Public lands will remain in public hands, for now. Montana’s natural beauty reminds us why that’s so important. Photo: Michael Bourgault//Unsplash
It’s not often that environmentalist surfers, Republican senators, and Donald Trump Jr. can all get behind a common cause. But that’s exactly what happened as the Trump Administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” intended to sell millions of acres of public lands. Voices across the political spectrum celebrated news that the provision had been removed from the bill.
U.S. Senator Mike Lee announced on the evening of June 28 that, after speaking with stakeholders across the country and failing to guarantee safeguards that would prevent the land from being sold to foreign interests, he decided to withdraw the sale of federal lands from the bill.
Four Republican senators from Montana and Idaho openly opposed the provision, enough to offset the party’s three-senator majority. Even the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter, lauded the move as a “huge win.”
“One of the greatest gifts we’ve ever had in America is the public lands that have been passed down generation to generation,” said Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana, one of the four senators who opposed the provision. “Especially for us in Western states, it’s our way of life for hunting and fishing.”
The dead provision had called for as much as 1.225 million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service (FS) lands to be sold off over the next five years to build affordable housing in 11 western states – Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. The proposal excluded National Parks, National Monuments, National Recreation Areas, and Wilderness areas, focusing on land within one to five miles of population centers with access to existing infrastructure.
A previous iteration of the provision called for even more public land to be sold – between 2.2 and 3.3 million acres, 0.5 to 0.75 percent of all BLM and FS area.
Environmental activists and surfers were vocal about their opposition to the bill. Kyle Thiermann, a Patagonia surf ambassador, podcast host, and environmental activist, urged his social media following to call their respective politicians to voice opposition to the provision.
“Not one acre of public lands is being included in this bill, and that’s because people like you showed up,” Thiermann said on Instagram. “It’s easy to think these government officials are untouchable, but this is an example that when people unify their voice, democracy wins. This is an example of people putting principles above party, showing that access to nature is a bipartisan issue.”
The Surfrider Foundation also took a stand against the public lands sale, while simultaneously warning of a separate provision in the bill that would sell off 80 million acres of ocean for oil and gas drilling leases.
“This bill would require new offshore oil lease sales, all while making the already risky and damaging practice of offshore oil drilling less regulated and more prone to operational accidents, like blowouts and oil spills,” said Katie Day, Surfrider’s senior manager of science and policy.
As of Monday, the sale of ocean leases is still included in the bill as lawmakers negotiate details ahead of President Trump’s Friday deadline to vote on it.
