AILSA CHANG, HOST:
A proposal to sell some 3 million acres of public lands might get stripped from President Trump's so-called big, beautiful budget bill. A Senate rules referee has flagged a technical issue with its inclusion, and the fact is, it's not a popular proposal anyway. Joining us now with the latest is NPR's Kirk Siegler in Boise. Hi, Kirk.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so with this latest ruling, does this mean the provision authorizing the sale of public lands owned by the federal government is essentially dead?
SIEGLER: Still unclear. You know, this provision is being pushed by Utah Republican Mike Lee, who has said he's planning to revise it to make the sales even more limited. But, you know, Ailsa, even if it had needed just a simple majority to pass, that was no guarantee. Several Republican senators, including from here in deep-red Idaho, where I'm talking to you from, and next door in Montana, had said they weren't going to support this. But to answer your question, Lee does chair the powerful Senate Natural Resources Committee. So even if it doesn't make it into this big bill, it could be brought back up at any other time.
CHANG: OK. Well, what was the argument for selling this public land to begin with?
SIEGLER: Well, remember, in most Western states, the federal government owns the majority of the land, and Senator Lee wants to sell some of this land adjacent to cities to build affordable housing and some other industrial uses. Affordable housing is badly needed, he says. You know, think of the desert land just at the edge of, say, Salt Lake City or Las Vegas. So in his initial proposal, he called for federal agencies to identify limited lands to possibly sell across 11 Western states. But he curiously left out Montana, where actually the backlash to these public land sales is particularly intense.
CHANG: Oh, that's interesting. Wait, explain that because some Western states - I mean, I'm talking about the ones not on the coast here.
SIEGLER: Right.
CHANG: They can be pretty politically conservative, and historically speaking, it's popular to not trust the federal government. So why don't they support turning this public land over?
SIEGLER: I mean, I think one way I'd answer that is that things have changed. You know, public lands in the modern West are really woven into kind of everyday life here and the economy, you know, whether it be for hiking, fishing, gathering firewood, even running cattle, logging, people depend on them. And sportsman's groups that tended to be more conservative have lately crossed over to join liberals to fight for public lands. And there's huge opposition today, even to limited sales like we're seeing, because they think it's going to set a precedent to start selling even more land. Here's Land Tawney with the lobbying group American Hunters & Anglers.
LAND TAWNEY: I mean, Mike Lee is talking about revisions because the stove has gotten hot, the fire has gotten hot from all the people that have pushed back against him, but there is no fix to this. There's no fix to start selling our public lands to pay off tax breaks for billionaires, period.
CHANG: So are the hunting groups claiming victory now?
SIEGLER: Well, not really because they expect these public land sales proposals to keep coming back up. And you know, yesterday we had another big controversial development with public lands. The Trump administration is planning to reverse this conservation rule that had protected 58 million acres of forest land from road building and logging.
CHANG: Right. This is the so-called Roadless Rule, right?
SIEGLER: Right.
CHANG: Can you tell us more about it and, like, why the administration wants to reverse protections?
SIEGLER: Right. This goes back to President Clinton in 2001, just before he left office, he enacted the Roadless Rule, and industry groups and Republicans for a quarter century now have been fighting it. There's been over a dozen lawsuits. They've said it locked these areas up and created de facto wilderness, which only Congress can actually designate. So yesterday, President Trump's agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins made this announcement speaking to western governors in New Mexico.
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BROOKE ROLLINS: This misguided rule prohibits the forest service from thinning and cutting trees to prevent wildfires. And when fires start, the rule limits our firefighters' access to quickly put them out.
SIEGLER: And Ailsa, environmentalists are expected to sue if and when this rule formally gets reversed.
CHANG: That is NPR's Kirk Siegler. Thank you, Kirk.
SIEGLER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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