public lands

Pitkin County's move to change the zoning of most federal land within its boundaries won't affect how the land is used today but is intended to limit development there if it's ever transferred to private ownership.

Trevor Neilson is a supporter of Project Winchester, an anonymous group he said exists to keep U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) from selling or giving away federal public land if she’s elected governor. Hageman hasn’t announced a run.

The Wyoming property owner is arguing it's trespassing to step over private land to access public land.

The bill would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 1.2 million acres within five miles of population centers in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah.

Many in Wyoming are celebrating that a Republican-backed proposal to sell federal public land for housing development in 11 states is dead, – for now.

Senate Republicans would have mandated the sale of over a million acres of BLM lands across the West, but that proposal was axed late Saturday night. Conservation advocates are celebrating, but say the fight isn’t over yet.

Over the weekend, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) withdrew his proposal for the Bureau of Land Management to sell parcels for the highest value. This follows several rounds of revisions and narrowing down aimed at keeping it in the bill after it ran afoul of Senate rules.

There’s a lot in flux with the public land sale proposal. Reporters debrief the latest updates, context and responses from Wyomingites.

Plus there’s no guarantee the public would maintain access.

Some local officials in the Mountain West say federal land could be used in certain cases to ease the region's housing crisis. But they view a plan from Senate Republicans as going much farther than the solutions that have worked in their areas.