Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, said on Saturday evening that he had dropped his contentious plan to sell millions of acres of public lands from the sweeping domestic policy package carrying President Trump’s agenda.
Mr. Lee made the announcement on social media after it became clear that the plan faced insurmountable opposition from within his own party. At least four Republican senators from Western states had said they planned to vote for an amendment to strike the proposal from the bill.
The plan had also triggered intense pushback from conservative hunters and outdoorsmen across the American West, who had warned that it threatened the lands where they hunted and fished.
“Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders and stakeholders across the country,” Mr. Lee wrote on X on Saturday. “While there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies — about my bill, many people brought forward sincere concerns.”
The provision would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of public property in 11 Western states. Proponents had argued that the region has a severe shortage of affordable housing and that developers could build new homes on these tracts.
In his post, Mr. Lee said that, because of the strict rules governing the budgetary process that Republicans are using to pass the bill, he was “unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.”
The four Republicans who opposed the plan were Senators Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy of Montana as well as Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho. While opponents acknowledged the housing shortage as a serious problem, they rejected a public lands sell-off as a solution.
“One of the greatest gifts we’ve ever had in America is the public lands that have been passed down generation to generation,” Mr. Sheehy said in an interview on Saturday before the proposal was struck from the package.
“Especially for us in Western states, it’s our way of life for hunting and fishing,” he continued. “I believe Mike Lee knows that, too, and I don’t believe he’s acting in bad faith at all.”
A previous version of Mr. Lee’s plan had called for the B.L.M. and the U.S. Forest Service to sell between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public lands. But the provision was stripped from the bill by the Senate’s parliamentarian, the nonpartisan official who enforces the chamber’s rules.
The latest version of the plan would have allowed individuals and companies to buy up to two square miles of land at a time, with no limit on how much property they could ultimately purchase. Only land within five miles of a population center would have been eligible to be sold.
In addition to the four Republican senators who opposed the plan, five House Republicans said on Thursday that the land sell-off was a “poison pill” that would cost their votes for the package. The opponents in the House included Representative Ryan Zinke, Republican of Montana, who led the Interior Department during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, celebrated the plan’s demise while warning other lawmakers not to attempt to resurrect it.
“To those already plotting to go after our public lands another way: Don’t. Unless you like losing,” Mr. Heinrich said in a statement on Saturday.
Maxine Joselow reports on climate policy for The Times.
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