Congress has revived a proposal to sell Western public lands to minimize increases to the deficit in the proposed budget bill — and this time, federal land in Colorado would not be left out.
A provision in the U.S. Senate’s draft of the national budget bill made public Wednesday would require the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service to sell between 0.5% and 0.75% of the 438 million acres the agencies manage across the West. The upper end of that range is nearly 3.3 million acres, or more than 5,100 square miles — about 12 times the land area of Rocky Mountain National Park. The provision exempts certain lands, like national parks and those leased for economic use, from sale.
In Colorado, the bill would open the door for the sale of portions of the 8.3 million acres managed by the BLM and the 16 million acres managed by the Forest Service. Organizations across Colorado, the West and the political spectrum blasted the proposal, which Republicans pitched as a way to build more housing.
“This isn’t about budget reconciliation or affordable housing. This is a fraudulent scheme to swindle American citizens out of our shared legacy,” Patrick Berry, the president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, said in a statement. “Our public lands are not disposable assets, and the gaslighting campaign claiming this is somehow a solution to a housing crisis is an insult to all of us. Our lands are the physical inheritance of generations of Americans who fought to keep public lands in public hands.”
The provision in the Senate version of the budget bill revives and expands a public lands sale proposal that was included in the House draft, but later removed in part because of vocal opposition from some Western representatives.
While the House version targeted only lands in Utah and Nevada, the new provision from the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources does not specify or limit how much land can or should be sold by the state.
“This is the largest public lands sell-off since people were homesteading, frankly,” said Michael Carroll, the BLM campaign director at The Wilderness Society. “It’s unprecedented in many ways.”
Colorado’s senators, both Democrats, have routinely and vociferously opposed the sale of federal public lands. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper on Thursday vowed to fight the sell-off provision.
“I think it’s such bad policy that we’ll win,” Hickenlooper said in an interview. “I’m not sure exactly how that win is going to happen, but we’re going to use every avenue available to make sure this isn’t going to become a reality.”
Local communities, not Washington officials, should decide whether parcels of public land need to be sold for housing or other needs, said Hickenlooper, who earlier this year led a failed amendment that would have banned the sale of federal public lands in the budget bill. Colorado mountain towns in recent years have successfully led grassroots efforts and worked with federal land managers to make public land available for affordable housing projects when needed, he said.
“Instead, this is a top-down, tyrannical execution of authority,” said Hickenlooper, who sits on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Exceptions for wilderness, national parks
The Senate provision would carve out certain lands from being sold, including national monuments, wilderness areas, national conservation areas, national parks and national recreation areas. Public lands with grazing, mining, drilling or timber leases also would not be sold.
The budget bill lays out a process for states, tribal nations and local governments to participate in decisions on which land parcels to sell, according to a one-page summary from the Senate committee. The provision requires that federal officials consult with a state’s governor, nearby local governments and tribes before selling land.
But it does not mandate that the federal officials receive local consent to the sale.
The federal government already employs a process for the rare and targeted sale of small sections of public lands when the agency and local communities decide it is in the public interest, including for community expansion or economic development.
Under the Senate budget provision, federal agencies are directed to prioritize the sale of parcels that are nominated by local governments, are near existing development and infrastructure, or are “isolated tracts that are inefficient to manage.”
“This proposal is central to relieving the housing crisis, fulfilling President (Donald) Trump’s housing and public lands agenda, and creating jobs and strong economic growth in the West,” the summary states.
The text does not set parameters around the affordability of any housing built on the former public lands. It also allows anybody to nominate a parcel of land to be sold.
Critics have seized on such details, or lack thereof.
“This is a shameless ploy to sell off pristine public lands for trophy homes and gated communities that will do nothing to address the affordable housing shortage in the West,” said Jennifer Rokala, the executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, in a statement.
Because there is no restriction on who can nominate land to be sold, people or developers could pick land in which they have a commercial or personal interest, said Carroll from The Wilderness Society. For example, someone could nominate and then buy the Animas Mountain mountain biking area outside of Durango, which is on BLM land that could be sold under the provision.
“Presto change-o, I have one of the most prestigious pieces of property in Durango and La Plata County,” he said.
Nearly all of the proceeds from the sales would go to the U.S. Treasury, except for 5% that would go to local governments and 5% that would go to deferred maintenance projects on BLM and Forest Service lands in the state where the sale happened.
The sales must be completed in the next five years and could generate $5 billion to $10 billion over the coming decade, according to the Senate committee’s summary.
The increased revenue would help balance out tax cuts and other spending included in Trump’s budget bill under consideration in Congress. The budget, as passed by the House, would increase the federal deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released last week.
Strong support in Colorado for public lands
Nearly 90% of Coloradans visit national public lands at least once a year, according to Colorado College’s 2025 Conservation in the West Poll.
In that same poll, 87% of Coloradans surveyed said they preferred building housing in or near existing communities over selling federal public lands to develop more housing. Across the eight Western states polled, 82% of people said that was their preferred approach.
Organizations dedicated to wildlife, conservation, hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation for months have feared that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress would try for a broad-scale sale of public lands.
“Public lands are the backyard of the little guy and the Senate bill will put them on the chopping block for the rich to erect fences and no trespassing signs,” Chris Wood, Trout Unlimited’s president and CEO, said Wednesday in a statement.
Colorado’s state lawmakers in March passed a hugely popular bipartisan resolution opposing the sale or transfer of federal public lands. It calls on the governor and attorney general to oppose any effort to do so. Just five of the state’s 100 lawmakers voted against the resolution.
Public lands contributed more than $17 billion to Colorado’s economy and supported 132,500 jobs in 2023, according to the resolution.
“Misguided attempts to seize control of vast acreage of national public lands from the American public and to force their disposal through litigation and legislation, supported by a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, are inconsistent with the values and interests of Coloradans,” the resolution says.
Federal public lands in Montana would be exempt from the proposed sales. Several of that state’s congressional delegates — including Republicans — strongly opposed the House provision and said they would not vote for the bill if it included the sell-off provision.
Colorado’s Republican congressional delegation did not oppose the House provision as forcefully.
Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Crank supported adding the sales to the budget when it was presented to the House Committee on Natural Resources. Rep. Jeff Hurd, from Colorado’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District, broke from his party colleagues and opposed adding the sell-off provision to the budget bill, but later supported the entire package because his concerns about the land sales did not outweigh the benefits of the bill as a whole.
Because the Senate lands sale provision is included in the budget bill, it is not subject to the hearings or oversight such a proposal would receive in a standalone bill, Carroll said. It also can’t be filibustered.
“It’s a way of jamming this through the process,” he said. “Public lands sell-off is wildly unpopular, and proponents know this.”
Other Senate committees are still working this week on their pieces of the budget bill as Republicans rush to pass a final version in coming weeks.
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