Latest news with #RoadlessRule
The Hill
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
The Fix Our Forests Act prioritizes industry over nature
America's public forests are under assault. We have already seen the massive timber harvests called for by President Trump's executive order, the elimination of the Roadless Rule, and the gutting of wildlife protection efforts. Those are the broad stokes, but there are also finer maneuvers underway, such as abandoning the traditional practice whereby forest personnel paint-mark the trees selected for cutting, handing those decisions over instead to the timber companies themselves. Or the various subsections that keep popping up in the 'Big Beautiful Bill' — for example, giving timber companies an option to pay for hastened environmental review and defunding endangered species recovery efforts. It also arbitrarily requires the Forest Service to increase harvests by 250 million acres annually for nine years. This is the context within which we must now view the Fix Our Forests Act, a logging-in-the-name-of-fire-prevention bill, stuffed with provisions that significantly override scientific and citizen review. If it passes, those overrides would be handed over to an administration that has made clear its ambition to 'log, baby, log' using whatever tools of governance it can. For the next three and a half years, the Fix Our Forest Act would be the Trump Our Forests Act. Trump is wasting no time opening the forests to extraction, yet his two main vehicles — the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management — are somewhat limited in their authority as federal agencies. Many of Trump's ambitions are therefore vulnerable to legal challenge by the citizenry. This is where the Fix Our Forests Act comes in. By putting the environmental overrides and judicial constraints into statute, Congress imbues these agencies with greater legal authority, significantly raising the legal bar for citizen redress. That so many Democrats appear willing to go along with this is nothing less than astonishing, especially given that just last year Senate Democrats shot the bill down, largely due to those very overrides of citizen control. Why the sudden acquiescence? Let's call it a political fear of fire. When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), an enthusiastic Fix Our Forests Act supporter, introduced the bill for the May 6 Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, she invoked ' growing threats across the nation,' putting wavering Democrats in the difficult position of looking soft on wildfire. She then linked the Fix Our Forests Act to the horrific January fires in Los Angeles, which were still burning when Fix Our Forests Act proponents rushed a revised version of the bill through the House to capitalize on the tragedy. It was a deceitful move, though. The Fix Our Forests Act, which focuses on logging in the backcountry, would have done nothing for the people of Los Angeles. The fires they suffered were grassland and chaparral fires on non-federal land and spread from building to building in the city. This sort of mismatch between claim and reality appears throughout the Fix Our Forests Act. It claims to be about fire reduction, yet it allows harvest of a forest's most fire-resilient trees — the larger, mature ones. It claims to be science based yet ignores science which draws different conclusions. It claims to protect communities from fire yet focuses mostly on wildlands logging far from human settlement. There seems to be some confusion as well. One of the main arguments against the 'fuels reduction' narrative, is that it's not fuels but climatic conditions — hot, dry, windy — that precipitate fire. Yet Klobuchar made her case for the Fix Our Forest Act by citing 'Rising temperatures, drier summers, longer fire seasons and earlier snow melt…' In other words, climate. In fact, many studies show that industrial scale thinning, by exposing soil to sunlight, exacerbates the very climatic conditions Klobuchar referred to — heat, desiccation and wind. To be sure, real people are in real danger. But as it turns out, there's already a bill to help them. The Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act provides designated funding to actual communities to do the things that will truly provide protection, such as hardening homes, improving emergency escape and access, and treating the land immediately around the communities themselves, all while using the process to lower insurance premiums. That bill has been held back in favor of the Fix Our Forest Act, with nary a peep from Democrats. Fear of fire is understandable, but political fear of fire — following the political winds on a bill that strips citizens of their ability to contest logging on millions of acres of maturing forest — isn't. If Democrats then hand such a bill to an administration that shows clear contempt for public process and governance, they will betray their own tradition of environmental stewardship. Democrats have been looking pretty hapless lately. Here's their chance to show some grit, by saying no to the Fix Our Forest Act and championing the Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act, which puts people and forests first, not industry profits.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Forest road rule in New Mexico faces potential change
