Interior Proposes Public Land Selloffs in New Strategic Plan

On Wednesday, November 11, the Department of the Interior released a 28-page strategic plan, which would direct the federal agency’s operations for the next four years. The plan’s strategic priorities, which include selling off public lands and prioritizing the development of extractive resource development and energy infrastructure, are raising major red flags for conservation leaders.

Perhaps most notable are the strategic plan’s directives to sell federal public lands, the first of which comes in a section on increasing energy production. To foster this goal, the plan calls for the Interior to “pursue strategic rights-of-way agreements, land exchanges and direct transfer of lands in support of reliable energy production and transport.”

“A strong and prosperous America requires a reliable, affordable and secure energy foundation,” argued Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a letter at the beginning of the strategic plan. “Our team is actively expanding domestic energy production and securing our critical minerals supply chain—reducing reliance on foreign adversaries, accelerating innovation and protecting the global environment.”

The next call for public land selloffs comes later in the plan within section about reducing red tape and strengthening collaboration with partners. There, the plan calls for the department to “decrease the size of the federal estate by offering to states, localities and Tribes the opportunity to purchase federal lands.”

The plan specifies that this land will not be of “nationally significant federal lands.” Conservation leaders, however, say this is still serious cause for concern. “I am hunting Montana right now, and I am having a great time. I am putting limits of pheasants in my bag. I am watching deer. I have lots of options as to where to go on land that is not going to be of national interest,” says Ryan Callaghan, President & CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. “[Selling this kind of land] would be catastrophic to what we know today as hunting and fishing.”

The call for selling off federal public lands comes just over a year after Senator Mike Lee attempted to mandate the sale of 2 to 3 million acres of federal public lands in the budget reconciliation bill. That effort failed following severe pushback from millions of Americans, including a strong contingent of hunters and anglers, despite the land proposed in the selloffs not being considered “nationally significant” from the standpoint of being in or near National Parks.

That the Department of the Interior would prioritize the divestment of federal public lands so soon following that failed attempt is striking. “Americans have made their position clear: Public lands should stay in public hands,” said Michael Carroll, director of BLM campaigns at The Wilderness Society. “But instead of safeguarding these shared places, the Department of the Interior has made selling them off an official goal. This unprecedented plan favors oil, gas, mining and development interests over ordinary people, and it threatens our shared outdoor heritage and our freedom to explore it.”

Transferring federal lands into state control could have many drawbacks, considering states are often mandated to prioritize revenue on their lands instead of managing for multiple uses. Meanwhile, recent reports have shown that the cost of managing public lands for states could balloon, forcing them to privatize said lands instead of keeping them open to the public.

“We have public land. We have access to it. We can hunt it and we can fish it right now. Why does that need to change?” says Callaghan.

Another controversial part of the strategic plan is the prioritization of increasing energy infrastructure to specifically power data center development, which recent surveys have shown to be widely unpopular among the American public. Burgum, however, is personally invested in the AI industry and touts this “the first time in human history we can turn electricity into intelligence.”

Additionally, the strategic plan directs the Interior to stop using the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to purchase new properties. Instead, it “will shift its investment focus to conservation and recreation access easements on privately owned lands.” For context, the LWCF has historically used funds from offshore oil and gas extraction to fund conservation projects and increase public access to recreation, including through the acquisition of lands by federal agencies.

“At every turn, the plan prioritizes extraction over conservation, emphasizing the need to pillage our public lands in order to power AI data centers,” says Communications Director Kate Groetzinger of the Center for Western Priorities. “This plan makes it clear Burgum will continue offering our public lands up to oil CEOs and tech companies on a silver platter. This is exactly the opposite of what Western voters want.”

What’s Next

The strategic plan comes at a major inflection point for public land management in the U.S. Senators are currently considering a permitting bill known as “BAAJA,” which is essentially intended to permitting easier for transmitting energy. Conservation groups, however, worry that the legislation could come at the expense of the conservation safeguards and lead to the degradation of key fish and wildlife habitats. Groetzinger goes so far as to say that passing it in its current form alongside the new strategic plan would be “a death sentence for public lands.”

While the strategic plan doesn’t come with an open comment period, conservation groups are encouraging folks to contact their senators and ask them to pause BAAJA and rewrite the legislation before moving forward.

Moreover, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) also recently proposed a rule that would overhaul the guidelines for creating resource management plans in part by scrapping public comment periods. Experts say that modifying this rule could pave the way for the public land selloffs called for in the strategic plan. The BLM is currently accepting public comments on that rule change through January 11.

“The only reason we have public lands is because we demand that we do,” says Callaghan. “The only reason that we didn't see a big public land sell-off during budget reconciliation two summers ago is because people stood up and said no. The only reason that we haven't seen multiple public land sell-off bills since then is because our senators and congresspeople understood that that would be roundly rejected. And it's all because people made those phone calls, wrote those emails, made those social media posts, and let people know their opinion.”

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