This land was your land (but now it’s my land)
The Big Ugly Bill revives an old scheme: auction off America’s wild public lands to the highest bidder.
Western public lands are one of the most valuable treasures held by the American public. Paris has the Louvre. Istanbul has the Hagia Sofia. Rome has the Coliseum. Kenya has the Serengeti. And the United States has vast and spectacular western lands, where wildlife follow ancient migration pathways and the howl of the wolf echoes from the mountainsides.
Right-wing politicians want to take these public lands away. Sell them off to the highest bidder. For housing, they say. That’s the excuse. But who’s really going to buy up the lands where the public has camped, and hiked, and fished, and enjoyed the wildlife for generations?
National Forest lands are proposed for sale. In the Pacific Northwest, some of the last old-growth timberlands, saved from the chainsaw by the spotted owl and the Endangered Species Act, are on the chopping block. Literally and figuratively. Would private timber corporations like to buy up some of these ancient forests, shield them from public view with ‘private property’ signs, and profit from their exploitation for the rest of time? They might.
In the Southwest, vast labyrinths of canyons and mesas are for sale. The mining industry has been prospecting them for years, finding the most profitable deposits of minerals, like uranium, coal, and copper. But when the lands are public, mine proposals are subject to public review and comment, environmental impact statements that might impose environmental restrictions. Would the mining industry like to privatize public lands, and fire up the giant dumptrucks and walking draglines to strip-mine the land without that annoying federal oversight? They might.
Across the sagebrush sea, priority habitats identified for sage grouse conservation shield habitats that support migrating pronghorns, wintering elk and mule deer, ferruginous hawks, burrowing owls, pygmy rabbits, and an array of rare sagebrush obligate species. Might the oil industry like to get title to these lands, to skip the delays that come with complying with federal laws, and be able to get straight down to the business of fragmenting and industrializing sage grouse habitats while commodity prices are at their peak? Probably so.
All across the dusty corners of the rural West, there are ranchers who have ranted for generations about federal control of their lives, and complained about the grazing permits that allow them to rent public range for the bargain-basement cost of $1.35 per cow-calf pair each month, while they siphon off drought payment after fencing subsidy to pay for expensive new pickup trucks. While corporate magnates that have bought trophy ranches to control vast fiefdoms of public land build grand estates with endless vistas of undeveloped land. Might these ranchers like to own outright the public lands on which they are squatting? Perhaps.
And what about the real estate developers, if the purpose is to create housing? Surely, the biggest profits will be in trophy homes, not affordable housing for working people, but business is business. Might the real estate developers be salivating over the high-priced real estate bordering resort communities like Aspen and Jackson, that presently is held in public trust, kept in open space and spectacular trail networks? Almost certainly.
And what does the American public stand to lose if 2.2 to 3.3 million acres of the public estate are sold off? The freedom to roam, to explore, to discover, the wild West of their collective imaginations. The engine of tourism that drives rural economies as visitors flock from around the nation – and across the world – to spend their tourism dollars in remote corners of the rural West. And the priceless inheritance of wildlife habitats, where native species recover as quickly as we can take the jackboot of profit-driven exploitation off their necks. Once the “no trespassing” signs and the barbed-wire fences go up, the public must keep out.
True, these lands are stolen lands, taken by force or swindled from the Indigenous peoples who lived there from time immemorial, in a sustainable balance with the natural world. So really, what does it matter, if these lands are swindled once again? Many tribes signed treaties in which they reserved the right to hunt, fish, or gather in their usual and accustomed places, far beyond the boundaries of reservations where they retained title to the land. But in many cases, these treaties specify that this right occurs on unreserved federal lands, so if they are privatized, those treaty rights would be taken away, without so much as a by-your-leave from the treaty holders.
Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill is a massive grift on many levels. Selling off public lands is one of its most egregious offenses. The first batch of land sales – required by the draft legislation to sell off 2.2 to 3.3 million acres of public property – would almost certainly be followed by more land grabs, triggering an avalanche of selloffs that would continue until all the desirable and profitable public lands are taken. It's a land heist on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the land-rush days of the 1800s. And if we know what’s good for us, we have to stop it.
Erik Molvar is the Executive Director for Western Watersheds Project. emolvar@westernwatersheds.org