The economic case for public lands

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has not been shy in expressing his belief that America’s public lands should be developed, leased and sold as much as possible. Before being confirmed, he told Congress that public lands are “assets [on the nation’s] balance sheet" of some unrealized value. Just recently, he called people who care about public lands “financially illiterate” while celebrating the onslaught of protection repeals and rollbacks that his administration has brought.

The secretary is right that our public lands are incredibly economically valuable, but he’s wrong about why. In fact, his narrow ledger-minded accounting of our shared public lands grossly underestimates the total value they provide and dangerously prioritizes short-term profit over long-term stability.

The most obvious and tangible aspect that Secretary Burgum’s evaluation neglects is the massive outdoor recreation economy that public lands prop up. In 2024 alone, the outdoor recreation economy accounted for 2.4% ($696.7 billion) of the entire nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) and $1.3 trillion in total economic output. That’s a nearly 3% growth compared to the same data from 2023.

In western states with larger shares of public lands, this economy accounted for a much larger share of state GDPs—as high as 4.9% ($3.8 billion) in Montana, 5.3% ($3.8 billion) in Alaska and 6.1% ($7.2 billion) in Hawaii. Studies have even shown that western counties with more public lands have stronger economies than counties with less. No matter the state, these economies rely on public access to lands and waters that Burgum’s development-first vision would fatally constrict. On top of that, the degradation of these landscapes further hurts outdoor recreation as they become less appealing to visitors—many of whom specifically visit public lands to hunt, fish or view wildlife.

The hypothetical trading of recreation access for resource extraction doesn’t even make economic sense once placed in context. The administration and its congressional allies have worked tirelessly to lower the royalty rate that fossil fuel corporations pay to drill and have entirely failed to set a royalty rate for hardrock mining, meaning the American taxpayer makes little to nothing when corporations exploit our public lands.

Perhaps even more important than the “real dollar” economics of recreation, however, is the less tangible value that public lands provide the nation in the form of ecosystem services: water purification, air filtration, flood mitigation, food generation. As Cambridge University economist Partha Dasgupta observed in his incredibly influential 2021 report on the economics of biodviersity, these are critical values that are almost always ignored by the sort of ledger analysis that Secretary Burgum is conducting. (Unsurprisingly, Sir Dasgupta also found that the sum of nature loss essentially negated almost all economic growth.)

Especially in Western states where public lands are plentiful and the impacts of climate change are becoming more dire, these ecosystem services are simply too critical to ignore. If a uranium mine poisons a critical water source or a logging operation seriously damages a salmon spawning ground, there are astronomical real dollar costs to the local communities that could very likely entirely negate any hypothetical profit from lease and sale.

For example, New York City—a sprawling, extremely developed metropolis—spends billions to compensate for the loss of ecosystem services that were once provided by the now-destroyed forests and wetlands. These problems are so grave that the city has an entire Office of Climate & Environmental Justice focused on mitigation and restoration. Though it is at the far end of the development spectrum, New York City shows just how serious the consequences of reckless and ultimately expensive ecosystem destruction can be.

Despite the secretary’s criticism, careful stewardship of our public lands makes perfect economic sense. It protects the freedom people have to access and enjoy the outdoors, safeguards the clean air, clean water and wildlife habitat communities depend on, and ensures future generations inherit the same opportunities we have today. Moreover, such an approach is overwhelmingly popular: 84% of western voters across the political spectrum believe that the policies Burgum is celebrating are a serious issue. So not only do Burgum’s words run counter to the facts, they are far outside the mainstream of American public opinion.