The Interior Department wants to sell some public lands to states, tribes and local governments. Which lands? How much? Where? The new strategic plan, as reported by AP, has not reached the burdensome real-estate detail known as the property.

Officials say shrinking the federal estate would let them concentrate on nationally significant lands. They haven't defined nationally significant either. Imagine a realtor announcing that certain rooms in your house are expendable, then declining to identify either the rooms or the meaning of expendable.

Lovely natural light. Excellent potential. Contents to be determined after the brochure.

Land transfers can serve real public needs. Western communities face growth and housing pressures; both this administration and Biden's explored federal land for affordable housing. The plan identifies state, tribal and local governments as buyers. It does not announce sales to private developers.

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Those distinctions make the missing details more important, not less.

Federal law restricts sales, protected land cannot be sold, and it's unclear how much Interior Secretary Doug Burgum can accomplish without Congress. Even former Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke opposes selling or transferring public lands. Democrats promise resistance too.

No park has been sold by this announcement. The five-year plan is a roadmap, not a completed transaction.

But what a roadmap: less federal land, somewhere, selected according to significance, meaning pending.

Before anyone celebrates the government's excellent asset management, perhaps show the owners what you're thinking of listing. There are quite a lot of us, and we would like to see the fucking map.