If you’re waiting for the day Congress votes to sell public lands, you may actually miss the day they are functionally sold (in effect, if not on paper) without a vote.
Land enclosure doesn’t require a deed transfer. It can happen bit by bit through paperwork and process: a sentence deleted from an appropriations bill here, a public comment process removed there, or a political appointee who treats land like inventory. And for this to happen, it needs oversight and accountability to go MIA.
That’s the pattern on the table right now: the enclosure of the commons.
They don’t call it that anymore, of course. They call it “management” or “efficiency” or “streamlining” or “stewardship.”
And when they get serious, they call it “transfer.”
They don’t start by selling the land: they start by deleting the language that says it’s in the public trust.
The Salt Lake Tribune:
“The section that Lee proposes to delete makes clear that national park units are federal lands that are staffed and maintained by federal employees.” [ref]
Maybe it’s all a big smash-and-grab:
Courthouse News (quoting Wendy Park of the Center for Biological Diversity):
“[The administration] is taking a wrecking ball to public lands so [their] industry cronies can make a quick buck…” [ref]
The people who were elected or appointed (and are being paid) to provide oversight are practicing silence as a governing strategy.
Public Domain, in the context of the nomination of Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management:
“Most caucus members have held their tongues on Pearce’s nomination.” [ref]
Because this is not primarily a fight about scenic vistas, trail access, or even “the environment.” It’s a fight about who gets to control scarce things. And land is one of the scarcest things there is.
You can print money and make buildings and mine rare earths, but you can’t print canyon walls or mountain peaks or open space.
The “public lands” sale is not a con job – it’s a system engineered by the modern concentration of governing power.
In the modern age of infinite news feeds and finely-tuned algorithms, most of us are conditioned to look for the dramatic moment: the vote where someone “sells the parks.”
That’s the children’s book version of what’s happening.
In the real world, you don’t need to sell the commons to destroy it. You just need to remove the friction that keeps it from being converted into somebody’s private advantage.
Start with the language Sen. Mike Lee is trying to delete. The Tribune reports that park advocates worry that deleting that provision could “enable [the administration] to begin downsizing and selling off national parks lands.”
Lee’s defenders will say: deleting language is not a sale. This is true, but deleting that language provides something that’s even more useful in the current moment:
Permission.
It removes a tripwire. It tells the Executive Branch: go ahead and explore “options.” And in a government that lives on “options,” the option becomes a pilot program… the pilot program becomes a budget assumption… the budget assumption becomes a financial crisis… and then the financial crisis becomes justification.
Clearly, this is not about national parks.
The Tribune shows you the logic chain in black and white by quoting the administration’s own budget request:
“There is an urgent need to streamline staffing… and transfer certain properties to State-level management…”
Notice what is missing: a promise to preserve the land. A guarantee of public access. A binding requirement that the public can participate early enough to make a meaningful difference.
Just “streamline” and “transfer.”
That language is about liquidation, not conservation.
Oversight is in absentia, and that’s the point.
The American system congratulates itself on “checks and balances.” But checks and balances are not ideas. They’re behaviors. They require officials to show up, take heat, and block bad moves inside committee rooms where the cameras don’t go.
And right now, the accountability class is missing.
Public Domain describes a new Senate Stewardship Caucus formed to “protect and expand access to public lands.” Fine. Then comes the first real test: Pearce’s nomination to lead the BLM – an agency overseeing nearly 250 million acres. Pearce, the piece notes, has a record of rolling back protections and even advocating federal land divestment. This is the kind of posture that treats public land less like a trust and more like an asset to be disposed of.
The article’s subtitle doesn’t mince words about Pearce’s posture:
“Will lawmakers put a man who has argued that ‘we do not even need’ the vast majority of federal lands in charge of 250 million acres of them?”
What happens when Public Domain asks caucus members where they stand?
Most don’t answer.
That’s not because they’re too busy. Silence is a modern political method, and argue as you may, silence increases the efficiency (speed) of governance. Cut out the annoyance of public accountability, and it’s easier to move your agenda forward. This isn’t partisan so much as practical.
