New Public Lands Actions Turn the Page on Decades of Conflict and Mismanagement

Under the leadership of President Joe Biden and Secretary Deb Haaland, the U.S. Department of the Interior is taking important steps to turn the corner on a long history of conflict and mismanagement of nearly 250 million acres of America’s public lands.¹ While some of these measures from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—the largest land manager in the United States²—have garnered attention, their actual collective impact is underappreciated. Key actions include the BLM’s foundational new Public Lands Rule, as well as new policies supporting responsible clean energy growth, updated oil and gas requirements, and a new framework to better support outdoor recreation and visitation. Together, this set of commonsense but long-overdue actions will update the BLM’s public lands oversight role to fit the modern era, enabling the agency to responsibly steward public lands, waters, and wildlife for the long haul; meet the nation’s clean energy needs; expand outdoor recreation opportunities; and support rural economies.

Despite some notable progress, including the establishment of new national monuments and the National Conservation Lands system to manage the BLM’s crown jewels,³ the past few decades have been riddled with controversy and bad decisions across the Western lands overseen by the agency. Again and again, the BLM has put public lands with outstanding wildlife habitat, cultural and historic resources, and prized recreational opportunities on the auction block for oil and gas leasing, with millions of acres already leased and millions more still available for leasing.⁴

Controversial actions to lease public lands were commonplace throughout the early and mid-2000s. These included a decision to greenlight drilling on lands along Montana’s Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument in 2002,⁵ leases sold in Colorado’s Thompson Divide in 2003 and 2004,⁶ New Mexico’s Otero Mesa opened to drilling in 2004 and leases sold in 2005,⁷ leasing of lands relied on for drinking water by Grand Junction and Palisade, Colorado, in 2006,⁸ proposed leasing of Colorado’s Vermillion Basin in 2007,⁹ and a notorious lease sale in 2008 that offered and sold leases in Utah near Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Dinosaur National Monument, and other well-known red-rock canyon lands.¹⁰

Although the story changed notably during the Obama administration, bad leasing proposals continued to pop up from the BLM during that time. Those included proposed lease sales near Mesa Verde National Park and Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and in the Nine Mile Canyon and Desolation Canyon region in Utah,¹¹ which were both eventually shelved.

Later, then-President Donald Trump’s proclaimed “energy dominance” agenda dramatically accelerated the pace of reckless leasing and drilling. By fall 2020, more than 50 million acres of federal lands were opened to drilling in draft or newly finalized plans, and more than 24 million acres had been offered for lease to the oil and gas industry by the Trump administration.¹² Among the public lands leased or proposed for auction were places treasured for their ecological, cultural and historic, or recreational value, including the following:

• Arizona: near Petrified Forest National Park¹³
• Colorado: near Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve¹⁴
• Nevada: near Great Basin National Park and the Ruby Mountains¹⁵
• New Mexico: near Carlsbad Caverns National Park¹⁶
• North Dakota: near Theodore Roosevelt National Park¹⁷
• Utah: near Bears Ears and Hovenweep national monuments, other archaeologically rich canyonlands, and the popular Slickrock trail¹⁸
• Wyoming: near Fort Laramie National Historic Site and in the critical Red Desert to Hoback migration corridor¹⁹

This legacy of bad decisions reflects a system dramatically skewed in favor of oil and gas drilling and mining, at the expense of biodiversity and land health, recreational access, traditional and cultural use by Native American communities, and clean energy development. The BLM has left the vast majority of its lands available, by default, to the oil and gas industry for leasing,²⁰ while mining companies can stake claims across most federal lands without paying royalties and can hold them indefinitely.²¹ In fact, a 2022 Center for American Progress analysis found that while 77 percent of high-value federal land for renewable energy development in the West had low oil and gas potential, those lands were nonetheless managed to prioritize oil and gas over renewable energy or other uses.²²

With sustainable energy solutions widely available and a growing recognition that the health of our lands, economies, and communities is intertwined, public land management decisions today should not be a zero sum game; decisions about building clean energy projects, expanding outdoor recreation opportunities, and conserving and restoring lands can, and must, go hand in hand.

Clean energy and conservation

As the climate crisis threatens every corner of the United States,²³ the public is demanding a rapid transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy that is better for the planet and communities. But succeeding with the massive build-out of clean energy generation and transmission needed to turn the tide of the climate crisis will require the renewables industry to earn and maintain public trust.

