SLO County federal forests saved from land sale. But other areas are still at risk
%20snow%202.jpeg "Snow on the Temblor Range at Carrizo Plain National Monument a year ago.")
The Senate will no longer consider selling public land managed by the U.S. Forest Service for housing — but a Utah senator still aims to auction off property owned by the Bureau of Land Management for that purpose.
Changes to the Senate’s budget reconciliation bill save 130,710 acres of U.S. Forest Service land in San Luis Obispo County, including West Cuesta Ridge and the Los Padres National Forest. But 15,250 acres of local Bureau of Land Management land could still be at risk, according to Los Padres ForestWatch director of conservation and research Bryant Baker.
A former draft of the bill would have ordered the sale of 0.5% to 0.75% of land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management across 11 Western states within five years.
This means the Senate must remove the provision from the bill in order to vote on it.
Federal forests in San Luis Obispo County are safe for now, but Baker said he expects more federal policies to target public lands while President Donald Trump is in office.
“We have to take these threats seriously,” Baker said. “There is a concerted effort to roll back environmental protections and to try to eliminate public lands in some areas, and we need to be fighting that as best we can.”
On Tuesday, Utah Sen. Mike Lee announced plans to sell other federally owned public land to housing developers — even if MacDonough thwarted his plans to do so in the budget bill.
“We’ve got a nationwide shortage of homes, particularly in the Western United States, and that is not acceptable in America,” Lee said on the Charlie Kirk Show on Tuesday.
In a social media post on X, Lee pledged to remove all U.S. Forest Service land from the proposed sale, and to reduce eligible Bureau of Land Management land to areas within five miles of population centers.
“This is basically just surplus land that’s suitable for housing because it’s right next to where people live,” he said on the show.
“This section of the bill is just absolutely absurd for trying to convince people that this is really going to help with the housing shortage,” he said.
Is SLO County land at risk?
To keep his promise, Lee must revise the budget bill or introduce a separate bill that seeks to sell Bureau of Land Management property within five miles of a population center.
Lee said the sale would exclude federally protected land, including national parks, national preserves and national monuments like the Carrizo Plain.
If Lee proceeds with this proposal, 15,250 acres of Bureau of Land Management land would be eligible for sale in San Luis Obispo County, Baker said.
This includes land near Montaña de Oro State Park, a large swath of land east of Santa Margarita, and Mine Hill near the Filipponi Ranch in San Luis Obispo’s Irish Hills area, he said.
Meanwhile, in Kern County, 250,000 acres near the eastern border of the Carrizo Plain National Monument could be sold, too, he said.
Much of the property is located in the foothills on the eastern side of the Temblor Mountain Range near the city of Taft, and it’s home to an “interesting and unique” shrubby and desert-like ecosystem, he said.
Because of ranching, oil drilling and development, “there’s not a lot of that left in that region,” Baker said.
Additionally, fire risk is highest where open space borders development, an area also known as the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Zone. The combination of man-made fires — sparked by anything from discarded cigarettes to malfunctioning lawn mowers — and ample fuel in wilderness areas can result in large, fast-spreading fires, he said.
Building houses on Bureau of Land Management property expands the WUI Zone — putting those residents in danger, he said.
According to a 2021 study by the U.S. Fire Administration, firefighter injury rates at structure fires in the WUI Zone were 14% higher than in urban areas, while civilian casualties were 20% higher in the WUI Zone than in urban areas. Dollar loss per structure fire is 12% higher in the WUI Zone, the study said.
“The fire aspect of this should just be a no-brainer for why this is a bad idea,” he said.
An earlier version of the bill said the land would be sold with a restrictive covenant, which would limit development to housing and related infrastructure. The idea seems to be to prevent other uses like mining or logging.
Baker, however, said the restrictive covenant didn’t offer clear protections — and he’s unsure about the federal government’s ability to control the use of the land once it’s privately owned.
Lee’s attempt to sell public lands joins the Trump administration’s other efforts to weaken environmental protections, Baker said.
On Monday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins rescinded the 2001 Roadless Rule, which prohibited road construction and timber harvesting on about 59 million acres of National Forest System land, the agency announced.
The Roadless Rule previously protected hundreds of thousands of acres of the Los Padres National Forest, Baker said.
Last week, the U.S. Justice Department released an opinion that said the president could alter or eliminate national monuments established by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act. Previously, Congress held this power.
Finally, in March, the Trump administration ordered an “immediate” expansion of timber production.
“When you really step back and look at all of these things happening, the picture that emerges is this widespread assault on public lands at a federal level,” he said. “I think that should be concerning to everyone.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2025 at 9:00 AM.
