NEWS AND COMMENTARY
The U.S. Department of the Interior issued a new rule on March 30, 2023, that purports to redress a problem with the relative priority of conservation in managing the 245 million acres of public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Conservation is already a legitimate use of public lands
Public lands in the United States are a source of pride and inspiration, embodying the diverse beauty of our nation’s landscapes and offering opportunities for recreation, resource utilization, and conservation.
On March 30, 2023, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a Notice of Proposed Rule-making that claims to “put conservation on an equal footing with other uses” and justifies, among other things, closing public lands as necessary for “mitigation and restoration.”
The conservation pretense is a canard—sugar-coated language to mask an underlying purpose—to provide a regulatory basis for restricting access to public lands for recreation, grazing, mining, logging, and other activities.
National land use policy already mandates that the public lands “protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archeological values.”
The longstanding national policy further provides that the federal government will preserve and protect certain public lands in their natural condition, provide habitat for fish and wildlife, and provide for outdoor recreation and human occupancy and use.
One expert, Sarah Montalbano, Education Policy Analyst at Alaska Policy Forum, writing in Independent Women’s Forum, said of the rule, “Unfortunately, the proposed rule is a solution in search of a problem: conservation is already implicitly recognized as a legitimate use of public lands.”
The proposed Lands Rule seems to offer little more than a redundant affirmation of the longstanding principles of conservation and multiple-use management.
Mitigation and restoration: A cloak for restricting access
The second ominous subtext of the proposed rule lies in its justification for closing public lands based on “mitigation and restoration” efforts. The regulation would allow BLM to offer public land leases for conservation purposes like it currently provides drilling, mining, and grazing acreage. In practical effect, such leases would enable the BLM to outsource conservation projects on public lands resulting in their closure for ten years or more.
While it is true that some areas may require temporary closure for habitat restoration or other conservation measures, the proposed rule appears to use this argument as a guise for progressively restricting access to public lands. The vague language in the rule creates the potential for sweeping closures, which could negatively impact recreational users, resource-dependent industries, and local economies that rely on access to public lands. The bottom line: The rule potentially deprives millions of Americans of the opportunity to experience and enjoy the outdoors. This move would diminish the quality of life for many citizens and undermine the concept of public lands as a shared resource for all Americans to use and enjoy.
The Public Lands Rule, as proposed by the U.S. Department of the Interior, is a misguided attempt to cloak a restrictive agenda under the banner of conservation and restoration. While it may seem well-intentioned at first glance, it relies heavily on trust in the benign husbandry of the BLM and its management of vast public lands—a trust that is, at best, tenuous.
The BLM has tried this before
In 2016, BLM imposed an eerily similar rule, the so-called “BLM 2.0 Initiative,” so egregious that Congress rescinded it by a Congressional Review Act (CRA) disapproval resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a co-sponsor on the U.S. Senate side of the joint resolution, said, “If left intact, [BLM 2.0] would have harmed grazing, timber, energy development, mineral production, and even recreation on federal lands.”
The current proposed Public Lands Rule is bad public policy that would institutionalize the sequester and protection of public lands and bar access to those whose right it is to access them.
Let’s not go down this path. The BLM will accept public comments on its proposal until June 20, 2023. More information on the Federal Register website.
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##RVT1100b
It’s what Barry Commoner called the “tragedy of the commons.” If a resource is free for unfettered use by everyone, its overuse will spoil it. Imagine a verdant prairie with a beautiful lake. The city folks and the farmers will take all the water from the lakes to drink and grow their crops. The miners will want to mine the minerals under the prairie, the builders will want to develop the area, manufacturers will want to dump their waste there, and then we (campers) will never know their was a prairie and lake in the first place. The moral of the tragedy of the commons is that if a resource if free to all, without some regulation, it can be lost to everyone. So, some reasonable regulations are needed to maintain uses for everyone so that we can still drink the water, eat the crops, mine valuable resources, and even go camping, but sustainably so that these uses are available to future generations.
Related to the article by Randall Brink on BLM proposed regulations: Having worked in recreation management for the BLM and US Forest Service in three western states for 30 years I can personally attest to the damage and trash left by inconsiderate campers, RVers and OHV users. Federal land management agencies are woefully underfunded and don’t have sufficient funding for managing developed recreation sites and facilities, much less recreation on undeveloped National Forest and Public Lands. The “disingenuous” party here is Mr. Brink not Federal agencies doing their best to protect National Forests and Public Lands and still provide appropriate recreational opportunities for the public.
