Boone and Crockett Club Opposes Senate Effort to Sell Public Lands Through Budget Reconciliation

The Boone and Crockett Club strongly urges the U.S. Senate to take a different course on the future of public lands, that starts with removing provisions to sell land from the budget reconciliation process. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s budget reconciliation proposal would dangerously complicate an already complicated problem for which a simpler and safer solution is available.

“The Club has a long history of working with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on public land issues and we want to continue working with the committee to resolve this issue,” said Tony A. Schoonen, CEO of the Boone and Crockett Club. “There is strong support for improving public land policy. The budget bill is not the way to do it. Several existing laws direct how land sales and exchanges should be carried out. The real problem is that these transactions are too slow and too seldom completed. That is something Congress can fix.”

The Senate budget reconciliation proposal on land sales initially directed the land agencies to disregard lands already identified for sale or exchange and start over with an unprecedented review of 2 to 3 million acres of potentially saleable lands across 11 states. Last week, the Senate proposal changed and now seems to expand the needless review to more than 200 million acres. The proposal has yet to be debated by the committee and likely will advance to the full Senate with neither a debate nor a vote.

“U.S. public land agencies have already recommended numerous parcels for sale or exchange,” said Schoonen. “The Senate proposal ignores the work already done to identify these lands and starts over with a wide-ranging review outside current law that is hard to understand and has already changed with no explanation, little publicity, and no public review.”

Compared to existing law, budget reconciliation confuses the selection of the proper lands to sell or exchange and reduces the share of the proceeds that goes back to the care of public land and the communities nearby. “

We believe the best solution is to remove the Senate proposal from reconciliation, revise it to clear the backlog of lands already designated for sale, and run the new bill through the committee after reconciliation is complete,” Schoonen added. “We hope to work with Chairman Lee and all members of the committee toward this more productive solution.”