Things Fall Apart
The Great Public Lands Selloff Is Coming and There's Nothing We Can Do About It
As I sat down this week to draft my newsletter I had a lot on my mind. With a new administration harboring openly hostile views on federal land administration (to put it lightly) a lot of people in the outdoor community are rightly worried. So let me start by quoting the late and great Jimmy Carter.
This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.
As a new administration prepares to take power, a storm is brewing over America’s public lands—the crown jewels of our national heritage. For those of us who treasure these lands as places of solace, recreation, and natural beauty, the outlook is grim. Let me be blunt: the incoming Trump administration, backed by a hard-right Supreme Court, a compliant Congress, and a gutted regulatory framework, is poised to execute the largest transfer of federal land in history. And there is almost nothing we can do to stop it.
This is not hyperbole. This is the cold, hard reality of what’s coming.
Why They’re Going to Do It
The ideology behind the selloff is clear. For years, Republicans—particularly in states like Utah—have salivated over the idea of taking control of public lands. The reasoning is dressed up in language about "local control" and "state sovereignty," but let’s call it what it is: an effort to unlock lands for private development, oil and gas drilling, and other extractive industries who also happen to be major party donors. Project 2025’s Interior Department section was authored by none other than William Perry Pendley, the notorious former acting director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In it, federal land transfers aren’t just an idea—they’re a top priority.
Pendley’s vision layed out in the pages of Project 2025 calls for selling off vast tracts of federal land to states or private entities. The argument? That public lands are “underutilized” and that states are better equipped to manage them. We’ve seen how this plays out: once in state hands, these lands are often sold to private interests, closed off to public access, and exploited for short-term profit.
Where It’s Likely to Happen
Make no mistake, the selloff won’t target Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon—that would provoke an unnecessary outcry even this administration can’t stomach. Instead, the focus will be on less iconic but still precious BLM lands: those sprawling spaces in the West that serve as critical wildlife habitats, cultural sites, and recreational areas.
Utah is primed to lead the charge, bolstered by its long history of legal efforts to wrest control of federal lands. Just recently, the Supreme Court declined to hear Utah’s wildly speculative lawsuit demanding ownership of these lands—a temporary relief, but ultimately a red herring. Utah won’t give up; its politicians will now look to the Trump administration to deliver what the courts denied by giving their claims better legal footing. The only reason Utah's lawsuit failed was its outlandish nature and lack of standing. Through FLPMA (more on that below), the Trump administration can craft arguments that provide just enough legal cover for the Court to validate unthinkable land transfers. The Grand Staircase-Escalante region and other BLM-managed landscapes are particularly vulnerable, as state leaders have persistently eyed these areas for energy development and other exploitative uses.
Following closely behind is Alaska, where public lands have been central to state development battles for decades. With vast oil and mineral reserves at stake, the state will likely push hard to open up lands in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and other ecologically critical areas. These efforts, cloaked in rhetoric about economic opportunity and energy independence, are designed to mask the irreversible damage they’ll cause. In reality they’re gifts to the resource extraction indistries that underwrite many politicians.
These states are ground zero for Trump’s land transfer agenda, with the political will and infrastructure to exploit his administration’s ambitions for privatization and resource extraction.
How a Well-Intentioned Environmental Law Will Be Co-opted
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976 was meant to enshrine the principle of federal retention of public lands. It was a watershed moment, signaling an end to the wholesale disposal of America’s natural heritage. But FLPMA contains a glaring loophole that until now no administration has sought to take advantage of: it allows the BLM to sell or transfer lands deemed “no longer needed for federal purposes” if doing so is in the "public interest."
The Trump administration will exploit this clause by asserting that transferring large tracts of land to states or private entities serves the public interest, citing reasons like fostering economic development, energy independence, or addressing budget shortfalls. With a sympathetic Supreme Court ready to back broad interpretations of executive authority, legal challenges to these transfers will almost certainly fail once they wind up in the highest court.
NEPA Can’t Help Us Anymore
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was once the bedrock of environmental oversight. It required federal agencies to carefully assess the environmental impact of their actions and gave the public a voice in the process. But under Trump, NEPA has already been gutted. Environmental reviews are now shorter, less rigorous, and easier to bypass altogether. The administration is sure to continue this assault, ensuring that land transfers face minimal procedural hurdles.
