- Outdoor columnist Ben Smith says outdoorsmen everywhere had a great victory when U.S. Senator Mike Lee withdrew his measure to sell off millions of acres of federal lands.
“O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!” I always loved that part of the Star-Spangled Banner before a ballgame. It still gives me chills when I go to a game and hear it played. The land of the free. Emphasis on land. And there are several other patriotic songs that mention our land. For instance, “My Country Tis of Thee” by Samuel Francis Smith has verses that state “Land where my fathers died” and “Land of the noble free.” And my personal favorite was written in 1918 by Irving Berlin after he was drafted into service during World War 1. It goes a little something like this: “God bless America, land that I love…”
See, there’s a central theme in patriotic songs about our country: land. Woody Guthrie wrote a song titled “This Land is Your Land” in 1940 as a response to my beloved favorite “God Bless America” about land ownership and the inequalities in America. Nonetheless, as we inch closer to July 4th and the air surrounding our barbeques is filled with patriotic tunes, you won’t be able to help but notice how many of those songs mention land. And that’s what I want to talk about this week.
Recently, outdoorsmen had a great victory when Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, withdrew his bill to sell off millions of acres of federal lands. It was a provision in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that would have affected eleven different states. Montana was about the only western state that would not have been affected because their lawmakers rejected it immediately. The bill was first introduced in the House and was for the sale of around 500,000 acres of federal land but was killed. Senator Lee brought the bill back, but this time for between two and three million acres of land to be sold.
After a huge outlash from western hunters and outdoors enthusiasts, Lee amended the bill to sell 1.2 million acres of land over the next five years. Over the weekend in the midst of increasing pressure from outdoorsmen and members of Congress, Lee removed the provision altogether. For now, this land is still our land.
The thing that is strikingly odd to me is that Lee and supporters of the bill, like our very own Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, planned to sell the land to private buyers to be developed as “affordable housing.” It doesn’t take a genius to look up potential lands that could have been on the sale block and check out the affordability of housing in the surrounding areas. For instance, Rock Springs, Wyoming is well within the map of potential land sales in the bill. What does a three-bedroom house go for in Rock Springs? Well, a 1,600 square foot house is going to cost you well over $300,000 to live in the area. I’m not sure who in the heck they are talking to about affordable, but it dang sure ain’t me. I wouldn’t pay three hundred grand to live in a sixteen hundred square foot house if it was next to the Fountain of Youth. Last time I checked the states that were eligible for this land sale are mostly within the Rockies…and land and housing in the Rockies is anything but cheap. So, they can take that lie and sell it somewhere else.
Senator Lee, even after removing the provision from the bill, still doubled down on why he thinks it’s a good idea. He even went as far as saying the land was mismanaged and neglected by Democratic presidents. Well Senator Lee, here’s your chance to fix it without selling it. The Republicans own a majority in the House, the Senate, and they have the presidency. I wouldn’t argue that the Biden Administration didn’t neglect federal lands, the Biden Administration neglected a lot of things. However, there were four years between the Obama and Biden Administrations. I wonder what was done with the land during that period. The political party blaming game has gotten old and Americans are tired of it. Either be a solution or shut up and move aside for someone that is.
You may be asking the question, “Why should we care down here? We live in the Southeast.” I’ll answer that for you now. If the federal government will sell off lands in the west that are designated for public use, lands that the American taxpayer funds, they will sell them off in Mississippi too. And we’ve already got a senator in favor of doing it. That’s scary to me. And the fact that they were willing to sell off the land for “affordable housing” is all the more reason for Mississippians to be concerned with this bill. Don’t you think that if any state needs land for affordable housing that it would be the poorest state in the nation?
I reached out to Senator Hyde-Smith via email to come on the Southern Drawl Podcast and explain her thought process behind supporting the bill but have received no response from her. One, she may not think a small potatoes outdoor show is worthy of her time, but while it isn’t the Joe Rogan show, it has a dedicated following of people that care about the outdoors. Or two, she may know that we would be opposed to selling off public lands under the guise of affordable housing because we know it’s a sham and she just doesn’t want the opposition. Either way, the invitation remains open.
For now, hunters, anglers, and all outdoor enthusiasts that use public lands to enjoy God’s creation can breathe a sigh of relief. Without those groups of people, we may have just seen the biggest land sell-off in American history. Maybe now our politicians will understand that “this land is your land, and this land is my land, from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters, this land was made for you and me.”
Ben Smith
