New rule changes how US manages a tenth of its land
Conservation, recreation get more priority
For decades, the federal government has prioritized oil and gas drilling, hard rock mining, and livestock grazing on public lands across the country. That could soon change under a far-reaching Interior Department rule that puts conservation, recreation, and renewable energy development on equal footing with resource extraction.
The final rule released Thursday represents a seismic shift in the management of roughly 245 million acres of public property — about onetenth of the nation’s land mass. It is expected to draw praise from conservationists and legal challenges from fossil fuel industry groups and Republican officials, some of whom have lambasted the move as a “land grab.”
Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, known as the nation’s largest landlord, has long offered leases to oil and gas companies, mining firms, and ranchers. Now, for the first time, the nearly 80-yearold agency will auction off “restoration leases” and “mitigation leases” to entities with plans to restore or conserve public lands.
“Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
Under President Biden, the BLM has put a greater emphasis on protecting public lands from the twin threats of climate change and development. Tracy Stone-Manning, the bureau’s director, has warned that hotter, drier climates are driving longer and more intense wildfires and drought across the American West. At the same time, development has fragmented and destroyed wildlife habitat and migratory corridors.
“We oversee 245 million acres, and every land manager will tell you that climate change is already happening. It’s already impacting our public lands,” Stone-Manning said during a Washington Post Live event last year. “We see it in pretty obvious ways, through unprecedented wildfires.”
The fossil fuel industry, a frequent foe of the Biden administration, has chaffed at the BLM’s approach. It has called the public lands rule an example of regulatory overreach that will stifle domestic energy production, even as the United States pumps more oil than any nation in history.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas companies, said the group plans to challenge the BLM rule in court. She said the policy appears to violate the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the 1976 law that tasked the bureau with overseeing “multiple uses” of public lands for current and future generations.
“We have no choice but to litigate,” Sgamma said. “These conservation leases seem to be designed to preclude energy development on federal lands.”
The BLM’s proposed rule released last year sparked especially intense outrage in Wyoming, an energy powerhouse that accounts for nearly onetenth of US fossil fuel production. Some Wyoming Republicans have claimed that the BLM is colluding with liberal environmental groups to put millions of acres off-limits to development.
Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, said Thursday he plans to introduce legislation to repeal the BLM rule using the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to overturn regulations by a simple majority vote. “With this rule, President Biden is allowing federal bureaucrats to destroy our way of life,” Barrasso said in a statement.
“It does seem to me this is a very top-down, Washington-centric approach that has kind of cut the legs out from the local people,” Republican Governor Mark Gordon told the Post last year. “Unfortunately, Wyoming finds itself imposed upon by these colonial forces of national environmental groups who are pushing an agenda.”
Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, an advocacy group, said some Republican officials have spread “disinformation and the conspiracy theories” about the rule.