Sept. 10 (UPI) — The Department of the Interior announced Wednesday that it plans to rescind a 2024 rule created to protect public lands with “no use” protections.
The federal government can lease its owned land to private organizations. The 2024 Public Lands Rule, enacted by then-President Joe Biden, would have allowed tribes, states and conservation districts to lease lands to preserve them.
The administration wants to end the rule because “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 [Bureau of Land Management] as established by Congress. Now, the BLM proposes to rescind this rule in full,” a press release said.
“The previous administration’s Public Lands Rule had the potential to block access to hundreds of thousands of acres of multiple-use land — preventing energy and mineral production, timber management, grazing and recreation across the West,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “The most effective caretakers of our federal lands are those whose livelihoods rely on its well-being. Overturning this rule protects our American way of life and gives our communities a voice in the land that they depend on.”
The Public Lands Rule exceeded the BLM’s statutory authority by placing an outsized priority on conservation or “no-use” at the expense of multiple-use access, threatening to curb grazing, energy development, recreation and other land uses, the Interior Department said.
“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 press release said.
Supporters of the rule say the Interior Department’s proposal would hurt land conservation efforts.
“This rule provided for healthy habitats and now it’s foolishly being yanked away in service of the ‘Drill, baby, drill’ agenda,” said Vera Smith, national forests and public lands director at Defenders of Wildlife, in a written statement.
“The National System of Public Lands is home to over 300 threatened and endangered species and an additional 2,460 at-risk species that are unlisted but trending downward,” the Defenders of Wildlife statement said. “These at-risk species are struggling in the face of widespread habitat degradation resulting from chronic drought, continuing invasive plant species invasions, and unsustainable levels of grazing, oil and gas drilling, and other disturbances. These trends highlight the importance of this rule and its emphasis on science-based decision-making, land health and sustainability.”