Senate committee hears plan to identify low‑value federal lands for transfer, with public meetings promised

At a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, a committee member asked when the public will be told which federal lands are being considered for sale or transfer and whether there will be public meetings before any offers are made.

The secretary replied that the plan remains at a proposal stage and said officials have screened federal holdings for parcels of “low value for recreation, mineral resources, etcetera” that are adjacent to fast‑growing population centers. The secretary said those parcels are most likely to be in states with high percentages of federal land, naming Idaho, Alaska, Utah and Nevada.

The committee member urged use of an existing framework, the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act, and pointed to a Southern Nevada statute as a local model. The committee member asked for a list of specific National Park units or other federal sites that might be transferred, noting Congress is in a budget year and the public deserves to know which sites are “potentially on the list.”

The secretary said there would be public engagement before any offers and sought to reassure members that “there won't be an acre of, of our any of our 63 national parks that are considered, up for sale.” He said the focus would be on low‑visitation or otherwise low‑value parcels rather than the agency's most prominent sites.

Officials described data limitations as a central operational challenge. The secretary said the government counts “330,000,000 people visiting parks,” but added, “Those aren't 330,000,000 different people. Those are visitor days,” and said systems do not consistently show whether visitors are local, national or international or how often they return. That lack of reliable parcel‑level visitation data, the secretary said, will make it difficult to produce a vetted list quickly.

The secretary offered Knife River Indian Village in North Dakota as an example of a low‑visitation site that could be better managed by a state historic society, saying it may have “less than a thousand visitors in an entire season” yet requires a park superintendent and other on‑site federal staff.

Committee members also raised the question of how revenue from any land sales would be used. The committee member noted that funds from sales under the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act have been directed to recreation, access and conservation and asked whether that model could be expanded; the secretary said he would evaluate existing models used in New Mexico and elsewhere.

No formal decision or vote was taken at the hearing. The committee member pressed for a list of candidate sites and a timeline; the secretary said producing that list would take time because of data and operational limitations and pledged that future public meetings would be part of the process.

The discussion mixed policy, budget and operational concerns: whether potential transfers could reduce infrastructure costs for fast‑growing cities, how proceeds would be allocated, and whether transfers would allow state or local entities to manage small or low‑visited sites more efficiently. The committee directed staff to continue oversight and asked the department to provide clearer, data‑driven information before any legislative or budget proposal proceeds.