The above site has a link to an interactive map where you can view the USFS and BLM lands that would be potentially available for sale: https://wilderness.maps.arcgis.com/apps ... 18aac42310The bill forces the arbitrary sale of at least 2 million acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands in 11 Western states over the next five years, and it gives the secretaries of the interior and agriculture broad discretion to choose which places should be sold off....The bill directs what is likely the largest single sale of national public lands in modern history to help cut taxes for the richest people in the country. It trades ordinary Americans’ access to outdoor recreation for a short-term payoff that disproportionately benefits the privileged and well-connected.Public lands eligible for sale in the bill encompass over 120 million acres, including local recreation areas, wilderness study areas, inventoried roadless areas, critical wildlife habitat and big game migration corridors.
I zoomed on some familiar spots and saw, for example, that the land surrounding the trail leading up South Colony Creek to South Colony Lakes would be "available for sale." I confess that I'm not sure how Wilderness.org is classifying "available for sale" in the context of the bill - the bill directs the sale of at least 2 million acres and the headline states "120 million acres eligible for sale." So there's no guarantees that any particular highlighted plot would actually be sold. I still think the threat is serious enough to be worth discussing and monitoring.
Per a Senate one-pager summary, the proposal "requires BLM and USFS to sell a minimum of 0.5% and a maximum of 0.75% of their estates for housing and associated community needs." I think most of us who have been to many of the highlighted lands understand how ill-suited most of these lands are to meeting housing needs. It is difficult to see BLM and USFS as significant contributors to the housing shortage in this country, and there are other tools available that do not require liquidation of the country's most precious asset - its public land.
I hope I'm not breaking any rules by posting this here. I can't really say "politics aside" because this is a political decision that would have massive, potentially catastrophic and irreversible impacts on our shared hobby (14ers and the outdoors generally) for generations. I know there's a range of political views on this forum but I imagine that one place where our politics probably line up is that these public lands should remain public lands and not liquidated every time the government needs some extra cash.
As the Wilderness dot org post notes, a similar provision was removed from the House reconciliation bill previously and hopefully this shares the same fate. But I think it's worth being aware of what is being talked about and recommended by the US Senate at this moment.