NACD Wants to Be a Part of New Land Use Rule

Earlier this year, the National Association of Conservation Districts submitted comments on the public lands rule that the Bureau of Land Management has been developing. NACD CEO, Jeremy Peters.

"We're really excited that conservation districts are included as part of the new management system that BLM is going to be rolling out. We work closely with BLM to ensure language that would include conservation districts. So now, you know, as a result of these efforts, conservation districts are specifically included, along with other local and state governments, as a qualified entity to hold mitigation or restoration leases, especially where there's impact from extractive technologies energy development on those public lands, conservation districts can help to restore impacted landscapes and provide successful restoration effort for habitat and the other uses that we care about."

Peters says that NACD would like to see the BLM contract with conservation districts to provide restoration efforts, and according to BLM, the proposed rule directly responds to the growing need to better manage public lands, waters, and wildfire in the face of devastating wildfires, historic droughts and severe storms that communities are experiencing across the West, as well as to deepen BLM collaborative work with communities, states, and tribes to support responsible development of critical minerals, energy, and other resources.