Without NEPA’s critical safeguards, the floodgates are open. Vast tracts of land could be transferred with little to no public input or environmental analysis. The process will be swift, opaque, and devastating.
Why SCOTUS Matters So Much
The Supreme Court’s current composition is probably the most significant factor in this looming selloff. With a conservative supermajority, the Court has demonstrated a pattern of deferring to executive authority when it aligns with republican agendas.
Many justices on the Court are strong proponents of what was once considered a fringe and almost laughably outlandish legal theory, the unitary executive theory, which asserts seemingly unlimited power for the executive branch over federal agencies and more. This line of thinking empowers the administration to act unilaterally, bypassing traditional checks and balances and further consolidating authority within the presidency.
Justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito epitomize the dysfunction of a Court that has become increasingly unmoored from democratic principles. Thomas, whose addiction to luxury has been subsidized and nurtured by his right-wing billionaire "friends," and Alito, whose legal opinions read more like essays from right-wing paramilitary message boards, have both aggressively advanced ever-more radical views on executive and property rights.
The Court's conservative supermajority, including Thomas and Alito as well as the three justices handpicked by President Trump, will undoubtedly back the administration's brazen interpretations of FLPMA and any other statutes at its disposal to achieve its agenda.
What Can Be Done?
This is the part where I so desperately want to offer hope, to tell you there’s a clear path to stop this. But the truth is, there isn’t. Believe me, I'm as disappointed in this harsh reality as any of you, but I want to be honest with our readers. Personally, I'm tired of being offered phony messages of hope and change. The reality is, with the supreme court at his back and an administration that is staffed with people who are expertly hellbent on destroying our natural heritage for short-term profit, there's no stopping it if they move quickly and aggressively.
Now I want to be clear, public outrage, lawsuits, and advocacy can and will delay the process of disposing of our federal lands, but they won’t stop it. The administration has four years to execute its plan, and with all the pieces aligned in their favor, they can and likely will succeed in transferring vast amounts of land out of federal hands.
What’s at Stake
When these lands are gone, they’re gone. Transferred lands will lose their public access and protections, becoming private playgrounds for the wealthy or industrial zones for extractive industries. Wildlife habitats will be irreparably damaged or destroyed, cultural sites desecrated, and irreplaceable recreational opportunities stolen. This isn’t just about land—it’s about who we are as a nation and what we value.
Is There Any Hope?
While we may not be able to stop this selloff outright, we can delay it as long as possible. If the Trump administration doesn't get the ball rolling on these initiatives within their first year in office there’s a chance the worst could be avoided with well-timed and coordinated lawsuits from advocacy groups with really good lawyers.
If you're a lawyer, are becoming one, or know any good ones, consider volunteering with organizations like NPCA, NRDC, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, or local lands advocacy groups affected by the incoming administration's actions. To be clear: not even Abe Lincoln, the prairie lawyer himself, could sway this Supreme Court against the Trump administration on these matters. But clever, determined lawyers can at least slow the train down, buying precious time before it reaches the high Court.
In a free society some are guilty, but all are responsible.
And for those of us who aren’t lawyers we can still stand up and be counted. I’m reminded of the words of the civil rights leader Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “In a free society some are guilty, but all are responsible." We can show future generations that we knew what was at stake and cared enough to make our voices heard even in defeat. We can document what is being lost, fight to delay the worst outcomes, and hold politicians who are complicit in it responsible at the ballot box. Most importantly, we can make it clear to future generations what happened here and why it must never happen again.
The great public lands selloff is coming. Let’s not go quietly.
Yes, America is finally coming to the end of the fifty-year reign of terror by environmentalist extremists. Under Trump and the leaders who will take the reins after he is gone, America will be returning to a concept of Wise Use of our vast Western resources. We have oil, we have timber, we have minerals. And we will once again be able to actually use them to better our lives.
The environmentalist extremists have had it their way for fifty years, and we’ve seen the results: catastrophic wildfires because of misguided policies of “preserving” forests, prices out of control because of unaffordable energy, and farmers, ranchers etc. being dictated to by bureaucrats living thousands of miles away who have never even set foot on the lands for which they are making decisions.
Freedom is about to reign again. The environmentalist land grab is about to come to an end.
"The administration has four years to execute its plan, and with all the pieces aligned in their favor, they can and likely will succeed in transferring vast amounts of land out of federal hands." Not 4 years but two if people can get their opposing acts together.