The Trump administration is poised to begin offloading public land, achieving a long-held conservative goal of reducing the government’s footprint in the West. Federal agencies manage around 640 million acres, or about 28 percent of the nation’s land, an invaluable resource Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has called “America’s balance sheet.” His membership in a luxury real estate club in Montana provides an apt example of how private interests stand to profit from federal lands.
Last month, the Interior Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a plan to make large tracts of government land available to developers. “As we enter the Golden Age promised by President Trump,” Burgum wrote on March 17, “this partnership will change how we use public resources.”
Little has been shared so far about the process for identifying parcels or how they might be sold or transferred. Burgum told CNBC the Interior Department would consider selling hundreds of thousands of federally managed acres within 3 miles of urban areas. Jon Ra... Read more
