Towards the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, a new rule was finalized within the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that gave equal footing to conservation—alongside energy development—as one of the many multiple uses the BLM is in charge of managing on its lands. The BLM is the largest land management agency in America, and a good amount of energy development occurs on BLM land throughout the country. BLM also leases its land for cattle grazing.
That rule was designed to offer leases to stakeholders who could then “(improve) and (recover) federal lands, offsetting development impacts,” according to Chris D’Angelo at Public Domain. Conservation groups could have theoretically leased land for the sole purpose of conserving and habitat restoration.
However, the Trump administration has moved to rescind that rule. The argument from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is that the rule didn’t properly “balance” the BLM’s role.
“It says in the mission statement, the job of Interior is to ‘manage and protect.’ It doesn’t just say ‘protect,’ it says ‘manage and protect.'”
Opposition to this move has been swift, from all corners of the sporting world. Aaron Kindle, Director of Sporting Advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation, told Field & Stream, “The majority of America’s mule deer and elk winter range is on BLM. This rule would have been critical for those species, for sage grouse, and for some 3,000 other wildlife species that inhabit BLM lands.”
Especially in the West, a large number of trout fisheries flow through BLM land, and some could have potentially been leased for stream and habitat improvement projects. With this rule change, however, land management practices will return to how they’ve been for most of the past decade.