"What we would have is not national parks but amusement  parks," said Bruce Babbitt,  President Clinton's  Secretary of the Interior during the 1990s. "I think lurking,  submerged at the bottom of this movement, is the radical   property rights groups whose objective is to eliminate, to  terminate, the public lands concept."Link

Land should be allocated

to the highest-valued use; transaction costs should be kept to a minimum; there must be broad participation in the divestiture process; and "squatters' rights" should be protected.   we offer a blueprint for auctioning off all public lands over 20 to 40 years. Both environmental quality and economic efficiency would be enhanced by private rather than public ownership. Land would be auctioned not for dollars but for public land share certificates (analogous to no par value stock certificates) distributed equally to all Americans. Those certificates could be freely transferred at any time during the divestiture period and would not expire until after the final auction. 

With the rising deficit,  the programs to privatize public lands are going forward.
 Link