Public on public lands
BLM Rule to Balance Land Use Sees Overwhelming Public Support
Westerners overwhelmingly back plan to balance land conservation with resource extraction in the face of extreme misinformation campaign
Following the conclusion of public comment today for the Bureau of Land Management’s new Public Lands Rule, conservation and other groups supporting the plan highlighted its overwhelming public support.
“People in public lands communities support this rule because it avoids the kind of conflict special interest groups in Washington D.C, have cooked up to protect the sweetheart deal they get from leasing public lands,” said Danielle Murray, Senior Legal and Policy Director at the Conservation Lands Foundation. “This plan is built with all public lands users in mind, not just those who have exploited a broken system of land management.”
“The level of public engagement we’ve seen from across the spectrum is unprecedented,” said Michael Carroll, BLM Campaign Director at the Wilderness Society. “This rule has been open and transparent from the start with opportunities for all public land users to weigh in at the same time. BLM should recognize that the diversity of opinion about this rule is exactly why we need to reform the system – no one group should get to write the rules for the rest of us.”
“The level of dishonesty corporate special interest groups have used to smear this rule is shocking even by their standards,” said Kyle Herrig, Senior Advisor to Accountable.US. “It should come as no surprise that the Cliven Bundy crowd is crying foul about a plan to restore equality to land management. This initiative is fair, democratic and long over due.”
Over 120 elected officials from Western states have called on the Biden administration to better incorporate conservation into BLM planning. Leading members of Congress also recently echoed these calls in a letter in support of the rule. Polls consistently show overwhelming bipartisan support for a balanced approach to public land management that gives equal weight to conservation and other uses.
BLM’s new rule puts conservation on an equal footing with other multiple uses of public lands. It allows land to be leased for conservation alongside grazing, drilling, mining and even more extractive uses of public lands. No valid existing rights to use BLM lands for these purposes will be affected. The rule seeks to correct a system that has been wildly imbalanced:
90% of BLM land is open to drilling;
60% are leased for grazing;
Only 14% are managed for conservation.
Learn more about the campaign to balance public lands management through the new rule at ActNowForPublicLands.org.
