One thing opponents and proponents of a recently proposed U.S. Bureau of Land Management rule agree on: It would be a major shift in how the agency manages nearly 250 million acres of federal lands.
The rule would allow for conservation leases, similar to how the agency auctions off parcels of land for mining, livestock grazing or oil and gas development. Supporters say the proposal would lift conservation to the level of extractive uses, a responsible move to protect lands affected by climate change.
I’ll be watching this closely, especially as I embark on my next book project on public lands. It’s a big deal: most of the federal Bureau of Land Management lands are governed by “multiple use”–that is, that land can have multiple, economic purposes (leisure, grazing, mining, energy production, and so forth). The Biden Administration wants to elevate conservation as a “use” which will impact water, species conservation, wildlife, and climate, in addition to the current economic uses of the land.
