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A provision to sell public land recently added to the Senate budget bill could have severe impacts on the future of the Pacific Crest and Continental Divide Trails, the organizations that help manage them warned today.
The recent addition to the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” championed by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) would instruct the government to sell up to 0.75% of the public land it currently holds. That would mean selling off a total of roughly 2 million acres of land, most of it currently held by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service.
“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land,” Lee said in a video from his office. “This bill puts it in better hands.”
While Lee and other supporters of public land sales have argued that the measure would only dispose of isolated parcels near populated areas that would be better suited for housing development, organizations like the Outdoor Alliance have noted that the measure’s vague criteria for determining what land is eligible would potentially put more than 250 million acres across the west up for disposal, including some heavily used by hikers, mountain bikers, car campers, and other recreationists.
In a post titled “The PCT Is NOT for Sale,” the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s (PCTA) Advocacy Director Mark Larabee said that while it might seem unlikely or impossible that the government would sell land along a popular, protected trail like the PCT, “the language in this bill is so loosely written that many vital public lands along the PCT are not specifically excluded. That means special places that PCT lovers enjoy could, in fact, be considered for sale.”
“Even more concerning, this process would bypass traditional safeguards: no public hearings, no environmental review, and no comment periods,” Larabee wrote. “Final decisions would rest solely with the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior—not with Congress.”
Larabee told Backpacker that while he wasn’t aware of any specific PCT sections currently being targeted for development, “that doesn’t mean we’re not in danger.”
“Our concern is over the idea that the Congress would cede control of selling off public land to the Secretaries of [the] Interior and Agriculture, and at the same time, strip away the public processes that already exist,” Larabee said. “Give us careful [consideration] though NEPA, like public hearings,” said Larabee.
In theory, a National Scenic Trail designation should make it extremely difficult to sell the land on which the PCT and CDT sit. But connecting trails that provide a greater level of access to these trails, resupply locations, maintenance access, and emergency response access could fall victim to private land ownership. The loss of enough these public lands could make a continuous thru-hike of some of the nation’s most beloved trails more complicated, if not impossible.
Mirroring the PCTA’s sentiments, the Continental Divide Trail Coalition (CDTC) wrote that while the treadpath of the CDT itself might not be eligible for sale, the government could sell off parcels as close as 1,000 feet to the trail to developers, potentially both ruining the vistas that earned the trail its reputation and cutting off hikers from access points or important amenities.
Selling public land could also have dire consequences for small mountain towns that rely on outdoor recreation to support the economy, the organizations warn.
“Outdoor recreation is a huge sector for our country and for the economies of small rural communities that are in the interface between public lands and urban areas. I think that doesn’t get enough weight in many of these congressional debates,” said Larabee. In fact, recent research shows that outdoor recreation – which usually takes place on public land, generates $1.2 trillion annually while supporting 5 million jobs across the nation.
The budget also features minimal exceptions to the purchasing rules, which could put vital migration land and sensitive ecosystems at risk of fragmentation or destruction.
In California, Oregon, and Washington, where the PCT runs, nearly 40,000,000 acres of land could be eligible for sale. Another 50,000,000 acres could be up for grabs along the CDT corridor with the exception of the state of Montana, which Lee entirely removed from the proposal at the request of the state’s Republican congressional delegation, which has been a notable opponent of selling public land.
A poll from Quinnipiac University found that 53 percent of Americans opposed the bill, while 27 percent supported it and the remainder of participants didn’t offer an opinion. Most of those in favor of the bill identified as Republican while most of those opposed identified as Democratic.
While the bill explicitly exempts national parks and monuments from sale, it’s not clear that even those exceptions would stick. In May, the Department of Justice published a memo arguing that President Donald Trump has the authority to unilaterally revoke national monuments’ status under the Antiquities Act, overturning a nearly 100-year old precedent that presidents could create but not cancel protections. The first Trump administration reduced the size of Utah’s Bears Ears and Escalante National Monuments, sparking a series of lawsuits from opponents of the move. A New York Times investigation later found that Utah Senator Orrin Hatch had flagged many of the removed areas as potentially containing deposits in emails to officials at the Department of the Interior, which Ryan Zinke, now one of the most vocal Republican opponents of selling public lands, then headed.
The budget bill narrowly passed in the House, and Senate majority leadership aim to pass it by the 4th of July. If the Senate passes the bill, it will return to the House, which will then have the choice to either pass it as-is or try to reconcile the differences between its version and the Senate’s.
The PCTA encouraged hikers to contact their senators to voice concerns about the loss of public land and tell them that “public lands are not a bargaining chip.” The group noted that the House removed a similar provision that would have disposed of 500,000 acres in Utah and Nevada after recreation and conservation groups voiced their concerns. Larabee also suggested hikers join the group, which is relying more on private donations and volunteers this year following funding cuts.
