Posted on 05/21/2025 2:30:52 PM PDT by PrairieDawg
The budget reconciliation bill currently before the U.S. House could dispose of nearly 1.5 million acres of public land, according to new analysis released today by the digital mapping company onX.
Republicans added the public land sale with an amendment proposed during a midnight session of the House Natural Resources Committee. Initial reports suggested that only about 10,000 acres would be subject to disposal, and later analysis increased that estimate to nearly 500,000 acres.
Now, an extensive review by onX researchers has revealed that the actual number could be as many as 1,466,352 acres in Utah and Nevada.
“Our public lands are not a line item in a budget deal,” said onX CEO Laura Orvidas. “They belong to the American people, and the people deserve full visibility into decisions that could affect public land access and outdoor recreation opportunity. We ask Congress to protect that legacy—not dismantle it.”
The bill’s language made it difficult to pinpoint which acreage the sales would incorporate. Some parcels, especially those in Utah, were named specifically. But others in Nevada were described in much more general terms. The team at OnX began by collecting PDFs of all the maps referenced in the legislative text.
“Some of these maps were already tied to real-world locations, which let us trace the parcels by hand. Some we had to manually align to real-world locations and then extract the parcel information. Others had embedded data that we could pull straight from the files,” the company explained on its website.
The result is the only known digital map of all affected parcels.
(Excerpt) Read more at themeateater.com ...
FRegards, PrairieDawg
1.5 million acres and a thousand trees amongst them all.
It’s scrub. It’s for grazing if you have enough of it; though year round water is sparse, at best.
Don’t the Feds own most of Alaska?
They call it our land but they mean their land not the American people. The problem is they want to deny public access to most PUBLIC land and only the special people will get to see or use it...
I am fine with it. Let the States control it.
The federal government owns 56.9 million acres just in Nevada.
They own 37.4 million acres of land in Utah. So that is a total of 94.3 million acres.
1.5 million acres is close to 2% of the land owned by the government just in those 2 states. I think they can spare 2%...
The federal government owns 224 million acres of Alaska.
I’m with you, and the evil GOP knows that too—which is why they only introduced this in the wee hours this morning, before the whole thing is voted on late tomorrow.
The federal government owns 80.1% of all the land in Nevada.
The federal government owns nearly 70% of Utah
The federal government owns 61.3% of Alaska
Oh geez
35,000 square miles.
Your views are not unpopular with me. Converting the west’s public lands into private ownership completely screws the public as it closes the door on any further public use of all lands so transferred. If any lands are to be transferred or sold, there needs to be public hearings for those parcels well before hand.
You’re right, PrairieDawg. This is very controversial.
Many have the mistaken belief that lands should be RETURNED TO THE STATES. That is very opposite of what went on. The States were carved out of federal lands, had to organize from settled properties, improve them, prove to be self governing, then apply for statehood. The lands never open to settlement remained in federal control. The point is, it has always been federal property until given up.
Now if it is being given up to the states with no strings attached, then I agree with you. If this land is purchased from the states and developed, it will be for the elites to benefit from.
This land should be deeded to the States, in trust for public use, such as a park or recreational forest. Or, opened back up to US citizens for actual homesteading where they move in, improve the property then buy it at a very low cost.
If my math is correct, this is an area roughly 48 miles by 48 miles. This is a lot of land. To be sold to developers would be a sin.
That’s 35,000 out of 656,424.
That doesn’t sound like all that much.
80.1% of Nevada is OWNED by the federal government. Only 19% of Nevada belongs to Nevada. Now how does that make sense?
Nevada cannot grow or become productive as most states cause they don’t even own their own land. They can’t develop it for themselves or derive any tax income for the good of the state.
Look at some of my other posts on this. For the public use you say, they PREVENT the public from actually using it...
The people in the western states have long complained about how much of the land in their states the federal government owns and won’t privatize....which means their states can’t develop nearly as much as they want to. I’m all for putting in some provisions such as the land must be sold to Americans and foreigners are not allowed to own any of it for a certain number of years but in general, the federal government could sell off a lot of public land in the West and still own a huge amount.
The federal government owns 61.3% of Alaska
the technology is going to change radically in the next ten years. its going to be dirt cheap desalinate the brackish water under most of those lands and the technology is already here to find vital minerals just by flying over land and scanning it with various tools to a depth xxx. I don’t know the depth. but I do know that all the tools to make the analysis are going to get a whole better in the next 10 years.
imho its a mistake to give away the federal lands without at least doing the mineral survey. Given the federal debt it would make more sense assess the lands and then sell those lands.
They can’t even find 10 most wanted on FBI’s list, or 5 of the 10 escaped prisoners in spite of 200 cops looking for them. How do you expect to find 30,000,000+ illegals using fake social security numbers of other people?
Sympathetic to your ideals but I am more a believer in private property. The government should own some land for various legit purposes. They own way way way too much.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.