When lawmakers are silent, the administration can do what power loves to do: shift power from votes (visibility and accountability) to procedures (expeditious policy implementation).
The weapon of concentrated power: remove the public from the room.
If you want to know how the commons dies, don’t just follow who owns land titles. Follow the process that manages their transfers.
Courthouse News reports that two nonprofits sued, alleging the administration has stopped enforcing public comment periods for environmental reviews tied to drilling, logging, mining, and construction approvals on public lands.
So while we’re all focused on ideological arguments about what to do with public lands, it’s currently not the most important part of the fight. The fight is being won (lost) through the mechanics of governance.
If agencies can approve projects without a meaningful public comment window, then ordinary people (the commoners) don’t participate in land management. They participate in post-mortems.
Courthouse News quotes the plaintiffs’ argument in simple terms: if resources are overlooked, then “the only recourse would be to file a costly and time-intensive administrative appeal or lawsuit…the damage could already be done.”
That is the enclosure playbook in 2025:
No transparency or policy debate or planning reviews for land auctions and sales (or transfers), but instead, a fait accompli.
The media is missing the mark because the mark is boring.
News media (including news-tainment) coverage focuses on a question:
“Can they sell the parks?”
That’s a headline, but maybe also a decoy. It generates clicks and drama and emotion (no scarcity there these days), but doesn’t reflect the key ingredients of deeper storylines.
The deeper question may instead be: can they hollow out the system that prevents parks and BLM lands from being treated like inventory?
And the answer, increasingly, is yes – because the mechanisms are being targeted: staffing requirements, public comment norms, nominations, appropriations riders.
The Tribune quotes a park advocate saying:
“The American public is not clamoring to get rid of national parks.”
Correct. The public is not clamoring. That’s why the strategy is not to ask the public what they think.
History has taught us that a core strategy of concentrated-power governments is to act while the public is distracted by ideological and cultural conflicts and while the oversight class is absent (e.g., see ref, ref, ref).
Is modern liberalism failing (virtue signaling while the machinery gets stripped)?
Modern liberalism is deeply skilled at moral language and storytelling, but deeply incompetent at power management.
It rallies around symbols. It fetishizes the right tone. It produces endless campaigns, donor emails, and “awareness.” Meanwhile, the actual machinery of protection gets rewritten in appropriations language and administrative memos.
Even worse, modern liberalism often collaborates with “streamlining” when it’s wrapped in the right aesthetic. It has developed an addiction to speed and a belief that urgency and drama are always good. You’ve seen the playbook – drama and urgency represent la tâche du jour – the rallying cry of the modern conservative movement – now adopted by liberals as well (but perhaps for different reasons – conservative power believes in its ability to distract and divide, while liberal power believes it’s how you win voters).
But it’s not just conservatives pushing the “move faster” doctrine. The Associated Press reports the House passed a bill to accelerate permitting reviews for energy and infrastructure projects by limiting reviews and narrowing challenges – supported by Republicans and Democrats [ref].
That mindset makes “public participation” sound like a nuisance – a delay – a luxury.
That’s the liberal failure in one sentence: they will defend the idea of public lands while tolerating the erosion of the methods that keep the land truly public.
They are outraged by outcomes and indifferent to inputs.
They will give you speeches about conservation while the public comment windows close.
The conservative bait-and-switch: confusing “local control” with loss of control.
If you care about hunting access, fishing access, motorized access, grazing, rural economies, and the Western way of life, you need to understand something.
You are not the customer here. You are the cover band, a pawn in the process, perhaps?
The Tribune notes Lee’s earlier public-land selloff push proved “deeply unpopular,” including “among hunters, anglers and Lee’s own conservative base.”
That should tell you something: when the base actually notices, it revolts. So the strategy changes. It becomes more procedural, more technical, quieter.
You’re told that weakening federal protections is “local control.” You’re told that understaffing is “efficiency.” You’re told that shortened reviews are “cutting red tape.”
