Water and a plan to sell off public land

A new plan would make 250+ million acres of public land eligible for sale.

Last week, lawmakers introduced a new proposal to sell off roughly 3 million acres of public land in the Western U.S. as part of President Trump’s omnibus spending and tax bill, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

According to the Wilderness Society, more than 250 million acres of land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management could be up for grabs under a leaked June 14 version of the proposal. Though the plan focuses on land, its effects on water could be profound.

«Here’s an interactive version of the map»

The eligible land excludes national parks and a few other protected areas, but it leaves open massive amounts of acreage in each Western state. These eligible areas include land with wilderness characteristics, grazing lands, wildlife corridors for threatened and endangered species, recreation areas and popular camping sites. Its also land that buffers the headwaters of some of our most important rivers in the West.

The U.S. Forest Service has a complex…