For a half-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.
Under the Federal Land Policy & Management Act of 1976, recreational activities such as fishing, hunting, and camping are regarded as equally viable uses of public land as are economic pursuits such as grazing, logging, mining, and oil/gas development.
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.
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.”
Making conservation a use the same as logging or minerals development or backpacking is all about adding another regulatory and litigative tool to preservationist elites to restrict access to, and uses of, federal land, Barrasso said.
“Environmental radicals do not want the public to have access to public lands,” he said.
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, which is in a 75-day public comment period that concludes on June 20, “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.”
“I would urge you to withdraw this disastrous and illegal proposal,” he said.
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.”The proposed new rule directs federal land managers “to identify and prioritize lands and waters through the land management process that require habitat restoration work, such as removing invasive species or restoring stream banks.”
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.”
“This tool has the potential to expand opportunities to accelerate restoration of big game migration corridors or establish carbon markets, for example, and directly responds to comments from state and industry partners on the need for a reliable path on public lands by which to pursue compensatory mitigation to facilitate development projects,” the BLM states in its proposed rule change.
Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) also raised questions about the proposed rule change in questioning Haaland during the Senate budget hearing.
Daines expressed “significant concerns” that recognizing conservation as a land use would threaten “traditional Montana uses like ranching, mining, logging” on federal lands.
“Conservation is vital, but this proposal hinders conservation by rushing forward with ill-conceived, opaque, and vague plans,” he said, asking Haaland if the rule will recognize the inherent conservation value in how ranchers use land.
“Grazing on federal lands provides billions of dollars in ecosystem management services, wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water,” Daines said. “I’m concerned that you are trying to separate these uses from their, quote-unquote, ‘conservation value.’”
“The proposed rule would not foreclose any other uses such as grazing,” Haaland repeated what she told Barrasso, adding again that “all [the rule change] does is put conservation on an equal footing within the multi-use mandate.”
During an April 20 hearing before the House Natural Resources Committee, Haaland was more expansive, claiming that adding conservation as a land use on federal lands “is really important to ensure the American people who own these lands get a fair return for the resources that are on those lands.”
Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) was leery of the rule-change, which she said “has been characterized as a seismic shift in public lands management” and is causing consternation among commercial interests that rely on federal lands.
Lee asked Haaland for assurance that BLM “rule-making will not end up slowing down the right kind of energy development on public lands at precisely the wrong time when we need to be speeding it up.”
“Conservation and energy development go hand in hand on BLM lands,” Haaland said. “The rule is not intended to slow down any of these projects and, in fact, we are like-minded in that we do need to ramp up our clean energy projects.”
