Critical Wildlife Habitat at Risk: Senate Bill Threatens Western Public Lands

Conservation Northwest strongly opposes Senate budget legislation that would mandate the sale of 2 to 3 million acres of public lands across 11 western states, including Washington. This legislation could effectively privatize management of much of our remaining public forests through long-term contracts exceeding 20 years. 

The Scale of This Threat: 

This proposal would increase logging levels incrementally for eight years to ultimately double logging from today’s levels and without sideboards to prevent build-up of wildfire fuels. 

The combined effect of increased land sales and increased careless logging would devastate our forests for wildlife and make them more prone to wildfires. The combined effect would be more wildfire tinder in our woods in the form of both logging residue and trophy homes.  

Consider that a developer will simply be able to handpick choice lands for development, such as near Cle Elum in the old I-90 checkerboard that we worked so hard to fix, and “nominate” that acreage for auction. Developers would build houses for wealthy people, getting tax breaks on land that had been treasured by the public for recreation, wildlife, and clean water.  

Key Concerns: 

The legislation bypasses decades of established public land management processes, eliminating meaningful public participation and environmental review. By fast-tracking sales without proper planning or community input, this proposal risks fragmenting landscapes that are essential for wildlife movement and ecosystem connectivity. 

Critical wildlife habitats, including wilderness study areas, inventoried roadless areas, and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, would be vulnerable to sale. These lands provide essential corridors for species like wolves, lynx, and grizzly bears and core habitat for spotted owls that Conservation Northwest works to protect and restore.  

Despite claims of addressing housing needs, the bill contains no guarantee of affordable housing development. The vague language around “community needs” opens the door to trophy homes, industrial development, data centers, and other uses that could confound wildfire control efforts, permanently fragment wildlife habitat and block traditional migration routes. 

The new provisions directing grants of long-term logging contracts to timber companies would, in essence, privatize vast areas of our National Forests. 

Heavy logging would increase fire risk, cause massive carbon emissions, destroy wildlife habitat, water quality and fish habitat, and leave local communities vulnerable to boom-and-bust economic cycles like we saw in the bad old robber baron days.   

Our Position: 

Conservation Northwest believes existing federal land disposal processes, refined over nearly 50 years, already provide appropriate mechanisms for selling lands suitable for addressing local housing needs while protecting critical wildlife habitats. This new mandate circumvents these protections and diverts revenue away from land management agencies that need resources to maintain habitat connectivity. 

We also think that forcing increased harvest through long-term contracts, in combination with assaults on other environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, will lead to stripping our public lands for private gain while dumping the resource damage on communities and the public at large.   

We urge Congress to reject this proposal and instead focus on targeted, science-based land management that maintains the ecological integrity of our western landscapes while addressing legitimate community development needs through existing, transparent processes. 

Please contact your Senator and Representative to let them know that you oppose the sale of our public lands and irresponsible increases in timber sales through long-term contracts.

Our Democratic members of Congress oppose these measures, so please thank them for their hard work. If you live in a Republican district or have friends and family in states with Republican senators, please ask them to get involved and urge their Senators to remove these damaging provisions from the budget bill.  

Conservation Northwest works to protect, connect and restore wildlands and wildlife from the Washington Coast to the British Columbia Rockies.