But local control often becomes privatized control or perhaps a different form of government control where conservative land advocates and voters are excluded even further.
Efficiency becomes liquidation. Streamlining becomes exclusion. Transfer becomes leverage… and leverage becomes sale.
If you don’t believe it, look at what the administration itself is signaling: “streamline staffing” and “transfer certain properties.”
That is not serving conservative voters – that is removing them from participating in the process.
Democracy vs republics vs ? Labels don’t actually conserve anything.
Many commoners want to argue about political theory.
Is America a democracy? A republic? Something else?
The problem here is that the label doesn’t guard the watershed or the trailhead or the climbing crag.
A democracy does not stop an agency memo or budget rider. A vote every two years does not restore a comment period that was eliminated.
Our governance process is not a protective guardian that we can blindly trust.
It is a hallway.
Power walks down it.
It leads to a private room.
Everyone else is told to wait at the door.
Removing the jersey.
The most reliable weapon in politics is identity.
Red. Blue. Hunter. Hiker. Climate voter. Property voter. Shareholder.
Identity teaches you to defend a team instead of defending a place.
Public lands don’t care what team you’re on.
A canyon owner does not consider what you think democracy means, whether its bottom is being hiked, driven, or mined.
We have a very difficult time stepping out of our political identity.
But regardless of your identity, can you trust the process to protect the interests of the commons? The concentration of power in the halls of modern American government has all but proven that your jersey is irrelevant to them, as long as they can keep you divided and distracted.
Hope roots in commoner action.
Public lands conservation decisions are being made by elected politicians (and their appointees). They are motivated by the conflicting influences of access to power from above and reelection incentives from below. They respond to pressure from commoners when that pressure is organized, specific, and sustained – and directly threatens their ability to (a) govern efficiently and (b) influence their reelection prospects.
The influence of power from above is strong, but that’s a strategy that depends on your absence.
Break the strategy by refusing to disappear:
- Pick your targets: your two senators and your representative. Write their names down. Stop fighting “Washington” – swamp or sewer, it’s enshrouded in fog and can’t be identified with any logical precision. Pressure works when it’s exerted towards a desk with a nameplate.
- Demand public commitments – on the record. Statements like “we care about public lands” are hollow. We need specific commitments: oppose appropriations language that enables downsizing or transfer… defend robust public comment process… reject nominees who treat public lands as disposable.
- Call. Then call again. Then show up. One call is a suggestion. Weekly contact is a cost. Offices tally contacts. They track trends. They fear organized repetition and do everything they can to dissolve it.
- Use the public stage that your officials can’t avoid. Town halls. District meetings. Field hearings. Ask one precise question. Require a yes or no. Record the answer. Publish it locally.
- Make silence expensive. Public Domain’s reporting shows what happens when senators “hold their tongues.” Don’t let them. If they won’t answer, make that the story in your town or county. Letters to the editor. Local groups co-signing. Public questions at every event. No more free ambiguity.
- Build coalitions that don’t require ideological purity. Hunters, anglers, hikers, climbers, birders, tribal communities, gateway-town workers, ranch families who want stability. The commons survives when people refuse to be separated into marketing segments.
- Defend the boring mechanisms. Public comment. Staffing. Transparency. Those are not bureaucratic niceties. They are load-bearing beams. When they’re removed, the building falls – don’t find yourself under the rubble and then wonder what happened.
Public officials are not tasked with protecting public lands. Public lands are protected by citizens who apply pressure until those in power feel the pain of failing to protect their constituents’ interests.
Here’s your playbook: activate, collaborate, participate:
- Get involved with organizations that represent the interests of commoners.
- Build coalitions with people who represent different interests in land use, but adhere to the principle of protecting it from enclosure.
- Participate in the political process by communicating with your elected officials, holding them to public account, and voting.
Remove your jersey.
Defend the place.
And make your elected officials earn their titles.
