Rules adopted by the GOP In The House of Representatives would place no value on public lands if legislation were introduced to dispose of it/BLM file of Cedar Mesa Citadal

Rules governing how the U.S. House of Representatives conducts work during the 19th Congress could make it easier for lawmakers to dispose of public lands.

Under the rules package adopted Friday, any legislation calling for disposal of lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, or National Park Service would not require any dollar value to be attached to the lands. Such moves "shall not be considered as providing new budget authority, decreasing revenues, increasing mandatory spending, or increasing outlays."

According to The Wilderness Society, under this rule the "Congressional Budget Office, which provides lawmakers with data so they can make budget decisions, would effectively consider public lands to have no monetary value, making wholesale sell-off of lands much simpler."

Lydia Weiss, senior director of government relations for The Wilderness Society, said this rule "would effectively put the nation’s public lands on the clearance rack, and it is the logical first step in a campaign to expedite sale of those lands."

A release from the organization added that "[S]elling off public lands will lead to loss of protection for wildlife habitat and cultural sites and shut the public out of valued recreation areas. Public lands are universally beloved, and polling has consistently shown that people consider them to be places shared with, and managed for the good of, the nation as a whole. Selling them off is a bad idea and a deeply unpopular one.” 

Read About Polling That Shows Westerners Prefer Conservation Of Public Lands

The release noted that back in 2017, "a similar rules package passed and set the stage for Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz to introduce legislation that would have sold off 3.3 million acres across the West. Chaffetz’s sell-off proposal drew intense criticism, including at an infamous town-hall event, and he was eventually forced to withdraw it."

"Indeed, polling conducted the prior month showed that 78 percent of people in the U.S. oppose efforts to privatize or sell public lands, including 64 percent of people who voted for President Trump in 2016," the release continued. "Subsequent polls have similarly shown that most people in the U.S., and most in the West, support conservation of public lands and consider the presence of lands like national monuments, forests, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas to be valuable for local communities."

The state of Utah has asked the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to file a lawsuit directly to the court challenging the BLM's holding of millions of acres of land in the state.

The Traveler has learned from a National Park Service veteran that during the first Trump administration there were talks about privatizing or contracting out small park units that didn't have much visitation or full-time employees.