NEW MEXICO (KRQE) — The feds are working to peel back a rule barring new roads from being paved through federal forests, and now, many are wondering what it could mean for two million acres in New Mexico. For decades, the federal 'Roadless Rule' has blocked new road building across New Mexico's untouched back country, but it may soon be a thing of the past. Story continues below News: New Mexico Supreme Court throws out embezzlement charges against former official Trending: A 'professional courtesy': How an officer crossed the line Community: Funding for farming internship program at APS in jeopardy KRQE Investigates: Embattled McKinley County DA asks for emergency funding to keep her office running 'We're going to go back to common sense forest management to ensure that our forests are here for generations to come,' said US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who states that the choice will in part help with wildfire prevention. But conservation groups, such as the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance are skeptical of the Trump Administration's choice. They fear what it could mean for some of the state's forest land. 'Lands the New Mexicans know and love would be at risk because of this rollback,' said NM Wilderness Alliance Executive Director Mark Allison. 'Which was intended to open up these places for industrial activity and development like commercial logging, mining, and oil and gas development.' Other concerns include the impact on outdoor recreation areas, habitat, and sacred tribal lands, as well as the potential of poaching endangered species like the Mexican Grey Wolf. But some New Mexico lawmakers are in favor of the rule change. Silver City Republican Senator Gabriel Ramos says it may help protect communities from wildfire, floods and property damage. 'If you look at every forest fire out here in the Gila, they've used dozers and they've actually cut lines,' said Ramos. 'And if they already had a road there, it would be a lot easier for them to go ahead and cut that line and try and stop the fire from growing.' NM Wilderness Alliance thinks what's being floated as a solution to the wildfires could actually cause more, citing studies showing most fires are human-caused and 90% occur within half-a-mile of a road. 'When you have more roads, you have more people, which means you have more human-caused fires,' said Allison. Near the Carson National Forest, Taos Democratic Senator Bobby Gonzales says there needs to be a balanced approach. 'I know that harvesting timber is important,' said Gonzales. 'But it has to be done that it meets the needs of everyone… Now, just to come in with wide open – developing roads- that does a lot of harm to the land and to restore it back is not that easy.' The US Forest Service still has to go through a long process before repealing the Roadless Rule, which is expected to include public comment. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Gulf Today
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Battles over public lands loom after sell-off proposal fails
Alex Brown, Tribune News Service Hunters, hikers and outdoors lovers of all stripes mounted a campaign in June against a Republican proposal to sell off millions of acres of federal public land. a. But even though the land sales proposal was defeated, experts say federal lands face a slew of other threats from President Donald Trump's administration. Agency leaders have proposed rolling back the 'Roadless Rule' that protects 58 million acres from logging and other uses. Trump's Justice Department has issued a legal opinion that the president is allowed to abolish national monuments. Regulators have moved to slash environmental rules to ramp up logging and oil and gas production. And Trump's cuts to the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of the agencies that manage federal lands. 'This is not over even if the sell-off proposal doesn't make it,' said John Leshy, who served as solicitor for the US Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration. 'The whole thing about leasing or selling timber or throwing them open to mining claims, that's a form of partial privatization. It's pretty much a giveaway.' Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has repeatedly described public lands as America's 'balance sheet.' He has argued that some lands could be used to provide housing, while calling for an expansion of mining and oil and gas drilling to increase their economic output. 'President Trump's energy dominance vision will end those wars abroad, will make life more affordable for every family in America by driving down inflation,' Burgum said before his confirmation hearing. Public lands advocates are bracing for ongoing battles for the rest of Trump's term in office. They expect Republicans to add last-minute public lands amendments to other bills moving through Congress, and for land management agencies to attempt to strip protections from other federal lands. Given the vocal backlash to the initial sell-off plan, advocates expect future attempts to be shaped behind closed doors and advanced with little time for opponents to mount a defense. Meanwhile, they expect states to play a key role in shaping those battles. In Western states, where most federally owned lands are located, many leaders from