While employed as a contract CRM surveyor I witnessed the misuse of public lands. While conservation is implicit, so is the notion that those citizens accessing said lands will use them responsibly and in accordance to regulations. Sadly many citizens misuse public lands, and the influx of people utilizing public lands has exponentially increased post COVID. The DOI had a responsibility to ensure the viability and sustainability of national lands. In addition to serving as public lands, these lands also serve as ancestral lands for many Native American tribes. Their integrity is paramount and the “new” regulation may just be a necessary response to ensure that viability.
What if you look at it with the lense that since the pandemic, public lands across the country have seen triple, quadruple the use from the public than previously, and the environment is being negatively affected by this massive influx of outdoor users. This rule aims to try and close areas as necessary to allow these areas to recover ecologically. Or do we truly want these areas to become dusty, void of flora and fauna, and basically straight up parking lots?
With kindness, your well intentioned lens might need some polishing. Or do ‘we’ truly want to (ultimately) be held like cattle in approved urban sanctuaries because ‘humans bad’, ‘flora/fauna good and need to be perpetually saved (as an excuse to manage ‘evil’ humans)’? Recommend the various works of Michael Crichton: ‘Nature finds a way’. Also, I seriously doubt that national parks and already strongly managed BLM land run much risk of transforming into The Dust Bowl any time soon if ever, but marks for (sadly typical) apocalyptic creativity. Maybe get out more and enjoy the scenery, assuming you can stomach the (immediate) guilt? Good luck with it, I sincerely hope you manage to.
Reality colliding with cultural insanity! Well done! Truly laughing out loud.
Looks like the debate gurus, possibly savants more aptly describes them than gurus, shut down debate on the Redwood. Do you think that is a tactic learned from the old debate team mentor as well? If your losing, grab the ball and run home? Gaslight then run.
I’m done for the day. Good luck at your next debate meet. Happy Sunday to everyone, including you two. 👍✌️ no hard feelings, really.
We’re going to need to access the public lands to install charging stations for the RV’rs who soon will be forced to electrification. The Administration’s focus on closing to access the public lands belies the term “public.” “Government Lands” is more appropriate.
If it can’t be grown, it must be mined. Land access is necessary for both society and sanity. Environmental religiosity ignores the inherent hypocrisy as it clings to technology that requires access and application of materials necessary for laptops, EV anything, and basically everything around you. So live by your convictions, abandon your toys, and freeze in the dark – or outgrow the stubborn immaturity and immediacy of your emotions and appreciate that any reasonable ‘balance’ includes natural resource extraction and development – and recreational access to the land that you share and have no right to restrict due to subjective attitude or scientific myopia, or both.
Closing an area to public use is necessary to mitigate impact. There is nothing more disruptive and impactful than human use.
Not sure why this is controversial. And it certainly isn’t a facade. It’s straightforward and essential to conservation.
Agreed!
This sounds like a corporate complaint from mineral and fossil fuel extractors. While traveling over the last 8 years, I have personally witnessed the continued destruction of many of our natural areas, from campgrounds to trails to preserves, by trash and human waste and the actions of careless visitors. To pretend our natural areas are actually protected when corporations and the careless public have free reign of them, including the most polluting industries on the planet, is both ignorant and short-sighted. Have y’all truly not been seeing in real time how our lands are getting misused for short term gain or enjoyment?
And does anyone here, after reading this article, still believe that the current administration has your best interest in mind when it comes ti “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”?
Yes, most of us do.
You’re not speaking for me.
Protecting our lands is vital to those pursuits even being available for your kids or grandkids.
Almost a cult following. They think the Red hats are a cult signal, while they blindly tout the insanity of a Party line that does prolificly marginalize God’s word to follow man’s word on the natural world. Control Gender? Control weather? Just 2 examples.
Absolutely not
The line by Murkowski says it all. “grazing, timber, energy development, mineral production And even recreation on public lands” The first 4 are for the corporations, The through in at the end is fur the people who own the land. If you think this has anything to do with citizens rights, You’re insane.
Preach brother!!
Ty ty ty whoever wrote this piece is taking the corporate line hard
This is a political hit piece. You use as reference “One expert, Sarah Montalbano, Education Policy Analyst at Alaska Policy Forum”. Alaska Policy Forum is an anti-government right wing organization. The fact that this woman is a spokesperson for this group does not make her an expert on anything.
Thumbs up cancelproof
Agreed!
Good point! Thanks. Obviously not an independent expert
Yes, exactly. The words to a song come to mind: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
There needs to be a check on corporate greed and a specific actionable allowance for preservation of wildlife habitat on our public lands. The author is reading a conspiracy into a very sensible government order.
