Idaho Sens. Crapo and Risch come out against proposed public land sales

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Americans of all political stripes have been in an uproar over a proposal in the budget reconciliation bill currently before the U.S. Senate that initially would have put about 250 million acres of public land on the block for sale to private interests — including nearly 22 million acres in Idaho alone.

Sen. Jim Risch. File photo

However, Rep. Mike Lee, R-Utah, announced on June 23 that he proposed to limit that provision to Bureau of Land Management acres within five miles of a “population center” and take U.S. Forest Service lands off the table entirely. If approved, that would significantly limit the amount of land potentially for sale to about 1.2 million acres nationwide, according to a June 25 report from The Hill. (For more on that story, see Page 4.)

Lee’s move comes amid backlash even from MAGA conservatives, who have heard from a broad range of constituents that the land sale portion of President Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” goes too far.

Even Lee’s proposed limitations met with pushback — including from members of his own party.

According to a June 24 report from E&E News, which is part of online media outlet Politico, “Lee’s most formidable opponents had been his own colleagues in the Senate. Four Republican senators said they did not support Lee’s proposal: Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy of Montana, and Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho.”

Crapo and Risch — both Republicans — had been silent on the public lands sell-off portion of the bill until last week, when both senators’ offices issued statements coming out against the proposal.

“After reviewing the Senate Energy and Natural Resources reconciliation language, I do not support the proposed provision to sell public lands,” Risch wrote in a June 20 statement.

A former state senator, lieutenant governor and governor of Idaho, the 11-term U.S. senator is the senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Crapo’s office issued a statement on June 19, writing, “After a careful and thorough review of the legislative text in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee reconciliation title, Senator Crapo does not support the proposed language to sell public lands,” Crapo’s Coeur d’Alene office told the Reader in an email June 25.

Republican U.S. Congressional District 2 Rep. Mike Simpson expressed his opposition to the public lands sale portion of the bill in April, announcing he would join Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., in co-sponsoring the Public Lands in Public Hands Act, which would bar the “sale of most public lands managed by the Department of the Interior and the United States Forest Service except under specific conditions and where required under previous laws.” 

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID.) File photo.

“Public lands were set aside for public use, and we have a responsibility to ensure that future generations will be able to enjoy the same benefits we sometimes take for granted today,” Simpson stated in an April 21 news release. 

“Idaho’s abundance of parks, forests, and public lands makes our state a wonderful place to live, work, and play,” he added. “As a lifelong Idahoan and chairman of the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, I have worked long and hard to protect Idahoans’ way of life by preserving access to Idaho’s public lands while ensuring the federal land management agencies are good neighbors. I am pleased that this legislation upholds that commitment … .”

Republican U.S. CD1 Rep. Russ Fulcher, however, told the Reader in an April 23 interview that while he did not support privatizing public land, “I do believe that we’ve got to figure out how to manage it locally because the resources aren’t there nationally. …

“The intent is not to try to privatize, the intent is to try to manage it. The intent is trying to take care of it,” he added, though indicated that while he wasn’t familiar with the details of the Public Lands in Public Hands Act, it “sounds to me like that’s a great way to lock stuff up so that you’re in the same system we’re in.”

Fulcher’s office did not respond to a request for further comment by press time.