That is effectively what I'm (we're) saying, yes. If you're interested in an explanation, it goes something like this: historically, it's been a common argument amongst the privatization crowd that because the federal government is so ineffective at managing public land, that land should be turned over to state ownership for management. The justification is that because states are more locally connected to those lands, they would have greater ability to assess and manage. The issue with this claim, and why I think it's taken a back seat to other arguments in recent times, is that there was never any real meaty data to back it up. It sounded nice, but there was no real substance to it. And of course the dirty little secret is the fact that once the state owns the land, private parties can purchase it for private ownership. The federal-to-state transfer is a necessary step to being able to purchase the land. Utah and Nevada are good examples of how this system works.
Our concern is that hammering the federal land agencies will weaken their ability to effectively manage, ultimately creating a situation where those unsubstantiated claims of ineffective management suddenly become substantiated. It's a precursor step to enabling the government to say, "we clearly can't do the job, so we're ceding these lands to someone who can." Of course if you've spent time in the military or military-adjacent industries, you're quite familiar with this line of reasoning, and you've seen the havoc it can wreak with instances of corruption and misplaced priorities. It's also a conversation that's been going on with other government services (USPS, health care, etc).
Are we wrong to be concerned? Anything is possible of course, but with the amount of work actively being done to shift public lands to private ownership, and the real lack of guarantee from the current administration that such risks don't exist, we feel pretty justified to be worried and vigilant.
