The Trump administration is proposing to rescind a rule from the Biden administration that allows tribes, states, and conservation districts to lease land for conservation, blocking other uses. These leases violate the “multiple” use mission of federal lands under federal law, which includes access to land for energy development, mineral production, timber management, and recreation. The government is required to lease federal land for the public benefit, but Biden’s 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health rule violates the law by restricting use of public lands. In formulating the rule, the Biden administration sidestepped public concerns and criticisms of the rule before implementing it in June 2024, including downplaying the economic effects of the rule. Biden’s Interior Department ignored the National Environmental Policy Act, which is legally required, in enacting the rule, arguing that the rule was too “broad, speculative or conjectural” for environmental analysis.
Soaring energy demand in the United States requires access to the country’s vast resources, and American industry needs a secure mineral supply to compete with China. The original law allowed lands leased for oil and natural gas development to be available for other uses, such as recreation, but Biden’s rule restricts lands set aside for conservation from being used for other productive uses.
The rule restricted oil and other extraction and development by promoting the designation of more “areas of critical environmental concern (ACEC),” which is a special status that is given to land the government stipulates has historic or cultural significance, or is important for wildlife conservation. Biden’s rule was a major change in policy and a departure from the “fair market value” laws applying to all other endeavors on public lands.
President Trump’s Interior Department determined that the rule violates federal law and oversteps the statutory authority of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to carefully balance the management of rangelands for multiple uses, as required by the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). According to the Federal Register Notice to rescind the rule, “The 2024 Rule constrains agency flexibility necessary to manage under such principles.”
The Biden rule resulted in reduced revenues from federal lands for states as well as the federal government, since states share in federal land revenues under the FLPMA, typically a 50% revenue share. According to the Associated Press, the BLM oversees more than 380,000 square miles of U.S. land, primarily in the West, and sells grazing permits and oil and gas leases. In addition to its surface land holdings, the BLM regulates publicly-owned underground mineral reserves — such as coal for power plants and lithium needed for electric vehicle batteries — across more than one million square miles. The Biden rule reduced economic opportunity for the rural Western states, where most of the federal land is located. Industry groups, including the Western Energy Alliance and six states, challenged the Biden rule.
Background
In 1976, Congress declared in the FLPMA that the BLM must manage its lands “on the basis of multiple use and sustained yield.” The Biden administration rule, however, defines “conservation” as a “use” within FLPMA’s multiple-use framework, which violates federal case law in Public Land Council v. Babbitt. In this case, according to a letter from six western governors to Biden’s Interior Department, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the BLM lacks the statutory authority to prioritize conservation use to the exclusion of other uses. The governors argued that the rule put BLM lands into a protection-oriented management regime more akin to the National Park Service than an agency statutorily obligated to promote multiple use and sustained yield.
Federal Register Notice to Rescind the Rule
According to E&E News, the Federal Register Notice:
- takes aim at the rule’s establishment of a restoration and mitigation leasing program designed to leverage private dollars by allowing companies and nonprofit groups to purchase leases for restoration projects or to offset damage from projects on other bureau rangelands. It states that the leasing program “ultimately vests too much discretion in individual authorizing officers to preclude other, productive uses, such as grazing, mining, and energy development, as incompatible with the goals of the restoration or mitigation under the lease, potentially over large tracts of public land.”
- indicates that the rule “also unlawfully and unnecessarily expanded the scope of the BLM’s regulations governing the designation and management of [ACECs].” The rule prioritized conserving pristine landscapes through ACEC designations. Among other things, it allowed BLM to implement “temporary management” procedures for some parcels nominated for designation as ACECs — which are managed primarily to protect their environmental, cultural, historic, or scientific values, restricting activities that conflict with that priority. It states that the “temporary management areas not yet designated as ACECs interfere with productive use of the land without engaging in the planning process. Thus, the 2024 Rule denies opportunities for public participation to determine whether the ACEC designation is even warranted.”
Analysis
With growing energy and mineral demand, it’s clear that the U.S. needs federal land regulations that facilitate efficient usage. Biden’s public lands rule put conservation on a pedestal by ensuring that lands leased for this purpose could avoid the multiple-use mandate required of other lands. Conservation is an important goal, but the Biden administration was wrong to circumvent the law to expand the government’s role in preserving federal lands. While multiple-use has its flaws and it would be beneficial to move towards a system of private ownership of these lands, it is a preferable status quo to what the Biden administration proposed.
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