BLM Lease Sales

 

BLM’s Eastern States Office, on September 15, 2026, held a lease sale in which 40 parcels were offered in the Wayne National Forest, in Monroe and Washington Counties, Ohio.  This sale was held in the wake of litigation that had blocked the leasing of lands in the Wayne National Forest for years.  (It was also the first sale in many years for which the Eastern States Office had obtained the Forest Service’s consent to offer lands in a National Forest.)  Most of the parcels in the sale received substantial bids, ranging up to $9751/acre.  Protests that were filed of the parcels in the lease sale were denied by Eastern States Office decision of September 14.

The September 2026 lease sale was the third Eastern States sale held under the current administration.  In the previous sale, on March 12, eight split-estate parcels (i.e., federal minerals under private surface) were offered for bidding: one parcel in Lafayette County, Arkansas; one in Caddo Parish, Louisiana; one in Kalamazoo County, Michigan; and five in Amite, George, and Perry Counties, Mississippi.  The Louisiana parcel went for a high bid of $1101/acre; the parcels in George and Amite Counties, Mississippi, for $501/acre and $101/acre respectively; and the Michigan parcel for $126/acre.  The Arkansas parcel, and the three parcels in Perry County, Mississippi, were sold for the minimum bid amount of $10/acre.

The sale before that, on September 23, 2025, comprised two parcels in Bossier Parish, Louisiana (on Barksdale Air Force Base); a split-estate tract in Calhoun County, Michigan; and two split-estate tracts in Greene County, Mississippi.  (The Mississippi parcels had initially been deferred from consideration for Eastern States’ June 2023 sale, and then received no bids when they were offered in March 2024.)  The Louisiana parcels drew substantial bids in the September sale: $10,003/acre for one parcel, and $1006/acre for the other; while the Michigan and Mississippi parcels went for the $10/acre minimum.

Only two Eastern States lease sales took place during the entirety of the prior administration, following a “pause” on new leasing that was imposed under the executive order of January 27, 2021 (see the Biden Administration Policy Review link).

The most recent of the two sales under the preceding administration was held on March 26, 2024, covering three parcels of split-estate lands in Mississippi (one in Smith County, and two in Greene County) that had been deferred from Eastern States’ previous sale in June 2023.  The Smith County tract went for the minimum bid of $10/acre in the March 2024 sale, with no bids received for the Greene County tracts.

In the previous Eastern States sale on June 29, 2023, four split-estate tracts were offered: one in Kalamazoo County, Michigan; and two in Caddo Parish and one in Bossier Parish, Louisiana.  High bids were received in that sale of $3501/acre for the parcel in Bossier Parish, and $2001/acre and $251/acre for the Caddo Parish tracts, in Louisiana; while the Michigan parcel went for $14/acre.

The next Eastern States Office lease sale is tentatively planned for March 2027.  The lands that are under consideration for offering in that sale include two split-estate parcels (Monroe and Conecuh Counties), and five parcels in the Conecuh National Forest (Escambia and Covington Counties), in Alabama; one split-estate parcel in Webster Parish, and one parcel on Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier Parish, Louisiana; two parcels in Jackson County, Michigan; ; three split-estate parcels in Mississippi (Covington and Wayne Counties); and one parcel in Monroe County, Ohio.