National Park Service Considers Handing Yosemite Land to Private Developer, Threatening Public Heritage
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The U.S. National Park Service is reviewing a controversial proposal to swap a vital piece of Yosemite National Park for land elsewhere, a move pushed by corporate interests and the Interior Department but fiercely opposed by park officials and progressive senators.
The National Park Service is currently negotiating with Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a Nevada-based real-estate firm, over a deeply troubling proposal to exchange a precious quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite National Park for another parcel elsewhere in California. This plan, which has been quietly discussed since spring 2025, would hand over public land to private developers, granting them coveted road access into Yosemite and opening the door to future hotel, resort, or luxury residential development—threatening the park’s ecological integrity and public character.
Kingsbarn’s CEO, Jeff Pori, is aggressively seeking to carve a road through protected wilderness, linking the company’s sprawling 83-acre property—just five miles from Yosemite’s ancient sequoia groves—to a main park thoroughfare. The agency claims that any exchange would be subject to federal law, environmental review, and public input, but the fact remains that no final decision has been made, leaving the park’s future hanging in the balance.
Park staff have reported intense political pressure from powerful interests to push the deal forward, despite it representing a stark departure from the historic mission of expanding, not shrinking, national park lands. Former Yosemite superintendent Cicely Muldoon has reiterated that the agency’s core mission is to preserve parks “unimpaired for future generations,” a principle now under assault.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who once promised to defend every inch of national parks, has now reversed course, siding with private developers and breaking with previous administrations that rightly rejected similar land grabs. Senators Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Merkley, Alex Padilla, and Adam Schiff have all voiced strong opposition, warning that the plan undermines the Land and Water Conservation Fund’s mission and could set a dangerous precedent for privatizing protected lands.
The proposed exchange would require a complex appraisal process and the identification of equivalent land, but critics—including the National Parks Conservation Association—warn that the deal could face legal challenges and represents a fundamental threat to longstanding conservation policy. This is yet another example of public resources being sacrificed for private profit at the expense of future generations and the environment.