both parties view public lands as special places open to all Americans and critical for clean water, wildlife and tourism. But some conservatives resent the fact that large portions of their states are managed by officials in Washington, DC, limiting development and private enterprise. Officials in some states, including Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, have pushed lawsuits or resolutions seeking to force the feds to hand over huge amounts of land. Public land experts say the lawmakers behind those efforts will likely press harder now that Trump is in the White House. Such state-level takeover attempts could shape the proposals that emerge from Trump's allies in Washington. The firestorm over federal lands exploded when US Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, introduced legislation that would force the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 3.3 million acres of land. The measure also would direct the agencies to make more than 250 million additional acres eligible for sale. 'We've never seen a threat on this magnitude ever,' said Devin O'Dea, Western policy and conservation manager with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. 'There's been an overwhelming amount of opposition. We've seen record-breaking engagement on this issue.' Lee, a longtime federal lands opponent, claimed the lands were needed for housing and argued the government has been a poor manager of its land. 'Washington has proven time and again it can't manage this land,' Lee said in June when announcing the proposal. 'This bill puts it in better hands.' But a wide-ranging coalition of opponents argued that the proposal had no protections to ensure the lands would be used for affordable housing, and that many of the parcels eligible for sale had little housing potential. A furious social media campaign highlighted cherished hiking trails, fishing lakes and ski slopes that were in danger of being sold, urging people to call their lawmakers to oppose the measure. In recent days, Montana Republican US Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, as well as Idaho Republican US Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, came out in opposition to the land sale proposal. That put into question whether Lee's legislation could earn even a simple majority. Then the Senate parliamentarian ruled the sell-off could not be included in the reconciliation bill without a 60-vote majority. That ruling came a day after Lee posted on social media that he would be making changes to the bill in response to concerns from Hunter Nation, a nonprofit whose board includes Donald Trump Jr. Lee released a scaled-back measure last week that would exempt national forest lands but would direct the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 1.2 million acres. It would require land for sale to be within five miles of a population center and developed to provide housing. Public land advocates say Lee's changes did little to assuage their concerns. They argue that federal land sales or transfers should happen through the current, long-standing process, which requires local stakeholder input and directs the proceeds from land sales to be reinvested into conservation and public access on other parcels. 'It's the overwhelming belief of hunters and anglers that the budget reconciliation process is not the appropriate vehicle for public land sales,' said O'Dea, with the hunting and fishing group. On Saturday evening, Lee announced that he was withdrawing the proposal, saying that Senate rules did not allow him to include protections that land would not be sold to foreign interests. But he pledged to continue the battle over federal land ownership, working with Trump to 'put underutilised federal land to work for American families.' While the sell-off proposal aligned with some state officials' goal of taking over federal lands, some lands experts say private developers would have been the real winner. 'If the lands are transferred to the states without money, the states lose,' said Leshy, the former Interior Department official. 'It's a hit on their budget, which means they're gonna have to sell them off. If states got a significant amount of public lands, a lot of that would end up in private hands.' In Utah, where leaders have made the most aggressive push to take over federal lands, lawmakers argue that they could raise lease prices for oil and gas operations, bringing in enough revenue to cover the state's management costs. 'The policy of the state is to keep these lands open and available to the public,' Speaker Mike Schultz, a Republican, told Stateline. O'Dea pointed to an economic analysis of what it would cost Montana to take over federal lands. The report found it would cost the state $8 billion over 20 years to take on wildfire management, deferred maintenance and mine reclamation. He noted that many Western states have sold off a majority of the 'trust lands' they were granted at statehood, undermining claims that a state takeover would leave lands in the public domain. While Lee's land sales proposal has gotten the biggest headlines, public land advocates are fighting a multifront battle against the Trump administration's moves to roll back the protected status of certain lands, slash environmental rules, and expand logging, mining and drilling operations.
