What should be the guiding principle of federal lands management? The House Subcommittee on Federal Lands heard from witnesses about just that last week.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages 245 million surface acres and 700 million acres of underground minerals. The BLM is particularly influential in Western states where land owned by the federal government can easily exceed 50 percent. 84.9% of Nevada is owned by the federal government, and 61.3% of my home state of Alaska, or 223 million acres, is owned by the federal government.
The BLM and the U.S. Forest Service are supposed to adhere to a “multiple use and sustained yield” mandate under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. These multiple uses include, but are not limited to, “recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific and historical values.” Sustained yield requires BLM to aim to balance “the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity” of multiple uses.
However, the Biden administration routinely restricted and denied timber, mining, oil and gas, and other projects that ought to be considered on federal lands under multiple-use management. Biden released a vague and preservationist executive order in 2021, the “America the Beautiful” initiative, that required federal agencies to preserve at least 30% of the country’s lands and waters by 2030. The administration also put in place the Conservation and Landscape Health rule, which created a novel conservation leasing program that sets preservation above other multiple uses. Unilateral designations of national monuments, with little input from local communities, were a staple of both the Biden and Obama years.
Multiple users of public lands were highlighted in the subcommittee hearing. Tim Canterbury, a rancher from Howard, Colorado, and president of the Public Lands Council, criticized the “huge regulatory burdens” that other grazers faced, and told the committee that “more land designations and reduced focus on active management is not the solution.”
Witnesses pointed to overregulation as a key issue, and suggested streamlining the permitting process under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), reforming statutes like the Endangered Species Act and the Antiquities Act, and more use of the Good Neighbor Authority to allow states to reduce wildfire risks on federal lands.
This hearing was well-timed with the nomination of Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, to be Trump’s Bureau of Land Management director. If confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Sgamma would oversee federal leasing programs for oil and gas, mining, grazing, and renewable energy. Ms. Sgamma said that she greatly respects “the work BLM does to balance multiple uses—like energy, recreation, grazing, mining—with stewardship of the land.”
In 1910, President Teddy Roosevelt said that, “Conservation means development as much as it does protection.” Multiple-use management recognizes that development is not at odds with responsible conservation and tries to strike a balance guided by the residents closest to the issue.
Mr. Canterbury, who testified on behalf of the Public Lands Council, said it well: “We cannot regulate conservation. Conservation comes from those of us that’s on the land.”
To learn about multiple-use management of public lands, go HERE.