Last week, the Department of the Interior (DOI) proposed to rescind the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Public Lands Rule. The rescission effectively restores federal land policy to prioritize public access and balancing multiple uses across 245 million acres of BLM lands.
The rule, as Center for Energy and Conservation Director Gabriella Hoffman and I wrote in the Wall Street Journal in July 2023, established “conservation” as “a distinct use of land” from other uses of lands, such as grazing, energy development, timber, or recreation. The BLM’s multiple-use doctrine already recognizes “natural scenic, scientific, and historical values” as well as “wildlife and fish” as legitimate factors for consideration, so it’s unclear what the rule was attempting to remedy.
The final rule also created two types of conservation leases—mitigation and restoration leases—that the BLM could issue to individuals, businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and tribal governments. The rule also expanded the BLM’s uses of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), allowing the BLM to designate them unilaterally for “temporary” management without public comment periods.
The Public Lands Rule prioritized their version of conservation, or the non-use of federal land more representative of preservation, over the multiple uses that the BLM is required to balance under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976. A lawsuit filed in July 2024 also argued that the effects of the rule were “large enough that it ought to have received an environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).”
The Department of the Interior wrote in its press release:
Stakeholders, including the energy industry, recreational users and agricultural producers, across the country expressed deep concern that the rule created regulatory uncertainty, reduced access to lands, and undermined the long-standing multiple-use mandate of the BLM as established by Congress …
Many rural communities depend on public lands for livelihoods tied to agriculture, mining and energy production. Rescinding the rule restores BLM to its legal mandate and protects these economic drivers from restrictive land-use policies. The people who depend on public lands for their livelihoods have every incentive to conserve them and have been doing so for generations—no new rule was needed to force what is already a way of life.
The rescission of the rule will be open for a 60-day public comment period, ending on November 10, 2025. This rescission means that local communities will be empowered to use and recreate on their public lands, and the BLM will have the certainty needed to responsibly allow development for multiple uses.
To learn more about multiple-use management of public lands, go HERE.