Arizona communities were bracing for possibly big changes to public lands as a provision inside the Senate Republicans’ so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill" includes the sale of millions of areas of federally-owned land.
Crafted by Utah Republican Mike Lee, the provision would have put lands under federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management up for sale. Lee said the land could be used for housing and other infrastructure.
“While we’re seeing the immense loss of nature and natural areas across Arizona due to mining and border wall construction, the solution should be to protect more public land, not to liquidate the areas that we still have,” said Laiken Jordahl, southwest conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Lee’s provision was removed from the bill by the Senate parliamentarian, who said it was in violation of chamber rules.
The lawmaker submitted a scaled down version that still includes Bureau of Land Management land in Arizona and elsewhere, according to text of the provision released by Politico.
Republicans in support of the sale are still advocating for the bill to pass.
“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that," Lee said in an X post Monday night.
Jordahl said areas like the San Pedro river, along the U.S.- Mexico border, are still at risk.
“We’ve got hunters on our side, off-road vehicle users on our side, we’ve got former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on our side. So this is a fight that we’re going to go to the mat,” Jordahl said.
Zinke headed the Department of Interior during the first Trump administration.
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Most of the nine schools — including University of Arizona — did refuse to sign the compact. But Eliza Collins from the Wall Street Journal said ASU President Michael Crow was upset that he didn’t have the opportunity to make that call.
