in the tri county area of marginal recreation value that could feasibly be developed as housing, but I think very little (if any) is within the Metro UGB. I would assume that most of the O&C lands near Portland are only economical for timber sale, so this would most likely look like a transfer of timberlands from public to private hands. In Southern Oregon, especially near Roseburg, Grants Pass, and Medford there’s likely to be some land that could be used for non-timber uses, but I’m not familiar enough with the area to comment more.
The history of the O&C lands is quite interesting, and I am broadly of the opinion that some of that land could be allocated to private uses, especially in Southern Oregon. The fact that a timber sale valuation was used for federal reimbursement to O&C counties was a primary factor in the overlogging endemic to the Coast Range and the Western Cascades. The fact that those counties primarily used that money to artificially deflate property taxes, rather than improve infrastructure or build a better civil society is still a huge bummer, but this bill won’t address any of these issues. It’s just a lazy fire sale of public land with no real demonstration of need, with the housing justification especially flimsy when you consider the locational aspect of the majority of the land. And in Oregon, it makes basically no sense given that there is exceedingly little BLM/Forest Service land within a UGB. Based on what I’ve seen, the 1 to 5 mile designation is utterly meaningless, and seems to be based on county boundaries. Since western states where most of the nations public land is have massive counties, it means decidedly rural land is included – making the likely uses obviously resource extraction.
But I guess this is just a rant about a bad bill. It’s such mind bogglingly bad policy that I could probably write 10,000 words about it. Tell your reps you hate it!
“They say it would help solve the housing affordability crisis because only lands that are 1-5 miles from a major population center would qualify for the sale.”
This doesn’t seem in keeping with that map, unless we have a VERY broad definition of major population center. By that 1-5 mile measure, very little if any of the highlighted spots would qualify.
There are three definitions the federal government could reasonably use: urbanized area (UZA), metropolitan statistical area (MSA), and city limits. I think city limits is the least likely, since there are tons of major population centers that are not incorporated. Between UZA and MSA, I think MSA is more likely as it’s a more standard unit of analysis, and being cynical, it includes far more land. “Major” is also not a standardized idea, but the government does distinguish between metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, and using just metropolitan would be easy.
I would still oppose a public land sale for areas between 1 and 5 miles with a UZA definition, but that would be justifiable with the logic used. Using an MSA definition is ludicrous in the Western US where counties are massive and often include tons of rural land. All of southern California is within the bounds of a county in a major MSA, but that includes all of multiple national parks and tons of national forests.