By Aubrey Bertram GUEST COLUMNIST
When it comes to selling off our public lands, Sen. Steve Daines’ and Sen. Tim Sheehy’s actions don’t match their words.
They’re taking credit for opposing public land sell-offs—at least in Montana. But behind the scenes, they’re supporting language in the Senate reconciliation bill that would pave the way to handing over 200 million acres of public land, in and out of Montana, to private oil and gas corporations and billionaires.
That’s more than twice the size of Montana. And while Daines, Sheehy, and some of their colleagues are paying lip service to keeping public lands public, they’re opening a back door to fencing off the places we hike, camp, hunt, fish and ride, blocking access and giving billionaires control of the places that belong to all of us.
Here’s how it works.
Language in the “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill would require the BLM to hold quarterly oil and gas lease sales for 95% of public land in Montana and across the West. These sales would even apply to lands with active grazing permits and so-called “split estates,” places where the federal government controls mineral rights while another landowner controls surface rights. This means that even protected public lands like state parks, wildlife refuges, and recreation areas could be affected to help an oil company pad its portfolio.
It’s not hypothetical: the federal government already owns the mineral rights in Smith River, Makoshika, and Lewis and Clark Caverns state parks, the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, and dozens of other sites across the state. Four times a year, corporations and billionaires would have the chance to snap up these rights. Once they do, the surface uses will be managed to not impede or prevent potential development—the chance to protect public access, recreation, clean water and wildlife habitat will be gone.
Lawmakers are justifying these sell-offs as a way to help balance the budget, but that’s fiction. Independent analysis of the current reconciliation bill estimates that it would add $3-5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
Sell-offs and giveaways would rip off Montana taxpayers too. The reconciliation bill would roll back the royalty rate on oil and gas from 16.67% to 12.5%, which is the same rate corporations paid in 1920. This is far less than what states, including Montana, charge private companies who get rich using the resources that belong to all of us. These corporate-friendly federal leasing rates cost Montana taxpayers $110 million between 2013 and 2022. Over the same time frame, oil and gas corporations left Montanans on the hook for up to $180 million in cleanup costs.
This plan to hand over our public lands to private companies and their billionaire CEOs has nothing to do with supplying reliable, affordable energy to Montana families. It has nothing to do with fiscally responsible, common-sense management of our lands. It has nothing to do with increasing efficiency or reducing government waste.
It’s part of the plan to dismantle our public lands—the logical next step in the plan that began with firing Forest Service and National Parks Service employees en masse, gutting USFS and BLM budgets, justifying eliminating national monuments, and weakening the laws that protect our clean air and water. It’s part of the coordinated effort to give billionaires control over our shared resources. It endangers our clean water, wildlife habitat, ranching and grazing opportunities, and the backbone of Montana’s unparalleled way of life.
Montanans have made it clear that we won’t let politicians sell off or give away our public lands. Sen. Daines and the rest of our delegation can’t claim opposition to sell-offs on one hand and orchestrate them with the other. If they’re truly opposed to selling off public lands, they need to stand up and call out this reconciliation bill for what it is: a historic effort to rip off taxpayers and support billionaires, increase the national debt, and take public lands away from all Americans.
Aubrey Bertram is staff attorney and federal policy director at Wild Montana.
