Is the push to sell public land a solution or a risk to conservation?
Close to midnight in the Committee on Natural Resources meeting last week, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., and Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, proposed and passed an amendment to the 2025 fiscal year reconciliation bill that would market multiple parcels of public land in both states.
Nevada and Utah have the largest amount of federally owned land in the country, and Maloy argued during the committee meeting that not all federally owned land holds the same value. It would be best used by the public in other ways.
'Some should not be available for disposal. We all agree on that,' she said. Her district includes some of the state's most famous landmarks and national parks — areas such as Washington County, which encompasses parts of Zion National Park. It also includes St. George, one of the fastest-growing communities in the nation. Overall, her district consists of 82% federally managed land.
'The high percentage of federal lands impacts the local government's ability to work on economic and transportation development, manage natural resources and fully take advantage of recreational activities,' she added, further explaining that the amendment would target 60 regional parcels totaling over 10,000 acres 'to be conveyed to the water district, the city of St. George and Washington County at fair market value.'
Despite the amendment passing the House committee 23-18, environmental groups and recreation advocates have been vocal in opposing developmental pressures in the name of public land conservation.
Steve Bloch, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance's legal director, cautioned that this could impact the American West as we know it.
'There's a right and a wrong way to identify tracks of land for disposal. The right way is working through the processes that the Bureau of Land Management has for identifying very discrete tracts of land that might be suitable for things like affordable housing or for other purposes,' he told the Deseret News. Bloch said that the organization felt Maloy and Amodei had not taken this route because they introduced the 33-page amendment 'at the 13th hour of a 13-hour hearing, literally at 11 o'clock at night.'
Bloch was among close to 50 protesters that attended a field hearing on Monday to show public opposition to Maloy's public lands amendment during a House Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources in Cedar City.
'These are places that Utahns hunt and fish and recreate on, you know, enjoy with their families, and all of that's at risk,' he said. The fear is that though it's generally a small amount of land, eventually more and more federal land will be sold off too.
None of the public land resides in a national park; a few parcels (11, 19, and 3) border Zion National Park.
In her statements before the committee, Maloy stated that the land totals one-third of one percent of the federal land in the state.
Bloch said that what he thinks it comes down to is 'Republican legislators who don't appreciate the value of federally public lands. They think of it as simply numbers in a ledger, to sell off some tracts of land and to use it as a part of a tax cut plan for billionaires, and (it's) so out of touch with how Utahns and Westerners and Americans think about federal lands.'
However, Maloy has been very vocal about the fact that the public lands amendment requires that the Utah land be conveyed at fair market value to public entities, and it will be conveyed directly to the counties, water district, and St. George.
She told Deseret News, 'It's not a money grab. It's a revenue source for the federal government' that will bring revenue to the country and ultimately reduce the nation's deficit.
It is also 'ensuring a strong economy for Utah, which is good for everybody.'
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