The Bureau of Land Management has begun the process of rolling back the Biden Administration’s rule allowing conservation leases on its land.
The agency on Wednesday released a proposal to rescind the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which aimed to put conservation uses of land on equal footing with grazing, energy production, mining and recreation. The rule allowed the agency to issue conservation leases to individuals, businesses, nongovernmental organizations or tribal governments for up to 10 years to protect or restore habitats and ecosystems.
"The previous administration’s Public Lands Rule had the potential to block access to hundreds of thousands of acres of multiple-use land – preventing energy and mineral production, timber management, grazing and recreation across the West,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a release. “The most effective caretakers of our federal lands are those whose livelihoods rely on its well-being. Overturning this rule protects our American way of life and gives our communities a voice in the land that they depend on.”
BLM's proposal says the agency has determined the rule “is unnecessary and violates existing statutory requirements.” In addition, its leasing provisions “threaten to upset the appropriate balance that the BLM must strike when managing public land under principles off multiple use and sustained yield."
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"The rule ultimately vests too much discretion in individual authorizing officers to preclude other, productive uses, such as grazing, mining, and energy development, as incompatible with the goals of the restoration or mitigation under the lease, potentially over large tracts of public land,” the proposal says.
Leaders of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and Public Lands Council praised the decision. PLC President Tim Canterbury said in a release that the organization's members believe the Biden Administration intended the rule to "remove us from our allotments and turn these lands into an unmanaged, unhealthy, unproductive liability."
“The last administration turned their back on ranchers and land conservation when they developed this rule and cut us out of the planning process for lands that we have managed for generations," Canterbury said. "It is well known that public lands grazing supports a healthy ecosystem and reduces the risk of catastrophic wildfires."
Environmental groups like the Conservation Lands Foundation, the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, Wild Montana and the National Parks Conservation Association expressed disappointment in the decision.
"The Public Lands Rule is a tool in BLM’s toolbox to work with landowners and other interests to make sure land uses are equitably balanced to keep our lands healthy for future generations,” Wild Montana member Wade Sikorsky said in a statement. "It’s extremely disheartening that this administration is trying to dismantle this rule less than a year after it went into effect.”
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