The New Public Lands Rule Balances Conservation Against Drilling

For more than a century, the Bureau of Land Management has prioritized the interests of miners, ranchers, and the oil and gas industries in management decisions on the 245 million acres acres of public land for which it’s responsible over conservation and recreation. No longer. Thanks to a new rule issued by the Biden administration, the agency must now balance development needs with the management of “landscape health.”

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said the Public Lands 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.”

The rule was first proposed in April, 2023, and was the subject of five public hearings and a 90 day public comment period. A statement issued by BLM says that “the vast majority” of the resulting 200,000 comments supported the change.

The Public Lands Rule has three main components: Promoting restoration of public lands and waters, supporting informed decision-making for responsible development, and protecting landscapes.

To restore public lands and waters, the rule directs the agency to identify areas in need of restoration, and to develop plans to make that restoration happen. These decisions will be made based on the health of specific areas, benefits to local communities, and opportunities to work with non-profits, local governments, and state agencies.

The rule also creates a framework for something the BLM is calling a “mitigation lease,” which will allow developers or users to offset impacts their actives have on public lands managed by the BLM. For example, a company can get a permit to build on a wetland if they restore another one. While similar mechanisms exist on state and private land, this will be the first time such mitigation practices will be possible on federally-managed public land. Mitigation leases will enable entities that want to mine, ranch, drill, or similar to offset the environmental impacts of those activities, and continue to achieve permitting even as the agency must now consider those impacts more critically. Mitigation leases can’t conflict with existing activities in areas where they’re issued, so shouldn’t adversely impact activities like off-roading, hunting, or camping.

The Public Lands Rule also creates a “restoration lease,” which will allow state agencies, non-profits and similar to take over conservation activities on certain slices of public lands managed by the BLM. The agency offers deer and elk habitat as an example, explaining that a restoration lease would allow a state fish and game agency or species-specific non-profit (like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation) could direct its funds to restoring habitat for those species on lands it manages. Again, those leases cannot interfere with existing uses.

While the BLM already uses broad information systems to support its decision-making, the Public Lands Rule seeks to combine tools used to inform livestock grazing and forest health into a single toolset that will then be implemented across all types of lands and permitting. This will also result in more transparency for the public, enabling you and me to better make our voices heard in public hearings and comment periods.

A major part of that expanded use of information will, for the first time, be Indigenous Knowledge. This is also a major win for Haaland, who is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and has made it a priority to expand the role of Indigenous people in an agency that once worked to remove them from their land.

One of the major focuses of the Public Lands Rule is protecting areas that are already in good—or natural—shape. The BLM says the rule will work to, “maintain intact lands to help support wildlife, habitat connectivity, old-growth forests, and ecosystem function.”

“This rule honors our obligation to current and future generations to help ensure our public lands and waters remain healthy amid growing pressures and change,” states BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning.

Predictably, the oil and gas industries, and the politicians they pay for are apoplectic—even though domestic production of those energy sources has reached a record high during the Biden administration. Again, the Public Lands Rule does nothing to restrict already-permitted activities on lands managed by the BLM, nor rule out future energy leases.

“With this rule, President Biden is allowing federal bureaucrats to destroy our way of life,” Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) claimed in a statement promising to bring legislation to Congress challenging the Public Lands Rule’s legality.

“These conservation leases seem to be designed to preclude energy development on federal lands,” said Kathleen Sgamma, President of the Western Energy Alliance, and oil and gas lobbying group. Sgamma says she plans to challenge the rule in court.

“As stewards of America’s public lands, the Interior Department takes seriously our role in helping bolster landscape resilience in the face of worsening climate impacts,” stated Haaland. “Complemented with historic investments from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are implementing enduring changes that will benefit wildlife, communities and habitats.”