Overview
- Reporting published Friday showed National Park Service staff have spent more than a year exploring a land-exchange that would transfer roughly a quarter-mile strip of Yosemite to Kingsbarn Realty Capital in return for other land.
- The Interior Department and National Park Service say no final decision has been made and that any exchange would follow federal law, required environmental review, and public notice.
- Kingsbarn, led by CEO Jeff Pori, owns an 83-acre parcel next to Yosemite and seeks to build an access road under a mile to a park thoroughfare that would give the property unusually direct entry to park lands.
- A prior owner pursued nearly identical access and lost in federal court in 2007 and on appeal in 2012, and critics say swapping park land would break long-standing precedent and raise valuation and ethics questions.
- Conservation groups and California Democrats have vowed to fight the swap through Congress and the courts, and observers say the next steps to watch are formal appraisals, any Land and Water Conservation Fund use, and the agency’s environmental-review record that would shape likely litigation and political battles.