To use land for something productive, you usually have to have exclusive rights to it. That's exactly what this process does - gives exclusive access to whoever

To use land for something productive, you usually have to have exclusive rights to it. That's exactly what this process does - gives exclusive access to whoever wants to do something productive with it. Selling land at auction is a good way to ensure it goes to whoever expects to make the most productive use of it. If an oil company gets it cheap and then makes a profit charging someone else to use it, good for them - that means they correctly predicted future demand, which is better than what anyone else did. But it's especially not a problem here because desert land in America is extremely plentiful and unwanted. It's effectively an unlimited resource. Do you know of any native Americans who want to use some remote desert but can't because they don't own it? Give them $2 to lease some. The government won't use it any more than they're already not using it so it's no use in their hands. They've already blasted big areas of desert with nuclear bombs and left it permanently radioactive so it's not even clear that the government is a good steward of land anyway.