For sale by the GOP: Our public land — and our shared history

America’s public lands are back in the crosshairs as Senate Republicans work on their own version of Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which recently passed the House and encapsulates the president’s policy agenda. After legislators were forced to drop a provision from the House bill that sought to sell off half a million acres, GOP senators now intend to mandate the disposal of between 2 million and 3 million acres of land across 11 Western states belonging to the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

This is the latest effort by a group of Western legislators and lobbyists to sell off public lands to states and business interests, and increase the leasing of them for mining, drilling and logging. The provision has found a champion in Interior Secretary (and former North Dakota Gov.) Doug Burgum, and leaked documents from the agency have revealed the intention to exploit public lands as convenient, disposable assets. Experts and advocacy groups warn that land near Yosemite and Tahoe in California, Sabino Canyon and Mount Lemmon in Arizona and large parcels of Arapahoe, San Juan and Rio Grande National Forests in Colorado could potentially be threatened under the current bill’s very limited exemptions for wilderness areas and lands of environmental concern.

Americans should resist blanket public land sales and act to preserve the lands we have left. It is easy to overlook the centrality of land to the way that societies work, even after a large portion of their populations move to cities. How societies manage their land has enduring consequences for everything from social and economic inequality to health and environmental quality. America’s public lands remain an unparalleled site of recreation for all, and a reservoir of biodiversity and natural resources that have defined our past and are critical to our shared future.

The privatization of land has often moved hand-in-hand with the marginalization and exclusion of some people – such as Native Americans in what became the United States, Black South Africans during apartheid and peasants removed from common lands in the UK and Italy during enclosure movements – for the benefit of a select few. It has also fostered severe environmental and ecosystem degradation. The uprooting of prairies across the Great Plains and the Dust Bowl could not have occurred without the massive settler movement triggered by the Homestead Act of 1862. These episodes show that reshuffling who owns the land can radically shift power dynamics and the trajectories of societies.

Public lands are a unique feature of the American West. While there is a small collection of public land in eastern states, slightly over half of all land in the West, comprising hundreds of millions of acres of land, is owned by the federal government. In some states, federal land is the overwhelming majority of all land. It covers some 85 percent of Nevada and nearly 70 percent of Utah.

This vast share in the West is a relic of its settlement. When the U.S. acquired these lands through the Louisiana Purchase, the Oregon Treaty and the Mexican-American War, there were no states in these areas to manage vast tracts of land. The federal government forcibly displaced indigenous people from large swaths of land and handed it out to settlers. As they felled forests, threatened major species and exploited natural resources at an alarming scale, a growing conservation movement arose to preserve the landscapes and ecosystems that remained. Because of this history, the federal government held onto hundreds of millions of acres of land.

Since then, there has been an enduring standoff between the federal government and some western states and interests over who should manage public lands. That standoff has flared up through events like the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s, and armed confrontations in 2014 and 2016 between militants and the federal government over the Bureau of Land Management.

The current effort to sell off public lands through legislation reflects this long-simmering discontent. Utah has been especially vocal in its effort to wrest land from the federal government and convert it into state-owned land that it could then use as it pleases. The state sued the government last year for control over tens of millions of acres. The Supreme Court recently denied this challenge.

Legislators like Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee are now pursuing the sale or transfer of public lands, arguing that it would help address housing shortages, promote economic growth and align land use with local interests while filling the federal government’s depleted coffers. But only about 0.1% of federal land is situated in or adjacent to urban areas and is suitable for housing. And legislators have flagged far more lands for disposal, including popular recreation areas and land adjacent to national parks, conservation areas and Native American reservations.

Given the immense value of land and its tendency to appreciate in value, selling public land to wealthy individuals and companies could fuel a further rise in inequality. It would almost certainly lead these areas to be cordoned off from public use, truncating shared spaces for recreation and nature access and the benefits that come with them. And if ecologically sensitive lands are targeted for development or resource extraction, it could lead to environmental damage while accelerating climate change and the loss of biodiversity, with repercussions for society as a whole.

The extent of public land in America is as unique as it is central to our shared history. Ceding that land to private interests or cashing out on it would be a mistake, the consequences of which would resound for generations.