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Since returning to office, President Trump has tried to dramatically shrink the federal government, firing workers and moving to sell off federal real estate. Republicans have also been debating whether to make it easier to sell off some public land to help pay for Trump's domestic agenda. NPR's Kirk Siegler reports this is reigniting a decades-old controversy in the West.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: In most Western states, the federal government owns half or more of all the land, and it seems like every day here now there's a headline warning that public lands are in danger of being transferred to state control or even privatized. An editorial in Idaho's largest newspaper predicts they're about to be sold to the highest bidder. On Instagram, the National Wildlife Federation says public lands are on the chopping block. The inference being that President Trump's mass firings of U.S. Forest Service and other employees are a step toward eliminating the federal lands agencies altogether.
TRACY STONE-MANNING: Congress is considering selling off our public lands to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
SIEGLER: Tracy Stone-Manning headed the federal Bureau of Land Management during the Biden administration. The agency controls a tenth of all U.S. land. She's now president of The Wilderness Society.
STONE-MANNING: What we're seeing from this administration is no balance at all.
SIEGLER: Groups like The Wilderness Society seized on a recently leaked Department of Interior plan that calls for giving more land management authority to local governments in places where there's a lot of federal land. This plan also calls for the release of, quote, "federal holdings" to build housing. Environmentalists say this is a blueprint for turning over tens of millions of acres of prized hunting and recreation land. But Casey Hammond, who was the acting director of the BLM during the first Trump administration, calls this fearmongering.
CASEY HAMMOND: Frankly, this is how many NGOs attempt to stay relevant. It helps them sell more calendars and teddy bears and fundraise.
SIEGLER: Hammond says Republicans are simply trying to correct course from what he says was a disastrous conservation-only strategy for public lands during the Biden era.
HAMMOND: I don't see an aggressive push for any wholesale transfer. I don't see it in any of these draft documents that have come out. I don't hear it in conversation among appointees. I don't hear it on the Hill.
SIEGLER: Still, Republican leaders in Utah, with the backing of Senator Mike Lee, are vowing to keep suing to wrest control of 18 million acres of federal lands. And the idea of an overbearing federal government has long been red meat for Republican fundraisers. It was President Reagan who first coined sagebrush rebels, calling for federal rangelands to be turned over to cattle ranchers and miners. A Reagan appointee wrote the section on federal lands in Project 2025. It calls for speeding up permitting for energy projects and reversing Biden-era climate policies, but there's no mention of transferring ownership of the land. Again, Casey Hammond.
HAMMOND: I think what we found during the last Trump administration is there's really no - there's no need for such discussion if we're doing our job. And that is to say, if we're effectively managing federal lands, there's no reason to turn them over to the states to be managed better.
SIEGLER: This may be a nod to today's political realities in the West, too, though. A controversial proposal that would have made it easier to sell off federal lands was taken out of the House Republican budget late last week. But at the University of Utah, law professor John Ruple says Congress still has the authority at any time to work with Trump and pass a law selling off federal land to anyone - states, tribes, oil companies.
JOHN RUPLE: That's kind of the could piece. I think the bigger question is, should the government do this? Should the U.S. convey away lands that belong to all Americans?
SIEGLER: Two Trump-supporting congressmen from Idaho and Montana say no. They recently introduced a bill to prevent any wholesale transfer or sale of federal land.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Denver.
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