Walking down the road near the Bear Canyon Trail in the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, February 2018.
About 14,000,000 acres of public land in Arizona are eligible for sale if a sell-off provision is included in the Senate Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, according to a map compiled by the Wilderness Society.
The Senate bill calls for the sale of 2.2 million to 3.3 million acres of federal land that’s managed by the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management over the next five years across 11 western states.
This new plan was included in legislation that came from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which hopes to raise upwards of $10 million for housing.
The environmental advocacy group compiled those land holdings and filtered out excluded areas like national parks, wilderness areas, and other places designated by Congress for conservation.
In Arizona, popular places like Mt. Lemmon, Sabino Canyon, Madera Canyon and other areas that locals and tourists frequent however meet the criteria for sale that’s been put forth by the Senate.
Mike Quigley, the Arizona State Director with the Wilderness Society, said the current legislation bypasses typical agency processes for identifying lands for disposal that include public input.
"If the Senate changes the House version, like they’re attempting to do by reinserting the public land sell-off language, then the bill would have to go back to the House for another go around and another vote," Quigley said. "The insidious part of this is by putting it in with all of these other budget considerations."
The Senate must vote on the Reconciliation Bill by July 4th.
Quigley noted that some of these areas that meet the eligibility criteria for sale are immediately adjacent to wilderness areas like the Pusch Ridge Wilderness or the Superstition Mountains.
"They just didn't happen to get inside the boundary when those designations were created," Quigley said.
In some cases they are easements or rights of way that guarantee access to these natural destinations to the general public.
"If that gets sold to a private interest and that access through that land is sold as well, it could be closed off," Quigley said.
By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.