New ‘Conservation’ Rule by Bureau of Land Management Limits Public Access to Federal Lands: Sen. Barrasso.

Proposed Rule Sparks Debate Over Conservation on Public Lands

For half a century, the United States Department of Interior (DOI) has used a multi-use doctrine in administering much of the 480 million acres of federal public lands its 11 agencies manage across the country. But in April, the DOI’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed new regulations in the Federal Register that would make conservation a land-use category to be considered along with recreational activities and economic pursuits on the 245 million acres of public lands it manages.

What Does the Proposed Rule Mean?

The proposed new rule on BLM lands, which include most of the nation’s onshore federal land oil/gas development, drew criticism from Western senators during a May 2 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee review of DOI’s $18.9 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) budget request.

• Conservation would be considered a land-use category on par with recreational activities and economic pursuits.
• The BLM can offer “third-party conservation leases” to third-party organizations for “restoration work on public lands in cooperation with community partners.”
• A conservation lease of public land allows organizations to restore habitats for activities that “generate revenue for the American taxpayer.”

The proposed rule is in a 75-day public comment period that concludes on June 20.

Debate Over the Proposed Rule

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said the proposed rule is “attacking multi-use,” which has been the guiding policy for federal public land use for decades, by making conservation non-use of land a use of land. “We’re making non-use a use,” he continued, insisting such a categorization “would turn federal law on its head—up is down, black is white.”

Barrasso accused DOI Secretary Deb Haaland of initiating the rule change and of “aggressively working to take access to public lands away from the public.”

Haaland said the proposed rule “would essentially put conservation on equal footing in the multi-use mandate” with other land uses. A conservation land use activity “would not foreclose other uses like grazing, mining, or energy development,” she said.

Barrasso said “environmental radicals” will use a conservation land-use category to make “large swaths of public lands off limits, calling the proposed rule “nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to limit economic activities on public lands in Wyoming and across the West.”

Rule Creates ‘Conservation Leases’

According to the BLM’s proposal published in the Federal Register, the rule change would apply “land health standards” to public lands and “clarify the term ‘conservation’ as an equal land use to others within the … multiple-use doctrine.”

Under the proposed rule, the BLM can offer “third-party conservation leases” to third-party organizations for “restoration work on public lands in cooperation with community partners.”

A conservation lease of public land allows organizations, such as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Pheasants Unlimited, to restore habitats for activities that “generate revenue for the American taxpayer.”

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