Discussion
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Companion forum thread to: Selling Public Lands Without a Vote: The Quiet Enclosure of the Commons
Public lands won’t be “sold” in a televised vote. They’ll be enclosed through deleted sentences, vanished comment periods, and lawmakers who stay silent while appointees treat the commons like inventory. The antidote is stepping out of political jerseys and applying relentless pressure on elected officials – before the bulldozers arrive.
Honestly the concept of owning land eludes me. We’re only here for a short while.
I call weekly. Sometimes daily. Sometimes it feels hopeless, then I remember, that’s how they want us to feel. Short of civil unrest, there will be many years of lawsuits and boycotts against the opportunists. Hopefully this next year will show some change in governance. Commoners have a right to exist and to use the land to which they are born.
Kuiu is off of my list.
https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/private-equity-group-buys-kuiu/
The James C. (“Cox”) Kennedy land dispute on Montana’s Ruby River (see Terran Terran’s link above for context) hits pretty close to me. I’ve floated and fished the section of the Ruby through this land since before he purchased it. When he purchased the land, the Montana Stream Access Law protected that right of way, and public access to it. He would have known this when he bought it, of course. Then, in 2004, “no tresspassing” signs and barbed wire/electric fences were erected to block that public access – which was a violation of public law. The dispute ended up in the courts, and the Montana Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of the public and the Stream Access Law, but it created years of ugly and unnecessary conflict between landowners and the public.
In addition to Kennedy, many “pro-conservation” landowners in Montana are incredibly wealthy. Do they do good things for “conservation”? Of course. They donate a ton of money and time, and yes, they do use their influence to move the needle forward for conservation initiatives. Examples: Charles Schwab, Tom Brokaw, Huey Lewis, James Kennedy, Ted Turner, Greg Gianforte, the list is much, much longer than this.
All of the above-named landowners own publicly accessible waterways, all of which I’ve accessed numerous times, with varying degrees of conflict on each of these properties. There are remote security cameras, professional (armed) security teams, rough-around-the-edges ranch hands who haven’t really been to diplomacy school. All of them have had a reputation (if not documented evidence) to keep the public out, because they (generally) believe that public access to waterways that have long been recognized as part of the public trust in Montana is unconstitutional and a violation of landowners’ rights and a dilution of their property value.
However… conservation and public lands access advocacy are not the same thing. Many wealthy conservationists believe that the privatization of public lands is the best means towards an idealized version of conservation. Turner et al. are well known to have this view.
Can someone be pro-conservation and anti-right-to-access even when that right is granted?
Yes, and that’s what makes all this so messy, complicated, and painful for the public. What undermines public trust is that most wealthy landowners are unwilling to engage the public in a transparent, collaborative, and respectful way. Erecting electric fences and hiding barbed wire across rivers to rip inflatable boats (a wanton tactic on public-access waterways running through private land in Montana) makes commoners feel disrespected when they are exercising rights legally granted.
Instead, they will exercise their influence through means not available to most commoners, whether legal or political.
Enjoying my rights as a Montanan in 2011 during a packraft float on a public right-of-way through one of the property owners’ lands mentioned earlier:
And FWIW, you need a fairly hefty pair of wire cutters to get through barbed wire efficiently. The Felco CDO is about 9 oz.
James Cox ran against Monroe.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/fws-chief-orders-comprehensive-review-of-wildlife-refuges/
I was listening to a podcast, I forget which
There’s a checkerboard pattern of private and public land. In order to get from one public square to the next, you have to go to a corner and carefully step from one to the other. Your body will briefly be over the private land, but you can avoid stepping on it. Like if you want to move like a bishop, going from one black square, diagonally, to the next black square.
Some hunter carefully did this, but the private land owner got law enforcement to arrest the hunter for trespassing. Court case. The court said it was legal.
Interesting how the rich landowner can corrupt law enforcement into doing their work.
BLM land has many strategically placed ranches blocking access.
On corner crossing. It varies by state.
Corner crossing.
@Ryan. I appreciate this piece. I hope it reaches a wider audience than just BPL.
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