The U.S. federal government manages something like 640 million acres of land, concentrated mostly across

sparsely populated areas of western states.

Everybody loves the national parks, but places that are not as obviously striking as Yosemite or Glacier or the Grand Canyon,

some people want them sold to the highest bidder for mining, drilling, or logging.

From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. Such a sell-off provision was pulled out of the text of the big, beautiful bill before it passed, but there will likely be more attempts, especially

given President Trump's conviction that we could use federal land to build affordable housing.

Before that happens, my guest wants us to consider what all of us

might lose if large amounts of public land fall under the control of private developers.

Kyle Manley is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder's Earth Lab.

His article for Scientific American is titled The True Worth of America's Public Lands. Kyle, welcome to think.

Hi, thanks for having me. The provision that was ultimately removed from the big beautiful bill

before it was passed was proposed by Senator Mike Lee of Utah. I find this interesting because

64% of the land area in Utah is federally owned.

Do you see any significance there?

Yeah, I think it's part of this big push since the 70s, actually, with the Safe Rush Rebellion,

to take over these federal lands, as a lot of people see it as overreach, but largely it's also

just seen as an opportunity to create more profit for corporations.

A lot of states have been trying since the 70s to overtake these lands and sell them

for profit.

And yeah, Utah being a large piece of that, Nevada being a big player there, too.

I think a big piece of that is how much of the federal land is within those states.

What was the Sagebrush Rebellion exactly?

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