Proposed Land Sale Pits Senate Republicans Against Key Constituency

Forbes

6 hours ago

The so-called Big Beautiful Bill suddenly turned ugly for America's 60 million hunters and anglers after Utah Senator Mike Lee proposed selling up to three million acres of federal land in the West. Sportsmen and women are traditionally among the most reliable Republican voters, but the nation's hunters and anglers are drawing a line in the public sand with the proposed disposal of federal ground through the reconciliation process.
'I fear some members of Congress are taking the continued support of sportsmen for granted,' says Jeff Crane, President and CEO of the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation (CSF). "For sportsmen, selling millions of acres of our federal lands in a fast-tracked budget reconciliation effort is unacceptable."
CSF is a bi-partisan Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for sportsmen's interests on Capitol Hill and in statehouses across the country with the support of the largest caucus of the U.S. Congress—some 250 members in all. In addition, CSF has sporting caucuses in all 50 states with more than 2,500 members of state legislators and 25 governors. When it comes to advising members of Congress on sporting, conservation and public lands issues, few groups carry more weight on the Hill.
'For many hunters and anglers,' says Crane, 'America's federal lands are the bedrock of our access to our outdoor sporting traditions. For tens of millions of sportsmen and women, it is this network of federal public lands where deep connections to fish, wildlife and the outdoors are born and where families forge lifetime memories.'
It's also where conservation ethics are born, the kind Theodore Roosevelt memorialized in his many speeches and writings as he inspired the framework for America's environmental ethos. 'Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything,' he wrote. 'For it's the only thing in this world that lasts. It's the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for…'.
Sportsmen have long embraced Roosevelt's words, for when a similar measure to sell federal lands was raised in the house version of the bill, it quickly created a storm of opposition among sportsmen's groups and was ultimately pulled thanks, in part, to CSF's opposition. That the measure was even proposed, however, has given many sportsmen pause regarding their historic support of Republicans.
To many of the nation's outdoorsmen and women, disposing of federal land is seen as something akin to pawning a family heirloom to pay a bank overdraft. If you're perceived—rightly or wrongly--as someone standing between sportsmen and the ground where some of their greatest memories have been made, you can count on living in infamy in that community. It's the kind of perceived betrayal that causes some voters to switch party affiliations.
You need not be a political wonk to understand that when a constituency feels their voice is ignored or marginalized by those they've supported, they are ripe to be assimilated by the opposition. Democrats who watched legions of union voters embrace Trump with his message of bringing jobs back to America witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. He attracted dramatically higher union support than previous Republican presidential candidates. Many pollsters credit Trump's message to labor as key to his victory in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—coincidentally, all states with high numbers of hunters and anglers.
'In the West, more than 70 percent of sportsmen say they rely on federal lands to participate in our cherished pastimes,' says Crane, 'and the concept of losing access to this ground is considered un-American.'
For Senator Lee who heads up the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, however, these federal lands represent a partial solution to both the budget deficit and the affordable housing crisis. In a taped statement, Lee noted that some 70 percent of his home state of Utah is owned by the federal government, 'That's not serving the Americans who actually live here,' he said.
Instead, he says, he wants to expand housing, support local development and get Washington out of the way of communities looking to grow while at the same time helping reduce budget deficits.
Monitor sportsmen's chat rooms, podcasts, influencers and industry media that have become a force in recent years—counting avid hunter Joe Rogan's media empire among them—and few are buying what the Republican senators are selling. Not surprisingly, sportsmen are skeptical that a Congress that hasn't balanced a budget in a quarter century is going to suddenly sell land assets to solve the deficit problem.
Furthermore, Lee's home state of Utah has among the highest per capita numbers of sportsmen. In 2024, nearly 800,000 residents and non-residents purchased hunting and fishing licenses with a total population of 3.5 million people. Given the significant pushback by hunters and anglers to the initial land sale effort in the House, other Republicans—like Montana Senator Steve Daines—are opposing Lee's new land sale effort in the Senate.
While Utah is blessed with stunning landscapes and tremendous natural resources (home to five national parks), understanding how the sale of millions of acres of federal lands might be part of a solution to the affordable housing crisis in that state is seen as a head-scratcher by many.
Salt Lake City, for instance, only encompasses 70,000 acres, and the state is feverishly working to solve one of the West's most challenging environmental crises as Great Salt Lake is drying up. A significant expansion of homes in the area will only exacerbate the water shortage that is plaguing the region.
Ultimately for Crane and CSF, however, there may be a rationale for the sale or swap of some federal lands, but the budget reconciliation process is not where any transaction should be sanctioned.
Instead, CSF cautioned, any disposal or sale of federal lands should follow the long-established protocols of both the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and the Federal Lands Transaction Facilitation Act. These measures are in place to, among other things, allow for public input and transparency.
In a statement released Friday, CSF shared their reasons for their opposition to the Senate language, writing, in part, 'Unfortunately, the Senate public lands language guts the public's voice in determining how their lands are managed, or which lands are sold. An arbitrary, undefined, percentage-based target is the opposite of a thoughtful and transparent process. As written, the Senate language omits critical detail to determine what specific lands would actually be disposed of, regardless of whether they are underutilized or highly valuable, and instead essentially gives carte blanche authority to determine which lands would be sold.'
While 3 million acres is a pittance when compared to the national total of 245 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land and nearly 200 million acres of national forest property, sportsmen worry that such a sale in the reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority—rather than a 60 percent majority under FLPMA--represents a dangerous precedent. Once the land is sold in this manner, what's to stop this from happening to ever more federal ground most ask? When the land is transferred, there's realistically no mechanism to ever get it back.
For Republicans, the larger political question is what becomes of their relationship with their core voting block of 60 million sportsmen? Can they afford to alienate them as the midterm election cycle gets underway—especially in key states where a public land sale will be anathema to the camo coalition?
For now, American sportsmen have turned their attention to Senate Majority Leader John Thune who hunters know as one of their own and who represents their best hope of stripping the land sale provision from the bill.
Even if the sale language is struck, however, after weeks of a national media barrage against the measure and those who proposed it, Republicans must wonder what political price they will pay with heretofore loyal supporters. The question will be: Was it worth it?