Gizmodo
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Gizmodo
Trump Says Roads Prevent Wildfires. The Truth Is More Complicated
The Trump administration announced its intention earlier this week to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Policy, also known as the 'Roadless Rule,' which restricts road-building, logging, and mining across 58 million acres of the country's national forests. The administration's rationale was that the 'outdated' Roadless Rule has exacerbated wildfire risks. In a statement announcing the policy change, U.S. Agriculture Department Secretary Brooke Rollins said that 'properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land.' Fire ecologists agree that the U.S. needs to step up land management efforts to reduce the likelihood of dangerous conflagrations. But experts don't think more roads penetrating the country's protected national forests is the best way to do that. Most fires — especially those that significantly affect communities—start on private lands that aren't affected by the Roadless Rule, and remote areas can usually be managed for fire risk using flown-in firefighters. Rescinding the Roadless Rule 'does not change our current federal land management capacity to improve management and stop wildfires,' said Camille Stevens-Rumann, interim director of the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute and an associate professor of forest management and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University. 'What opening up currently roadless areas really does is allow for timber extraction.' Before the Forest Service—an agency of the USDA—finalized the Roadless Rule at the very end of the Clinton administration in 2001, the agency struggled to pay for the maintenance of existing roads in national forests, let alone the construction of new ones. But the policy has been controversial, facing multiple challenges from states, private companies, and GOP lawmakers who saw the rule as an impediment to commercial logging. It was repealed in 2005 by the administration of then-president George W. Bush, but reinstated the following year by a federal district court. Lawsuits from states including Alaska and Idaho have attempted to carve out exemptions for their forests, and some Republican lawmakers have facilitated land transfers from federal ownership in order to circumvent Roadless Rule protections. Most recently, in 2020, during President Donald Trump's first term, the Forest Service rolled back the Roadless Rule for the 9 million-acre Tongass National Forest in Alaska. Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska praised the repeal 'fostering opportunities for Alaskans to make a living.' But that decision was reversed in 2023 under then-president Joe Biden. This time around, the Trump administration is deemphasizing logging as a rationale for nixing the Roadless Rule. The USDA press release on the decision only briefly touches on the industry, saying that the Roadless Rule 'hurts jobs and economic development' and that repealing it will allow for 'responsible timber production.' The communication devotes more attention to the supposed wildfire risk that the rule creates, pointing out that 28 million acres of land covered by the rule are at high risk of wildfire, and arguing that repealing it will 'reduce wildfire risk and help protect surrounding communities and infrastructure.' Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, in a column posted to the Forest Service website, said the amount of land lost to wildfire in roadless areas each year has 'more than doubled' since the Roadless Rule's inception, though he does not provide evidence that this is because of the Roadless Rule and not other factors like climate change and the hotter, drier conditions associated with it. Schultz did not respond to a request for comment. The implication of the USDA and Forest Service's statements is that roads can help get firefighters and equipment to remote forests to reduce their risk of fires, or fight fires when they break out. It's true that land managers sometimes need access to densely forested areas to get rid of overgrown plants and dead wood that could fuel a small blaze and turn it into an out-of-control fire. They do this with practices known as tree thinning, which involves the removal of small shrubs and trees, and prescribed burns—intentionally set, carefully managed fires. But five experts told Grist that the relationship between roads and forest fires is not as simple as the USDA's announcement implies. Although roads can help transport firefighters and their gear to the wilderness—whether to fight existing wildfires or to conduct prescribed burns—they also increase the risk of unintentional fires from vehicles and campfires. 'If we're gonna say which one leads to a greater risk'—roads or no roads—'I don't think we have the full picture to assess that,' said Chris Dunn, an assistant professor of forest engineering, resources, and management at Oregon State University. 'Those two components might counteract each other.' In a 2022 research paper looking at cross-boundary wildfires—meaning those that move between private lands and lands managed by the Forest Service, including roadless areas—Dunn and his co-authors found that the vast majority of wildfires start on private lands, with ignitions rising as a function of an area's road density. In other words, more roads are associated with more fires. This research also showed that most fires that destroy 50 buildings or more are started by humans on private lands. Another study, this one from 2021, focused on roads and roadless areas within 11 Western states' national forests. Dunn and his co-authors found that most wildfires between 1984 and 2018 started near roads, not in roadless areas, and that there was no connection between roadlessness and the 'severity' of a fire — the amount of vegetation it killed. However, fires in roadless areas were more likely to escape initial suppression efforts, and they tended to burn a larger area. Dunn noted that not all big, severe, remote fires are bad. Some ecosystems depend on occasional burning, and his research suggests that the greater size of fires in roadless areas can make landscapes more resilient to climate change. A problem arises when forest managers look at forests exclusively 'through the lens of timber and