Rescission of Conservation and Landscape Health Rule

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Bureau of Land Management</SUBAGY> <CFR>43 CFR Parts 1600 and 6100</CFR> <DEPDOC>[PO #4820000251; Order #02412-014-004-047181.0]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1004-AF03</RIN> <SUBJECT>Rescission of Conservation and Landscape Health Rule</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Land Management, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing to rescind the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, issued as a final rule on May 9, 2024. We solicit comment on all aspects of this rule. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by November 10, 2025. The BLM is not obligated to consider any comments received after this date in making its decision on the final rule. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Mail, Personal, or Messenger Delivery:</E> U.S. Department of the Interior, Director (630), Bureau of Land Management, 1849 C St. NW, Room 5646, Washington, DC 20240, Attention: 1004-AF03. <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> In the Searchbox, enter “BLM-2025-0001” and click the “Search” button. Follow the instructions at this website. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kyle Moorman, Chief, Division of Regulatory Affairs and Directives, telephone: 202-527-2433, email: <E T="03">kmoorman@blm.gov</E> with a subject line of “RIN 1004-AF03.” Individuals in the United States who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, TDD, or TeleBraille) to access telecommunications relay services. Individuals outside the United States should use the relay services offered within their country to make international calls to the point-of-contact in the United States. For a summary of the proposed rule, please see the proposed rule summary document in docket BLM-2025-0001 on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The BLM is proposing to rescind the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule adopted on May 9, 2024, via 89 FR 40308, with an effective date of June 10, 2024, and codified in amendments to 43 CFR part 1600 and the newly created 43 CFR part 6100 (2024 Rule). The 2024 Rule established a “policy for the BLM to build and maintain the resilience of ecosystems on public lands in three primary ways: (1) protecting the most intact, functioning landscapes; (2) restoring degraded habitat and ecosystems; and (3) using science and data as the foundation for management decisions across all plans and programs.” (89 FR 40308).) The BLM has determined, based on a review of the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, that the 2024 Rule is unnecessary and violates existing statutory requirements. Among other things, the 2024 Rule is unnecessary to facilitate, and even undermines, the BLM's management of the public lands under applicable law, including the direction in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) to manage public land under principles of multiple use and sustained yield, except where the land has been dedicated to a specific use by other provisions of law. The 2024 Rule constrains agency flexibility necessary to manage under such principles. Accordingly, we propose to rescind the 2024 Rule in full and seek comment on that proposal. The 2024 Rule's leasing provisions threaten to upset the appropriate balance that the BLM must strike when managing public land under principles of multiple use and sustained yield. The BLM is charged by statute to regulate the “use, occupancy, and development” of public lands in accordance with the principles of “multiple use” and “sustained yield.” 43 U.S.C. 1732. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> But the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule identifies conservation—a non-use—as a productive use for leases and permits. This is contrary to the BLM's mandate and statutory authority. Conservation is not a “use” under the statute. Under a more appropriate implementation of FLPMA's mandate, the BLM works to conserve resources, as appropriate, to ensure balanced resource use while also achieving and maintaining appropriate output of those resources, in all cases consistent with the principles of multiple use and sustained yield. It does so through its own affirmative land management work and in partnership with other entities, including other government agencies, but it does not follow that FLPMA's leasing authority may be used to that end. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  FLPMA defines both terms. Multiple use “means the management of the public lands and their various resource values so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the present and future needs of the American people; making the most judicious use of the land for some or all of these resources or related services over areas large enough to provide sufficient latitude for periodic adjustments in use to conform to changing needs and conditions; the use of some land for less than all of the resources; a combination of balanced and diverse resource uses that takes into account the long-term needs of future generations for renewable and nonrenewable resources, including, but not limited to, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific and historical values; and harmonious and coordinated management of the various resources without permanent impairment of the productivity of the land and the quality of the environment with consideration being given to the relative values of the resources and not necessarily to the combination of uses that will give the greatest economic return or the greatest unit output.” 43 U.S.C. 1702(c). Sustained yield “means the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level annual or regular periodic output of the various renewable resources of the public lands consistent with multiple use.” <E T="03">Id.</E> § 1702(h). </FTNT> As many commenters pointed out during the public comment process on the 2024 Rule, the restoration and mitigation leases for which the Rule provides may preclude other uses of the public lands, running contrary to the notion of multiple use. The Rule ultimately vests too much discretion in individual authorizing officers to preclude other, productive uses, such as grazing, mining, and energy development, as incompatible with the goals of the restoration or mitigation under the lease, potentially over large tracts of public land. In reviewing the need for the 2024 Rule, the BLM has determined that it has sufficient tools to manage the public lands without inviting third parties to seek land use authorizations for those types of activities traditionally performed by the Bureau. For example, Interior may withdraw land under 43 U.S.C. 1714, but only after following certain procedural requirements. The 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, to the contrary, permits the BLM to take effectively the same action under a different guise without following the statutorily required procedures. For these reasons, the BLM has determined it is appropriate to repeal the leasing provisions at 43 CFR 6102.4 and 6102.4.1. Congress often permits agencies to set aside land and to prevent development for preservation purposes, such as when Congress designates a Wilderness Area or National Park. But when Congress does take such action, it says so explicitly. The Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, therefore, makes no sense in statutory context and is not supported by clear statutory authority. <E T="03">West Virginia</E> v. <E T="03">EPA,</E> 597 U.S. 697 (2022). The 2024 Rule also unlawfully and unnecessarily expanded the scope of the BLM's regulations governing the designation and management of areas of critical environmental concern (ACECs). ACEC designations (and nominations) can create conflicts with the use of BLM-managed land for recreation, grazing, development, and extractive uses. ACEC nominations often target public land that is subject to pending project applications, causing project delays even when the nominations are clearly without merit. In order to manage the public lands under principles of multiple use and sustained yield, the BLM must have the flexibility to protect resources while also allowing for productive use of the land, in all cases where appropriate. The 2024 Rule allows for temporary management of ACECs with hardly any of the procedures usually required to designate ACECs. This distorts the normal ACEC process. These temporary management areas not yet designated as ACECs interfere with productive use of the land without engaging in the planning process. Thus, the 2024 Rule denies opportunities for public participation to determine whether the ACEC designation is even warranted. Moreover, the 2024 Rule's heightened standard for de-designation of an existing ACEC puts an added and unnecessary burden on any effort to revisit the continuing need for protection in those places, including where a different use of the land would be both appropriate and productive. For these reasons, the BLM proposes to restore the ACEC regulations to the form they took prior to promulgation of the 2024 Rule. The BLM is also inviting public comment as to whether those legacy ACEC regulations should be restored verbatim, as is proposed, or revised to allow for more efficient and flexible management of ACECs as part of managing under principles of multiple use and sustained yield. It is the policy of the Secretary that ACEC regulations should be as flexible as possible to allow for productive uses of land consistent with FLPMA. The 2024 Rule's land health regulations, meanwhile, include provisions that often require the BLM to act on a fixed or rapid timetable, interfering with previously authorized use of the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━