Currently, there are no proposals on the table to enact these kinds of large-scale transfers. Arizona lawmakers, however, have made their interest in such transfers clear in the past, and the groups who supported this new analysis are concerned that future proposals might receive a warmer welcome under President Donald Trump’s administration.

The report was compiled by the Grand Canyon Institute on behalf of the Arizona Trail Association, Arizona Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy. It stresses that opportunities for the state to increase revenue generation from transferred land above existing levels would be “quite limited.”

And because Arizona’s State Trust lands are required to be managed for “maximum revenues,” any large-scale transfer of land into that system would likely lead to at least some land sales to offset the increased management expenses, reducing the amount of land in the state open to public use.

Matt Nelson, executive director of the Arizona Trail Association, is familiar with the loss of access that can occur when state-managed land is sold. About 100 miles of the trail are currently located on State Trust lands, and two sections of the trail have already had to be realigned when parcels changed hands.

“We will always be biting our fingernails and waiting to see which parcel of land goes up for auction, who buys it, what their plans and intentions are, and then what we do with the trail,” Nelson said.

Though federal land protections aren’t perfect either, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are not subject to the same “maximum revenues” requirement and thus face far less inherent pressure to offload parcels.

Nelson added that economic value is not how he normally prefers to talk about public lands. But he believes the data is important to have if — and when — proposals for land transfer resurface.

“We know in looking up at the makeup of the current legislature, this is going to come up again,” he said.

Scott Garlid, executive director of the Arizona Wildlife Federation, also said he is “very confident that it will become a hot topic again.”

“Historically, there’s been plenty of opportunity for us to stop bad federal lands legislation,” he noted. But some of those traditional guardrails might be weaker under the current presidential administration.

Doug Burgum, Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, has talked openly about wanting to monetize public lands and the possibility of transfers to states. And Trump’s budget request for the Forest Service in the next fiscal year calls for “empowering States to assume a greater role in managing forest lands within their borders.”

“It’s a much more dangerous environment today than it’s ever been in the past,” Garlid said.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s proposal to sell federal lands last year was another danger signal, according to Christian Stumpf of The Nature Conservancy.

“It was the start of what we knew was more to come,” Stumpf said.

Stumpf also cited the attempts to downsize land management agencies through drastic staff reductions as a possible indicator that the current administration may want to reduce federal landholdings.

He hopes the data contained in the new report will help quell legislators’ interest in potential land transfers.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s get rid of our federal lands.’ But to really understand the implications of what those words mean, hopefully this report shows that this is a serious matter that would cost Arizona a significant amount of money and resources and staff time to manage,” Stumpf said.

One of the most costly aspects of land management is wildfire suppression. The report calculates that taking over wildland fire response from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management would cost Arizona about $176 million — more than 10 times the state’s current wildfire suppression budget.

Proactive wildfire risk reduction activities — such as forest thinning and prescribed burns — are expensive, too. The report estimates that the Forest Service’s annual expenditures on risk mitigation in the state total around $170 million.

Again, this would be a major new cost burden on the state. And falling behind on risk mitigation would increase the risk to communities bordering public lands.

“Right now, frankly, Arizona’s really being looked at as a state around the West that can be a model for wildfire management,” Stumpf said. “Especially how we deal with low-value timber. The 4FRI [Four Forest Restoration Initiative] project has really gotten some impressive momentum right now, and we’ve really avoided catastrophic wildfire in populated areas in recent years.”

The 4FRI project is a landscape-scale forest restoration and fire risk mitigation effort spanning millions of acres across the Kaibab, Coconino, Tonto, and Apache-Sitgreaves national forests, from west of Williams along the Mogollon Rim to the state border with New Mexico.

Large-scale land transfers could jeopardize such efforts, Stumpf said: “That all gets put at risk when we’re going to have to look at the taxpayers of Arizona taking on that responsibility.”

Stumpf and Garlid both emphasized that Arizona’s federally owned lands are national resources.

“Whether it’s hiking, whether it’s camping, whether it’s hunting or fishing or just sitting on a rock and contemplating life, there’s a lot of people that derive great benefit from these lands,” Garlid said.

Both also noted that there are existing processes for divesting federal lands — processes that are deliberate, transparent and structured to include local input. They are opposed to any attempt to circumvent those processes by selling or transferring large swathes of land rapidly.

Nelson, Garlid and Stumpf all encouraged public lands users to make their opinions known to legislators at both the state and federal level.

“Get out there, enjoy it and remind people while you’re there that these lands belong to all of us,” Garlid said.