dollar signs on trees,' he said, which can create a bias against tree mortality—even if it's ecologically healthy for trees to burn or get thinned out by workers. That economic perspective seems to match that of the Trump administration, which has repeatedly referred to public lands and waters in terms of their 'resource potential.' Steve Pyne, a fire expert and emeritus professor at Arizona State University's Center for Biology and Society, agreed with other experts. Grist spoke with that rescinding the Roadless Rule 'is not about fire protection; it's about logging.' In April, USDA Secretary Rollins directed regional Forest Service offices to increase timber extraction by 25 percent, in line with an executive order Trump signed in March ordering federal agencies to 'immediately increase domestic timber production.' In response to Grist's request for comment, a USDA spokesperson said that, 'while some research indicates that roads can increase the likelihood of human-caused fires, they also improve access for forest management to reduce fuels and for fire suppression efforts.' They declined to respond to a question about opening up public lands for logging interests, except to say that the agency is 'using all strategies available to reduce wildfire risk,' including timber harvesting. Even if it were certain that more roads mitigate fire risk, it's not clear that rescinding the Roadless Rule will lead to more of them being constructed. James Johnston, an assistant research professor at the University of Oregon's Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities, and Environments, said the Forest Service lacks the personnel and funding to maintain the road system it already has, and building new ones is likely to be a challenge. The Trump administration has only exacerbated the problem by firing 10 percent of the agency's workers since taking office. 'Nobody is going to next week, next month, or any time in the future build roads across an area the size of the state of Idaho,' he said, referring to the 58 million acres covered by the Roadless Rule. Private companies that want to build new roads on public lands also face barriers to road construction because they need to obtain environmental permits, he added. New roads on Forest Service land would have to comply with statutes like the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. Johnston also noted that many roadless areas are unsuitable to roads because they are too steep or rocky. Ryan Talbott, Pacific Northwest conservation advocate for the nonprofit WildEarth Guardians, noted that it will take time for the USDA to legally rescind the Roadless Rule. 'There's a process,' he said. 'In ordinary times they would put a notice in the Federal Register announcing that they intend to rescind the Roadless Rule, and then there would be a public comment process and then eventually they would get to a final decision.' The USDA spokesperson told Grist that a formal notice would be published in the Federal Register, the government's daily journal that publishes newly enacted and proposed federal rules, 'in the coming weeks.' Stevens-Rumann, at Colorado State University, said that if the Trump administration were serious about mitigating wildfire risk, it would make more sense to increase Forest Service funding and personnel and, critically, to conduct tree-thinning and prescribed burns in areas that already have roads. 'We have a ton of work that we could be doing in roaded areas before we even go to roadless areas,' she said. This article originally appeared in Grist at Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Battles over public lands loom even after sell-off proposal fails
A sign welcomes visitors to Bureau of Land Management land near Cedar City, Utah. Utah and other states have pushed the federal government to hand over public lands, and a sweeping proposal in Congress could put millions of acres up for sale. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch) Hunters, hikers and outdoors lovers of all stripes mounted a campaign this month against a Republican proposal to sell off millions of acres of federal public land. The public outcry was so forceful that the measure's sponsor pledged to scale back the proposal. Then on Saturday, before an initial U.S. Senate vote on Republicans' mega tax and spending bill, he withdrew it altogether. But even though the land sales proposal was defeated, experts say federal lands face a slew of other threats from President Donald Trump's administration. Agency leaders have proposed rolling back the 'Roadless Rule' that protects 58 million acres from logging and other uses. Trump's Justice Department has issued a legal opinion that the president is allowed to abolish national monuments. Regulators have moved to slash environmental rules to ramp up logging and oil and gas production. And Trump's cuts to the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of the agencies that manage federal lands. 'This is not over even if the sell-off proposal doesn't make it,' said John Leshy, who served as solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration. 'The whole thing about leasing or selling timber or throwing them open to mining claims, that's a form of partial privatization. It's pretty much a giveaway.' Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has repeatedly described public lands as America's 'balance sheet.' He has argued that some lands could be used to provide housing, while calling for an expansion of mining and oil and gas drilling to increase their economic output. 