The Bureau of Land Management oversees millions of acres of public lands in the American West. Their mission is to balance a range of uses from energy development, conservation, recreation and more.
A Biden-era policy explicitly emphasizing conservation as part of the agency’s mission has drawn multiple lawsuits and loud criticism, as well as support from public lands advocates.
But what is the Public Lands Rule, and how did it change the agency’s work? And will things change under the Trump administration?
A key part of the BLM’s mission, as laid out by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, or FLPMA, is managing land for “multiple use.”
But what exactly are those uses?
“So that includes grazing, recreation, wildlife habitat, energy development. A lot of our federal oil and gas development occurs on BLM lands, some timber and forest management. Wilderness protection, you name it, it's managed by the BLM,” said Juli Slivka, the policy director for Wilderness Workshop, a conservation advocacy nonprofit based in Western Colorado.
It’s a tough mission, Slivka said. And she and other public lands advocates say the BLM hasn’t always done the best job in balancing those uses.
Steve Bloch, legal director of the nonprofit Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said the BLM has leaned heavily in favor of regulated industry.
“If it's coal mining or mineral extraction or oil and gas leasing, those kinds of interests have really been in the forefront and dominated the BLM’s worldview for decades,” he said. “And, that's not really the way it's supposed to be under the law.”
Slivka said that’s reflected in what the agency actually has and hasn’t codified.
“So we have oil and gas regulations, we have mining regulations, we have recreation regulations,” she said. “We've never had regulations for the conservation part of BLM’s multiple use framework.”
Slivka also said the other part of the BLM’s mission—“sustained yield”—has also not been prominently discussed. The term basically means only taking the resources from the land that it can support.
“(The) BLM is directed to not permanently impair the land or the environment, and (the) BLM is directed to find a balance that is based on the values of those resources and not necessarily to produce the greatest economic return,” Slivka said.
New rules for multiple use
That’s where the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule comes into play. The rulemaking process started in 2023, and the final rule, commonly known as the Public Lands Rule, was made official in April of 2024.
So what tools does the rule give the BLM to regulate conservation?
The biggest change is that it creates a new leasing program.
“You could buy an oil and gas lease, or you can have a grazing permit,” Bloch said. “This would be a conservation lease, a lease that you would acquire from the BLM to manage to restore or to mitigate past impacts.”
There are two kinds of leases: restoration leases and mitigation leases. Restoration leases, as the name implies, are intended so that the leaseholder—including non-governmental organizations and state land managers—can restore degraded or damaged ecosystems. Mitigation leases are intended to offset other uses of public lands that may occur.
“For instance, if we develop a solar energy project on important wildlife habitat, then we could use a mitigation lease to protect that same quality of wildlife habitat somewhere else,” Slivka said. “And so we're ensuring that over the long term we're not permanently impairing public lands resources.”
The Public Lands Rule also clarifies an existing concept, which is “Areas of Critical Environmental Concern.”
“The BLM can use ACECs for ecosystem resilience,” Slivka said of the expanded guidance. “The BLM can use ACECs to do co-stewardship with tribes and ensure that we're protecting Indigenous landscapes and cultural resources.”
In addition, it provides BLM managers guidelines for identifying “intact landscapes.” Those are areas where ecosystems aren’t interrupted by human development, such as road building.
Bloch says these tools are hugely important in the face of a changing climate.
“We know that preserving, conserving land in its untrammeled state has real climate benefits,” he said. “For example, sequestering carbon, retaining water, or keeping fossil fuels in the ground.”
Pushback on conservation as one of the BLM’s uses
But the rule has drawn significant pushback. Critics say that the BLM isn’t bringing conservation onto the same level as other uses, but putting it above things like grazing and extraction.
Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) has introduced a bill, cosponsored by Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.), to withdraw the Public Lands Rule altogether.
Utah and Wyoming also filed a lawsuit against the BLM over the rule. The lawsuit alleges that the BLM did not follow the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, when drafting the rule.
“This rule adds conservation to the mix, and puts it on par with these other congressionally identified uses. This is problematic because conservation was not identified by FLPMA,” said Jason DeForest, an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Utah.
He discussed the lawsuit in a podcast produced by the Utah Attorney General’s Office, called Legally Speaking.
The word “conservation” doesn’t come up in FLPMA’s definition of multiple use, but it does charge the BLM with protecting things like ecological and environmental factors like air and water quality, and that certain public lands should be protected in their “natural condition.”
FLPMA also says that the BLM must consider “the relative values of the resources, and not necessarily to the combination of uses that will give the greatest economic return or the greatest unit output.”
FLPMA's definition: "The term 'multiple use' means the management of the public lands and their various resource values so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the present and future needs of the American people; making the most judicious use of the land for some or all of these resources or related services over areas large enough to provide sufficient latitude for periodic adjustments in use to conform to changing needs and conditions; the use of some land for less than all of the resources; a combination of balanced and diverse resource uses that takes into account the long-term needs of future generations for renewable and nonrenewable resources, including, but not limited to, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific and historical values; and harmonious and coordinated management of the various resources without permanent impairment of the productivity of the land and the quality of the environment with consideration being given to the relative values of the resources and not necessarily to the combination of uses that will give the greatest economic return or the greatest unit output."
The rule also clarifies what the term “conservation” means, especially when compared with other words like “protection” and “preservation.
DeForest also said the Public Lands Rule could infringe upon state land management agencies.
“If a mitigation lease is in place, an organization like the Grazing Improvement Program throughout the state could be precluded from continuing to do range improvements,” he said. “Which would affect the watershed, or could affect other elements of the landscape out there that the state is currently working to protect, and they may not have that ability if a lease is issued.”
Advocates disagree with that characterization. Slivka said the leasing program was crafted with partnerships in mind.
“The restoration leases in particular, are really envisioned to largely be carried out in partnership with state fish and game agencies, who do a lot of the boots on the ground work to restore public lands,” she said. “So I think that’s (an) ill-founded argument against the rule.”
An uncertain future for the Public Lands Rule
The rule’s future is uncertain with a new administration in place.
Kathleen Sgamma, President Trump’s pick to lead the BLM, spent over 20 years with the Western Energy Alliance, most recently as the president. The oil and gas industry group joined a lawsuit against the BLM over the Public Lands rule.
In a statement, she said the rule would “reorient multiple-use lands away from productive uses that sustain rural western communities.”
“Conservation is a goal. It is not a use,” she said during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing in June 2023.
The agency has already begun to withdraw guidance on implementing certain aspects of the rule.
A memo on “Restoration Prioritization and Planning” in accordance with the Public Lands rule is listed on the BLM’s website as being made inactive on February 27th, due to an executive order issued by Trump rescinding what his administration considers to be “harmful” actions.
Steve Bloch with SUWA says that because the rule was established via a lengthy process with multiple rounds of public comment, it will likely have to be retracted in the same way.
“The issue will be in the meantime, how much of the rule will be implemented and… I have to think that's not going to be a really high priority for this administration. So, it feels like it's a bit of a dead man walking.”
In response to questions, a BLM representative wrote in an email that the agency is “in the process of determining the path forward on the Public Lands Rule.”
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