On April 18, 2024, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final rule that will guide future management of 245 million acres of public land, nearly 1/0th of the country’s land base. In the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, Congress charged BLM with managing public lands for multiple uses and a sustained yield of natural resources for current and future generations. The “Public Lands Rule” addresses ecological degradation of public lands, which threatens the ability of BLM to achieve the goals of FLPMA, and it focuses on resilience, that is the ability of ecosystems to recover from the threats of disturbances and environmental change.
GWC is pleased to release a white paper – A Legal Analysis of the Public Lands Rule – in collaboration with the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, & the Environment at the S.J. Quinney School of Law. The white paper lays out the overall framework of the Rule and discusses the primary policy tools that are included.
In particular, BLM clarifies in the Rule that “conservation,” which includes both restoration of degraded ecosystems and protection of intact areas, is considered to be a “use” on par with other multiple uses. The Rule also creates “restoration” and “mitigation” leases that can be used to address harms or degradation resulting from other of the uses.
The white paper also provides detail on the legal foundation of the Rule. The Public Lands Rule is built upon the multiple use and sustained yield mandate in FLPMA, and Congress provided BLM with a conservation mandate to ensure that public lands can provide a sustained yield of services to the public over multiple generations. The Rule is consistent with FLPMA and the discretion that federal courts have provided to BLM to determine how best to balance and manage multiple uses on public lands.
You can read the final rule here. You can read the white paper here.
If you have any questions about the Rule or the white paper, please reach out to Chris Winter, Executive Director, chris.winter@colorado.edu.