'President Trump's energy dominance vision will end those wars abroad, will make life more affordable for every family in America by driving down inflation,' Burgum said before his confirmation hearing. Public lands advocates are bracing for ongoing battles for the rest of Trump's term in office. They expect Republicans to add last-minute public lands amendments to other bills moving through Congress, and for land management agencies to attempt to strip protections from other federal lands. Given the vocal backlash to the initial sell-off plan, advocates expect future attempts to be shaped behind closed doors and advanced with little time for opponents to mount a defense. Meanwhile, they expect states to play a key role in shaping those battles. In Western states, where most federally owned lands are located, many leaders from both parties view public lands as special places open to all Americans and critical for clean water, wildlife and tourism. But some conservatives resent the fact that large portions of their states are managed by officials in Washington, D.C., limiting development and private enterprise. Officials in some states, including Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, have pushed lawsuits or resolutions seeking to force the feds to hand over huge amounts of land. Public land experts say the lawmakers behind those efforts will likely press harder now that Trump is in the White House. Such state-level takeover attempts could shape the proposals that emerge from Trump's allies in Washington. The firestorm over federal lands exploded when Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, introduced legislation that would force the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 3.3 million acres of land. The measure also would direct the agencies to make more than 250 million additional acres eligible for sale. 'We've never seen a threat on this magnitude ever,' said Devin O'Dea, Western policy and conservation manager with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. 'There's been an overwhelming amount of opposition. We've seen record-breaking engagement on this issue.' Lee, a longtime federal lands opponent, claimed the lands were needed for housing and argued the government has been a poor manager of its land. 'Washington has proven time and again it can't manage this land,' Lee said earlier this month when announcing the proposal. 'This bill puts it in better hands.' But a wide-ranging coalition of opponents argued that the proposal had no protections to ensure the lands would be used for affordable housing, and that many of the parcels eligible for sale had little housing potential. A furious social media campaign highlighted cherished hiking trails, fishing lakes and ski slopes that were in danger of being sold, urging people to call their lawmakers to oppose the measure. In recent days, Montana Republican U.S. Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, as well as Idaho Republican U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, came out in opposition to the land sale proposal. That put into question whether Lee's legislation could earn even a simple majority. Then the Senate parliamentarian ruled the sell-off could not be included in the reconciliation bill without a 60-vote majority. That ruling came a day after Lee posted on social media that he would be making changes to the bill in response to concerns from Hunter Nation, a nonprofit whose board includes Donald Trump Jr. Lee released a scaled-back measure last week that would exempt national forest lands but would direct the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 1.2 million acres. It would require land for sale to be within five miles of a population center and developed to provide housing. Public land advocates say Lee's changes did little to assuage their concerns. They argue that federal land sales or transfers should happen through the current, long-standing process, which requires local stakeholder input and directs the proceeds from land sales to be reinvested into conservation and public access on other parcels. 'It's the overwhelming belief of hunters and anglers that the budget reconciliation process is not the appropriate vehicle for public land sales,' said O'Dea, with the hunting and fishing group. On Saturday evening, Lee announced that he was withdrawing the proposal, saying that Senate rules did not allow him to include protections that land would not be sold to foreign interests. But he pledged to continue the battle over federal land ownership, working with Trump to 'put underutilized federal land to work for American families.' While the sell-off proposal aligned with some state officials' goal of taking over federal lands, some lands experts say private developers would have been the real winner. 'If the lands are transferred to the states without money, the states lose,' said Leshy, the former Interior Department official. 'It's a hit on their budget, which means they're gonna have to sell them off. If states got a significant amount of public lands, a lot of that would end up in private hands.' In Utah, where leaders have made the most aggressive push to take over federal lands, lawmakers argue that they could raise lease prices for oil and gas operations, bringing in enough revenue to cover the state's management costs. 'The policy of the state is to keep these lands open and available to the public,' Speaker Mike Schultz, a Republican, told Stateline last month. O'Dea pointed to an economic analysis of what it would cost Montana to take over federal lands. The report found it would cost the state $8 billion over 20 years to take on wildfire management, deferred maintenance and mine reclamation. He noted that many Western states have sold off a majority of the 'trust lands' they were granted at statehood, undermining claims that a state takeover would leave lands in the public domain. While Lee's land sales proposal has gotten the biggest headlines, public land advocates are fighting a multifront battle against the Trump administration's moves to roll back the protected status of certain lands, slash environmental rules, and expand logging, mining and drilling operations. 'The approach is to throw as much as you can at the wall and see what sticks,' O'Dea said. 'There's only so much you can mobilize opposition to. There's a huge risk that some of these things could fly under the radar.' Some conservative states and industry groups say Trump is allowing federal lands to be used to their full economic potential. Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, said his constituents are 'keenly aware of how the federal government's ownership of 60 percent of Alaska's lands can inhibit economic development and cause challenges for our communities.' Leshy noted that public lands have proven to be a popular cause, but Trump's cuts to the federal workforce could undermine public confidence that the federal government is capable of managing the land. 'if you make it terrible for long enough, maybe people say, 'The feds shouldn't be managing this, they do such a bad job,'' he said. Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
