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Public lands advocates celebrated a victory when Senator Mike Lee of Utah removed a public land sell-off provision from the budget reconciliation bill after massive public backlash. But lawmakers in Congress, as well as the Trump administration, continue to pursue the idea through other means.
Still ongoing is a joint initiative between the Interior and Housing and Urban Development departments to identify national public lands that would be suitable for housing development. A memorandum of understanding signed between the two departments in March outlined a number of tasks, including an inventory of available public lands and an assessment of their suitability for housing development, and a report on the initiative's progress. So far, none of these items has been made public.
"We just saw how massively unpopular this idea is, and even if they repackage it, people across the West will continue to reject privatizing public lands," Michael Carroll, Bureau of Land Management campaign director for The Wilderness Society, told Public Domain.
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I would argue that a large portion of the projected need [for rare earth minerals] is in clean energy...The excitement over rare earths is sort of at odds with the destruction of demand for clean energy.”
