The Interior Department confirmed Saturday it is weighing a land exchange that would give a Nevada-based developer a route to build a private access road through a corner of Yosemite National Park. [1] The National Park Service has been in discussions with Kingsbarn Realty Capital about swapping a small parcel — the Guardian reported it at roughly a quarter mile — near the park's western boundary for land of equal value elsewhere in California. [1][2]
Kingsbarn owns an 83-acre parcel known as Hazel Green Ranch, bought in 2024, that sits more than 10 miles from the nearest park entrance by the only currently available route. [2] The company's attorney, Lanny Davis, said the swap would let it build a road "under a mile" long to connect the property directly to a main Yosemite route, framing the shorter route as a reduction in driving and vehicle emissions. [1] An Interior Department spokesperson said no final decision has been made and that any exchange "would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations and Departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes." [1]
The proposal, first reported Friday by NOTUS, has drawn immediate opposition from conservation groups and elected officials. [2] The National Parks Conservation Association said the plan "attempts to dismantle America's conservation legacy" and called it "an attack on the American people that own this national park," adding that a federal appeals court already rejected a version of the same road proposal in 2012 when the parcel's previous owner sought easement rights. [1] Jayson O'Neill of Save Our Parks framed it as part of a broader push by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to "sell off public lands and privatize America's national parks," while Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California vowed to "fight this, both for Yosemite and for every treasured park that would be up for grabs if this domino falls." [2] Interior spokesperson Aubrie Spady rejected the characterization directly, telling the Guardian there "has been no political pressure to reach a predetermined outcome" and that suggesting the department is secretly working to hand over park land is "false." [2]
CNBC's reporting adds a detail neither the department nor Kingsbarn has addressed on the merits: Jeff Pori, the company's chief executive, made regular small-dollar donations to President Trump's campaign committee between 2024 and 2025, with no history of donating to national political campaigns before October 2024. [1] CNBC said it found no evidence the donations influenced the administration's consideration of the proposal, and reporting so far has not established a causal link — only a coincidence of timing that conservation groups have seized on regardless. [1]
What the coverage from CNBC and the Guardian treats as a self-contained land-use dispute — a specific parcel, a specific road, a specific developer — is also a mechanism other developers with land adjacent to national parks could copy. An equal-value exchange requires no direct payment and no congressional appropriation; it only requires Interior's sign-off that the traded parcels are comparably valued and that environmental review clears the swap. If Kingsbarn's road goes through, the precedent is not really about Yosemite's western boundary. It is about how easily a park boundary can move when the developer on the other side of it can offer land instead of cash.
That is the gap between how this story is being told and what the mechanism actually does. The National Park Service has managed land exchanges for decades without controversy when the land traded away carried little public value. Whether a quarter-mile strip inside one of the country's most visited parks qualifies the same way is the question Interior has not yet had to answer publicly, because it has not yet said yes.
-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington