Public hearings to begin on rule opening leases to conservationists

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is set to begin public hearings on a proposal to open federal lands leasing to conservationists with the first public presentation to take place Monday evening.

The proposed rule, first announced at the end of March, would open the leasing process to those seeking to preserve public lands, along with the oil, mining and grazing interests to which they are traditionally leased.

BLM will host a virtual meeting, the first of five such events, on Monday evening, with a public meeting in Denver to follow May 25. Further meetings will occur May 25 in Denver, May 30 in Reno, Nev.; and June 1 in Albuquerque, N.M.; with a final virtual meeting slated for June 5.

The bureau has oversight over just less than 400,000 square miles of public lands it historically leases to ranchers and the fossil fuel industry. A public comment period for the proposal is open through June 20.

Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities, told The Hill the proposed rule, as well as the scheduled listening sessions, are a “big, important step” in bringing BLM back in alignment with statutory intent.

In five decades of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which governs federal land management, “You’ve seen a lot of back and forth in the way public lands are managed but it’s been clear that even though the intent of FLPMA was to put public lands management front and center, that hasn’t happened,” Weiss told The Hill.

The conservation aspect of the rule “is what Congress directed 50 years ago, and BLM has never really lived up to that congressional instruction,” he said.

However, the proposal is also encountering fierce opposition from Republicans representing Western states, who have already been vocal opponents of the Biden administration’s environmental policies.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, has already introduced a bill that would block the proposed rule, calling it a “threat to our Wyoming way of life and our economy.”

“Nearly half of the land in Wyoming is owned by the federal government. The law has long recognized the value of managing much of that land for multiple use — including mineral development, grazing, recreation and timber management,” Barrasso said.

“In Wyoming, we pride ourselves on being responsible environmental stewards of the land. Now, the radicals in the Biden administration are trying to upend a system that is foundational to public land access and productivity,”

Barrasso’s bill is sponsored by Sens. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).