Unfortunately, its already happening. Many places you cannot get to BLM land because some rich moron bought the land leading to it and you can’t get there from here. It’s a proven fact that the government can’t manage anything. And the environmentalist that think they know what they are doing are screwing up our fishing and hunting seasons and in someplaces you can only keep one fish, maybe. Let the bears roam, let the cougars flourish. More and more people are moving to places that no man has ever gone before. Proper management and common sense is needed, not big government.
So we should let fisherman drive salmon extinct and let Elon musk’s boring company dump 150,000 gallons of waste into the Colorado river each day because corporations and commerical industry are actually the good guys?
Absolutely, pave it over… now that’s true progressivism…💥
Government is ONLY interested in increasing it’s own power/control. They care NOTHING for the wishes/welfare of citizens. I know, your cousin works for the gov. and is a wonderful person! The overall institutional goals are self serving and nefarious.
This move is anything but a surprise. The BLM doesn’t have the funding to police the massive lands they are tasked to oversee, and the explosion of irresponsible and ignorant recreationists who leave trash, feces, scarred trees and campsites, and deliberately deface cultural treasures, have made the restriction of public access to these lands necessary. If I had been in charge of managing the resource I would probably have come to the same conclusion and decided “If these people don’t have the values and sense to honor and protect their inheritance, then they don’t deserve to have access to it!” What we really need is a public that protects these lands and is willing to confront or at least report the miscreants who have driven the BLM to these measures. At the very least, everyone wanting access to these lands should be required to register at a local BLM office for a pass, stating licence plate, number in party, chosen dispersed camp area, and display the pass to occupy the site.
If people that went on these premises knew how to act they wouldn’t have to resort to this but people leave trash everywhere defecate,tear down trees carve up historical sites they don’t know how to act anymore so they have to take these steps to preserve wild areas. I agree that anyone that goes into these areas should have to register leave the license plate numbers and pay to access. We have property in the Blue mountains and constantly have to chase people off of it that have torn up fences torn down fences and trashed our property harm and harass wildlife and livestock. Drunk “hunters ” are my favorite with the huge bonfires. People have no home training anymore so they don’t know how to act when they get out and about into society let alone into wilderness areas whether they are privately owned or publicly owned. They had to do something else to stop the free-for-all.🏞️🏔️🌱✌️
Hear, hear! And people to inspect campsites and charge those who are there/most recently camped when it is trashed. a $250 “damages bond”, to have already been run off a credit card and awaiting cancellation at checkout if the site passes inspection.
I have brought up this same point to a couple of campgrounds, seems pretty simp[le to me, but they act like it would be an act of Congress to do it. (haha)
Unfortunately you can’t legislate good behavior or morals. I’ve seen the destruction left behind by societal misfits in landmark heritage places like Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, etc. and those require admission. What would you expect from such when there is no oversight?
My thought is our Federal government will close these public land to us, the United States tax paying citizens and lease it to India and China to use the land and water to grow crops for their nations. A way of taking our natural resources for those foreign nations at our expense without too much concern for conserving anything.
Wow, maybe you should watch less Fox “News.”
Love America, but don’t trust our government. Just learned that about the FCC add Xfinity/Comcast. The other issue is our government has an endless amount of money to use against us in court.
I have seen what a few, but ever increasing, minority of park visitors are doing to our national, state and local parks. Who we should be mad at are the pigs amongst us who are trashing our country- rural and urban.
Society is controlled by the lunatic fringe – Unknown
I read the proposed rule that you can find here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/04/03/2023-06310/conservation-and-landscape-health My biggest takeaway is the “conservation leases” that will be issued to 3rd parties to mitigate & conserve a sensitive area. I’m thinking it will be like what happened at Horseshoe Bend near Page, AZ. Used to be you parked your car on the road, walked a single file dirt path to the cliff (being careful you didn’t fall off) and viewed the bend in the Colorado River below. Now there’s a huge parking lot ($10.00 fee), an 8′ wide trail with shade structures and guard rails. Someone is making a ton of money there. That’s probably what will happen to a lot of the special BLM places that will get the “conservation lease.” But, it’s our own fault. RVers continue to ignore the 14 day limit and set up residence at the free BLM camping areas and trash the place. The trails are full of discarded poop bags. It’s sad.
BLM attempts at holding conservation equal with other uses has lost case after case due to court interpretation of FLPMA. This article is falsely alarmist.
Hear hear!