Owyhee Breaks wilderness study area. (Courtesy Thomas O’Keefe)

Selling public lands, as a Senate version of a federal budget reconciliation package proposes, could impact Owyhee Canyonlands users from recreationists to ranchers, according to an advocate for the area that includes parts of Oregon, Idaho and Nevada.

“I see it just having a huge impact on all users of public land and on our economies as well,” said Tim Davis, Ontario, Ore.-based executive director of Friends of the Owyhee.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman Mike Lee, R-Utah, released a budget reconciliation bill text June 11 and an updated version June 14.

Interior and Agriculture department secretaries would select for disposal 0.5% to 0.75% of U.S. Bureau of Land Management and National Forest System lands, through a formal process, according to the most recent text.

Before selecting nominated tracts, secretaries would consult with applicable state governors, local government units and tribes. Nominations would have to describe planned uses, the extent to which development of the tract would address local housing needs, and associated infrastructure to support housing.

In selecting tracts to be sold, priority consideration would be given to those that are nominated by states or local governments, adjacent to developed areas, have access to infrastructure or are suitable for housing, according to the most recent text. Secretaries would not be able to dispose of land that is federally protected, that is subject to “valid existing rights” or that is not located in one of 11 eligible Western states.

U.S. public land eligible for sale increased from about 120 million acres in the original proposal to more than 250 million in the revision, according to an analysis by The Wilderness Society, which also released a map and state eligible-acreage totals.

Eligible acres differ from mandated acres, Wilderness Society spokesman Max Greenberg told Capital Press.

Since the bill calls for selling 0.5% to 0.75% of BLM and Forest System land, the mandated total is 2.02 million to 3.04 million acres, he said. For forest land, the percentage is based on public domain lands, not including acreage that was acquired or transferred into the U.S. Forest Service system and was not in the public domain originally.

In the new version of the bill, the pool of land eligible to be nominated for sale to meet the mandate is 250 million-plus acres, Greenberg said.

The June 11 version of the bill defined lands with valid existing rights to include lands with grazing permits, and the June 14 version struck that point, he said. Since valid existing rights are best understood to mean property interests such as oil and gas leases, rights of way or perfected mining claims, the June 14 version “seemingly put grazing permit lands back on the table for disposal, which sent the eligible acreage skyrocketing.”

Friends of the Owyhee’s Davis said sale of federal lands poses a risk that recreation users lose access.

“I also fear for the ranchers,” he said. “If public land went up for sale and they couldn’t buy their grazing allotment, they would lose areas they have been grazing — in some cases for decades.”

Counties stand to lose payments in lieu of taxes, Davis said. Malheur County, Ore., which includes part of the canyonlands, receives about 21% of its budget from these federal payments.

The new version of the proposal “would sell off vast swaths of public land without sufficient safeguards,” he wrote to Friends of the Owyhee email subscribers. The revised land-sale provision also would result in “a fast-tracked process that prioritizes profit over the preservation of public resources.”

The current proposal “lacks transparency, with broad discretion given to the secretaries of the interior and agriculture in choosing which lands will be sold,” Davis wrote. And it “does not guarantee that the land will be used for the benefit of local communities, with many areas unlikely to ever see meaningful development or improvement.”

The Owyhee Basin Stewardship Coalition currently does not have a position on the proposal, said spokesman Mark Dunn, who is polling the coalition’s executive committee. The group, which formed about 10 years ago to pursue alternatives to national monument designation in the canyonlands, includes ranchers.

As a concept, selling federal land seldom gets traction because of widespread opposition, “but to me, it’s like, OK, I’d like to have a lot more detail,” said Rusty Inglis, Oregon Cattlemen’s Association district vice president and a rancher in Malheur, Harney and Grant counties.

Some federal lands likely are being underused and would go to a better purpose if sold, “but you want to be careful what you wish for,” Inglis said. “Public land ranchers, especially in eastern Oregon … most ranchers here couldn’t afford to purchase the acres they run on, say on a BLM (U.S. Bureau of Land Management) permit.”

He would be concerned about which land is sold, “who ends up with it and what it’s going to be used for,” he said.

“It totally depends on where it is and what it’s going to be used for,” said Bob Skinner, a rancher near Jordan Valley, Ore., and past president of the Public Lands Council.

Sales near population centers could be justified given the growth of cities, but the sale of more remote rural lands “could be devastating to cattle or sheep grazers, and the nation’s food supply,” he said. The remote public lands are suited for grazing and wildlife habitat, and in Oregon and Idaho are protected with help from rancher- and farmer-led Rangeland Fire Protection Associations.

Another issue could be Taylor Grazing Act implications, Inglis said. “Those permits have been used by families for a number of years.”

Eastern Oregon has a few large ranches that are family-owned, but most family ranches have a relatively small base property and “run almost strictly on permits,” he said.

An earlier proposal to transfer federal lands in Oregon to the state “never did get anywhere,” Inglis said. “And most states don’t have the budget to fight wildfire on them.”

OCA President Matt McElligott said he is not in favor of reducing animal unit months, a measure of grazing activity on allotments, although “I don’t see it going that far.”

Rather than wholesale transactions involving big expanses, he expects the focus to be on sales of small public parcels surrounded by private lands — a checkerboard-like situation common in the West, he said.

Friends of the Owyhee’s Davis said June 17 that the original proposal to sell land as part of the federal budget bill identified a few popular recreation sites in the canyonlands as candidates to be sold.

As for the new proposal, “today I see the updated map, and pretty much all public land in Malheur County would be up for sale,” he said.

Updated bill text / Senate Energy and Natural Resources

Wilderness Society analysis, state acreage tables

Wilderness Society map, summaries