WASHINGTON— More than 100 organizations urged congressional leaders today to drop an amendment from the House budget bill that would force the sale of at least 500,000 acres of public lands in Nevada and more than 11,000 acres in Utah.

“This public land sell-off amendment is unacceptable and should be removed from the budget reconciliation bill immediately,” said Travis Hammill, D.C. director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “The amendment remains fundamentally flawed. First and foremost, it would sell off thousands of acres of federal public lands in southwest Utah. It was concocted with zero public input, with zero opportunity for public review, and with zero understanding of the places potentially harmed. To top it all off, the amendment was initially introduced at nearly midnight during the 13th hour of an all-day hearing. Rep. Maloy should be embarrassed by her actions.”

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) and Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) introduced the amendment during a late night House Natural Resources Committee hearing, without an opportunity for review by other members of Congress or the public. The amendment, now part of the larger House reconciliation bill, is anticipated to pass the Rules Committee today and will potentially head to the House floor for a vote today or tomorrow.

“This is a public lands fire sale in Nevada and Utah. Some of our most valuable wildlife habitat will be heading straight to the auction block to be bulldozed for subdivisions and warehouses,” said Ashley C. Nunes, public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Reps. Amodei and Maloy are handing our national heritage to corporate interests to fund tax cuts for billionaires. We’re going to fight them every step of the way.”

Today’s letters say the unpopular amendment would sacrifice wide swaths of important wildlife habitat, deprive the public of recreation and hunting opportunities, and destroy irreplaceable cultural resources that belong to numerous Native American Tribes. It calls on House leaders to scrap the amendment before bringing the reconciliation bill to the floor for a vote.

Background

The amendment contains no requirements for public use and no limitations on how public lands in Utah can be used once sold. That means the land could be developed for golf courses, luxury resorts, strip malls, vacation homes or simply flipped for sale again.

Public lands at risk in Utah include:

• Parcels within Beaver Dam Wash and Red Cliffs National Conservation Areas — designated by Congress to conserve and protect spectacular natural and cultural resources.
• Parcels within the Santa Clara River Reserve, which protects open space and has many recreational opportunities.
• Parcels within the Santa Clara/Gunlock and Red Bluff Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, as well as land within the Red Mountain Wilderness.
• Several parcels next to Zion National Park, one of the most visited national parks in the nation and an economic engine for Washington County. The tracts proposed for sale include a 300-acre mesa outside the small town of Rockville, as well as land at popular Zion-area trailheads.
• Other parcels that cut through habitat for desert tortoises, who are protected as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, as well as habitat for mule deer and desert bighorn sheep.

In Nevada, Amodei is putting hundreds of thousands of acres on the auction block, many of them already envisioned for sprawling developments outside of Nevada’s cities.

Public lands at risk in Nevada include:

• 100,000 acres or more in Clark County in and around Las Vegas, including tens of thousands of acres of pristine desert tortoise habitat, to build a new sprawling city in the open desert stretching to the California border.
• More than 40,000 acres in Washoe County, massively increasing the urban footprint of Reno. The city already struggles with overwhelming traffic, a lack of adequate infrastructure, strained water resources and increasing air pollution.
• More than 300,000 acres in Pershing County, transferring much of the county into private hands.

Up to 10,000 acres in Pershing County would be sold directly to mining companies that already have mining infrastructure on the land, allowing them to circumvent federal environmental protection laws.