The leftâs idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Leeâs vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.
The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls â that heâs calling for a reckless fire sale of Americaâs natural beauty to line developersâ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. Itâs fearmongering, and, by the way, itâs wrong.
Hereâs whatâs really happening.
Private stewardship works. Itâs local. Itâs accountable. Itâs incentivized.
The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land â nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, thatâs more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.
Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. Thatâs not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isnât just a bureaucratic technicality â itâs a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.
Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi â in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania â might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.
Lee isnât proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. Heâs talking about 3 million acres â thatâs less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isnât your familyâs favorite hiking trail. Itâs remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.
Failed management
Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.
Consider Yellowstone again. Itâs home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison â animals that havenât been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government wonât allow it.
So what do they do when the herd gets too big?
They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. Thatâs not conservation. Thatâs bureaucratic malpractice.
And donât even get me started on bald eagles â majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Whereâs the outrage?
Bidenâs federal land-grab
Some argue that states canât afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states canât afford it, how can Washington? Weâre $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.
The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the â30 by 30â initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal âconservationâ by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.
That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.
You think that wonât affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It wonât be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. Itâll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred â unless itâs your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.
Land as collateral
Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.
What happens if America defaults on its debt?
David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images
Do you think our creditors wonât come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.
This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.
The American way
Thereâs a better way â and itâs the American way.
Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what theyâve done for generations.
Did you know that 75% of Americaâs wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries â whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys â didnât come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?
Private stewardship works. Itâs local. Itâs accountable. Itâs incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.
This is not about selling out. Itâs about buying in â to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.
So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We donât need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.
Because this isnât just about land. Itâs about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesnât come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.