New Biden Rule Boosts Conservation On Public Lands

The changes are a marked shift for a federal agency that environmentalists have long derided as the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining.”

Conservation and ecosystem restoration will now get the same consideration as oil drilling, logging and grazing from America’s largest land manager, according to a final rule published Thursday.

The Bureau of Land Management’s final Public Lands Rule, first proposed last year, confronts the agency’s long legacy of prioritizing extraction on federal lands that every American shares an equal stake in.

“As stewards of America’s public lands, the Interior Department takes seriously our role in helping bolster landscape resilience in the face of worsening climate impacts,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come.”

The rule directs BLM — the nation’s largest land manager — to “protect intact landscapes, restore degraded habitat, and make wise management decisions based on science and data.” The agency will also be tasked with incorporating land health assessments into its decisions about how lands are used.

The biggest change from when the rule was first put forward last year deals with a new tool established to promote land protection and ecosystem restoration. The concept was initially floated as a system of broader “conservation leases,” but the BLM ultimately opted for establishing separate “restoration leases” and “mitigation leases.” Restoration leases will be available to individuals, organizations and state agencies interested in improving or recovering public lands, while mitigation leases are specifically for offsetting impacts from development or use of other lands.