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Map shows which 16M acres of Calif. public lands eligible for sale in GOP bill

By Anabel Sosa

As the Senate continues to comb through the Big Beautiful Bill, 258 million acres of public land across the western U.S., including large swaths of California, could soon be eligible for sale.

A map published by the Wilderness Society, a nonprofit land conservation organization, reveals which parcels of land across 11 states would be up for grabs, in accordance with the land sale proposal detailed by Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

If the budget is passed by the July 4 deadline, an estimated 16 million acres in California are at risk of being sold over the next five years. Those vulnerable parcels of land include areas adjacent to Yosemite National Park, Mount Shasta, Big Sur and Lake Tahoe. 

Lee has been unrelenting in his push for the sale of public lands, saying it could promote economic growth and housing across the western U.S. and could generate upward of $10 billion for the federal government. 

In all, up to 3 million acres across all states would be authorized to be sold out of 258 million eligible acres across the West. Those sales could take place in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

“They capped it at 3 million acres, but 258 million acres is on the menu,” Michael Carroll, Bureau of Land Management campaign director for the Wilderness Society, told SFGATE. “People could have their favorite hiking open space or outdoor areas sold off right out from under their community. It’s a drastic change in what we could see on the ground across the West.”

What also alarms Carroll, beyond the sheer scale of land, is who the potential buyers would be. The updated bill language states that “any interested party” could make a purchase.

States would have first right of refusal to sell land, but Carroll called the provision “a joke.” “Most states are facing massive budget shortfalls this year and don’t have resources to keep up against billionaires or millionaires, or corporations,” who would likely want to buy the land, he said. 

Environmentalists fear the sale of these critical public lands could be counterintuitive to conservation efforts, including the longevity of wildlife, and also pose a threat to wildfire management in parts of rural states that depend on consistent land maintenance. 

The short-term fiscal benefits of these sales worry opponents, including a majority of Democrats, who say that it will only benefit the wealthiest.

The land in question is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. That acreage does not include federally protected land, including national parks and recreation areas, although, after a recent Department of Justice opinion that stated the Donald Trump administration has authority to undo national monuments, it’s unclear if national monuments are also at threat. 

Lee previously introduced a proposal to sell off 500,000 acres of land but only in Nevada and Utah. That plan was supported by nearly all House Republicans, but Rep. Ryan Zinke, an outspoken Republican from Montana, said he would not vote for the budget bill when it was being deliberated in May if it included the public land sale provision. 

“Once the land is sold, we will never get it back,” he said at the time. 

House Republicans in late May struck out any section that called for the sale of public lands from the bill.

But last week, the senator from Utah reintroduced the idea — this time with more land across more states at risk of sale. Montana was not on the list.