Grist: “The Trump administration is poised to begin offloading public land, achieving a long-held conservative goal of reducing the government’s footprint in the West. Federal agencies manage around 640 million acres, or about 28 percent of the nation’s land, an invaluable resource Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has called “America’s balance sheet.” His membership in a luxury real estate club in Montana provides an apt example of how private interests stand to profit from federal lands. Last month, the Interior Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a plan to make large tracts of government land available to developers. “As we enter the Golden Age promised by President Trump,” Burgum wrote on March 17, “this partnership will change how we use public resources.” Little has been shared so far about the process for identifying parcels or how they might be sold or transferred. Burgum told CNBC the Interior Department would consider selling hundreds of thousands of federally-managed acres within 3 miles of urban areas. Jon Raby, the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, told Bloomberg News the initiative would consider land within 10 miles of towns of 5,000 people. “Either they are making this up as they go along, or the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a nonpartisan conservation group. The task force said it will deliver a report to the National Economic Council by today, identifying parcels and outlining how much housing would be built. It also will offer recommendations to “reduce the red tape behind land transfers or leases” by “[s]treamlining the regulatory process.” The Interior Department declined an interview but said in a statement to Grist that “all options are being explored.”…