Conservation of BLM-Managed Lands: A Three-Point Plan for 2022
The most significant of America’s incredible wealth of public lands is the nearly 250 million acres overseen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). 2022 is the pivotal year for the BLM to make progress toward national conservation goals through the implementation of a three-point plan: developing a durable conservation framework; fixing plans developed by the Trump Administration that eliminated conservation; and completing ongoing plans to provide important conservation for tribal communities, wildlife habitat, watersheds and recreation areas.
The diverse landscapes under the BLM’s management include biologically important sagebrush ecosystems from Oregon to Montana, redwood stands of northwest California, vast boreal forests of Interior Alaska, red rock country of the Colorado Plateau, and the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts along our southern border. These lands have been home to Indigenous peoples since time immemorial, and many areas now managed by the BLM continue to sustain Indigenous communities and cultures today.
However, fewer than one-fifth of BLM-managed lands are designated for conservation. In 2022, the BLM has an unparalleled opportunity, as the nation’s largest manager of unprotected lands, to take a leadership role in advancing President Biden’s goal to conserve 30% of the nation’s land and waters by 2030 as outlined in the America the Beautiful initiative.
Increasing protections for important wildlife habitat and Indigenous peoples’ ancestral lands, watersheds, and ecosystems can help lessen the impacts of climate change and sustain biodiversity. Such conservation would carry economic benefits for the many local communities around BLM-managed lands that rely on outdoor recreation and associated tourism. It would also provide access to nature for the many people who live near these public lands, including some communities that currently lack the health and other benefits of nearby protected lands.
For the Biden Administration to be successful in providing balanced and responsible conservation for BLM-managed lands, three main actions are necessary:
Develop Conservation Frameworks to Provide Durable Protections
The BLM is a multiple-use agency — meaning that the lands it manages can be used for conservation, recreation, development, or sustained yield — although historically the land has been extensively grazed and mined for oil, gas, and minerals with little consideration of conservation values. In 1976, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) first included conservation as a priority use of BLM-managed lands, and created a public process for the BLM to develop regional land use plans to balance multiple uses. Through this planning process, the agency is required to: inventory its lands; prioritize, identify, and conserve areas of critical environmental concern (ACECs); and consider suitable wilderness quality lands to protect these outstanding values.
ACECs require special management attention to protect areas with historical, cultural, and scenic values; vulnerable habitat and wildlife; and watersheds and drinking water sources. Although some 20 million acres have been designated as ACECs in planning processes, their management is wildly inconsistent across the BLM’s field offices, and in many cases, these landmark places are provided no or little protection from industrial development and other threats. The lack of standardized regulations for how ACECs are managed has also resulted in their arbitrary elimination across the West and Alaska.
Recognizing the critical role that ACECs can play in protecting lands to which Indigenous tribes have been connected for millennia, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians adopted a resolution asking the BLM to conduct a rule-making to ensure that ACECs are a priority within the agency’s land management planning processes. ACECs can be an important tool for the agency to advance conservation on public lands, but only if this designation is applied consistently, meaningfully, and with durability. To achieve that, the BLM should develop a regulation to establish standards for ACEC prioritization, identification, designation, and management.
FLPMA also provides BLM the authority to administratively protect lands as new Wilderness Study Areas, managing them to conserve the values described in the Wilderness Act of 1964. Lands with wilderness characteristics that were not earlier identified and formally designated as Wilderness Study Areas often lack safeguards from industrial development and other threats. The vast majority of the approximately 70 million acres of BLM lands in Alaska contain wilderness characteristics and in just the contiguous West, more than 30 million acres possess these such values. The BLM should exercise its authority to conserve wilderness-quality lands for the benefit of future generations.
Fix Plans that Eliminated Important Protections
During the Trump Administration, the BLM finalized plans that arbitrarily eliminated millions of acres of protections to open more lands for oil, gas, and mineral development. Specifically, the BLM dropped nearly two million acres of previously designated ACECs in Alaska’s Bering Sea-Western Interior planning area (while also ignoring Tribal nominations for eight million acres of new ACECs there), and tens of thousands of acres in the Lewistown, Montana planning area. The Biden Administration has already moved to restore protections for more than eight million acres of Special Areas in the Western Arctic, lands that since time immemorial have been part of the Indigenous peoples’ lifeway as the some of the largest caribou herds on earth are sustained by this land. BLM leaders have the authority to fix these plans to restore protections to more than ten million acres of public lands, as well as expand ACEC protections on other important habitats nominated for designation. BLM should reconsider plans finalized without conservation elements and adopt conservation-oriented alternatives to fix these flawed plans.
Complete Pending Plans
The BLM is currently mid-plan in almost a dozen planning processes across the West and in Alaska. These planning efforts provide an outstanding mechanism for the agency to conserve vast tracts of deserving lands. Prospects exist in Nevada where future uses across almost 50 million acres of BLM-managed lands are being considered, Alaska’s 13 million acre Central Yukon planning area, as well as regional planning efforts in the Rock Springs area in Wyoming, Southeastern Oregon and Lakeview, southern New Mexico, eastern Colorado, and northern California. Each of these planning efforts gives the BLM an opportunity to work closely with local communities, tribes, sportspersons, recreationists, and others to solicit their input on how this public domain should be managed. These ongoing planning efforts could result in the conservation of tens of millions of acres to advance our national policy goals on conservation.
As agency leaders pivot from the disastrous days of the Trump Administration when the agency was systematically dismantled, great opportunity exists to rebuild the agency and deploy long-overdue protections to our shared landscapes and ecosystems. Time is running out, and we look forward to seeing 2022 be the year of the BLM’s pivot towards balanced and responsible conservation.
