Thomas Reed is a rancher and writer who lives in Montana. He is the author of “Give Me Mountains For My Horses” and other books.
America loves its public lands, but they are increasingly under threat. Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum has called them an “incredible asset on America’s balance sheet.” This kind of nomenclature has public lands advocates nervous, particularly with the Trump administration reportedly mulling the sale of hundreds of thousands of acres of public land near urban centers on the dubious pretext of fixing a national housing shortage. Indeed, much of the nation’s housing shortage is in states with little public land to sell, or states where housing shortages are tied to other problems like lack of water and labor. Couple this with the administration’s acceleration of environmental review for oil and gas extraction and the downgrading of the importance of recreation as a use of these lands. Americans need to push back and say: Our federal lands are not for sale.
Trump’s views on public lands weren’t always like this. In January 2016, before voters in the Republican presidential primary launched Donald Trump toward his first term, Trump and his son Donald Jr. attended the world’s largest firearm trade show in Las Vegas. The pair sat for interviews and rubbed elbows at the SHOT Show with gun manufacturers, hunters, and shooting sports aficionados. Throughout the visit, the Trumps carried a strong conservation message in press conferences and interviews with the media.
The future president emphasized the importance of the federal government being “great stewards” of this “magnificent” land and pushed back on a movement by some Western states to take over federal land from the American people. “I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do. I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? I don’t think it’s something that should be sold.”
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There is little doubt that Don Jr., an avid hunter who has long enjoyed American public land, was largely responsible for his father’s take at that time. Observers, particularly hunters and anglers who identified as Republican or independent, applauded Trump’s words.
But when Trump was elected for his second term, a new crew was at his back and some of the same players wanting the federal government to jettison the citizens’ public lands were chirping in the president’s ear that public lands could be sold to pay down the national debt. Don Jr., meanwhile, has been largely silent.
Americans own, use, and enjoy more than 640 million acres of land, about a third of the land mass in the nation, mostly acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Federal agencies, from the Forest Service to the Department of Defense, manage these lands on our behalf. Mining companies, oil and gas companies, ranchers, and loggers lease the vast resources of these lands, paying back into the treasury. Hunters, anglers, hikers, off-road vehicle enthusiasts, and anyone else wanting to escape the noise of civilization can enjoy these lands, usually for free or a nominal fee. Public land provides clean air and water in an ever-changing climate.
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Yet some states, led most recently by Utah, believe they should take those lands from the nation’s taxpayers for their own use. Trump, in 2016, was dead right: The states have often chosen to sell off the land to private interests. Nevada once had 2.7 million acres of state land and now owns just 3,000. Oregon had 3.4 million acres and now has 776,000 acres.
The notion of selling off land for housing development is one that many politicians have embraced. Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources recently voted to clear the path for sales of land around the Nevada cities of Las Vegas and Reno and near the fast-growing retirement community of St. George, Utah, tacked on as part of the budget reconciliation.
But much of the housing shortage in the nation is found in New York and Florida, while housing shortages in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah are often tied to significant water or labor shortages. Moreover, the federal government already has the ability to sell off certain parcels of public land, taking into account public input, not a dark-of-night maneuver in Congress. The Biden administration, for instance, sold 20 acres of public land for affordable housing projects in Las Vegas in October 2024 for a mere $100 per acre.
Moreover this sell-off philosophy of federal lands ignores the fact that public lands are vastly popular. In the early 1900s, states in the East, jealous of the vast public resource in the West, pushed for passage of the Weeks Act, which allowed the federal government to purchase thousands of acres of land from private interests from Maine to Alabama. National Forests like Pennsylvania’s Allegheny and Vermont’s Green Mountain were once private lands and now are enjoyed by millions of Americans.
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Public lands pay. Oil and gas royalties are cheaper, mining is cheaper, grazing is cheaper. A rancher grazing a cow on public land pays less than $1.50 a month to do so. On private land, that cost can be $50 per cow. And outdoor recreation is worth $1.2 trillion.
All may not be grim with Burgum and his “balance sheet” language. During his confirmation hearing, Burgum, a sportsman, touted public lands as a miracle and channeled America’s public lands hero, President Theodore Roosevelt. Yet we may be reaching a turning point for the future of our public lands. Perhaps it is time for Don Jr. to help his father make the right choice, as he did when he was just one of many candidates for the nation’s highest office.