Most people in the United States have a favorable opinion about renewable energy, with recent polling finding that two-thirds of U.S. adults support efforts to prioritize wind, solar, and hydrogen over fossil fuel production.²⁴ But the recent success of disinformation campaigns aimed at discrediting renewables, including many efforts tied to the fossil fuel industry, shows how sensitive public opinion can be to questions about the environmental benefits of renewable energy.²⁵

In addition to rebutting false information, clean energy companies and supporters can embrace opportunities to actively demonstrate that renewables and healthy lands, waters, and wildlife can go hand in hand. Along with voluntary efforts to establish common ground between industry and community groups,²⁶ a clear framework that integrates conservation and clean energy build-out on U.S. public lands can help build public confidence.

Recreation and conservation

Meanwhile, outdoor recreation interests have long recognized that conserving and stewarding public lands and waters is critical to their industries and to the more than 168 million people who enjoy America’s outdoors each year.²⁷ Recently, record levels of outdoor recreation nationwide have been accompanied by a dramatic increase in visitation to BLM lands, with a jump of nearly 40 percent in recorded visits between 2012 and 2022.²⁸ Outdoor businesses and recreation user groups have strongly supported the agency’s proposed Public Lands Rule because of the importance of healthy, conserved public lands for the future of outdoor recreation.²⁹

A 2023 CAP report found substantial opportunity for conserving vulnerable BLM lands to help meet demands for outdoor recreation, relieve overcrowding in national and state parks, and address gaps in nature access for communities with the greatest needs.³⁰ That analysis identified more than 50 million acres of unprotected BLM lands within close proximity (25 miles or less) of a national or state park, as well as 20 million acres of unprotected BLM lands very close (10 miles or less) to the nation’s most nature-deprived and socially vulnerable areas.

A suite of new actions by the BLM will bring public lands management into the modern era. New rules and policies will provide the agency with long-overdue direction to conserve healthy lands, waters, and wildlife populations, while promoting responsible clean energy development on public lands, updating requirements for oil and gas companies, and investing wisely to sustain outdoor recreation growth.

Conservation and long-term health of lands, waters, and wildlife

The lynchpin of the BLM’s modernization effort is its Public Lands Rule, which is aimed at guaranteeing the long-term health of the lands and waters the agency stewards. Healthy public lands and waters will provide the foundation for a future in which outdoor recreation, cleaner energy, wildlife populations, and communities thrive. But climate change, reckless development decisions, and management conflicts will threaten that foundation if comprehensive conservation regulations are not on the books.

The just-finalized Public Lands Rule will finally make conservation more than an afterthought for the managers of nearly 250 million acres of public lands.³¹ Under the new rule, commonsense guidelines for conserving natural resources replace biased decision-making that favored extractive use, ensuring greater balance and reducing conflict.

The rule also directs the agency to conserve the most ecologically important lands, such as wildlife migration corridors. Moreover, it makes sure community—and Tribe-led—conservation proposals get fair consideration and are not easily washed away by changing political tides; it also requires the agency to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and explore opportunities for Tribal co-stewardship.

Additionally, the rule helps wisely target ecosystem restoration work—such as projects funded through the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act³²—and encourages additional, voluntary investments by formalizing tools that the BLM calls “restoration and mitigation leasing.” As explored in a 2023 CAP report, mitigation leasing could be a win-win, allowing clean energy project developers to offset unavoidable damages more cost effectively and delivering more direct benefits for affected wildlife and other resources.³³

Clean energy development

Complementing the Public Lands Rule—which finally creates a rational framework for conservation to help reduce conflict and restore public confidence—the BLM is prioritizing the following actions to rapidly and responsibly deploy clean energy on public lands, which is desperately needed to stem the climate crisis:

• Finalizing a renewable energy rule: The BLM finalized a rule on April 11, 2024, to promote wind and solar development on public lands by lowering rents and fees, streamlining permit review, and making it easier for companies to secure leases within designated areas to further incentivize projects that locate in areas with fewer natural resource conflicts.³⁴ The rule will reduce capacity fees for wind and solar projects by 80 percent,³⁵ building on rental and fee reductions initially instituted by guidance in 2022.³⁶
• Updating the western solar plan: The BLM is also completing updates to the agency’s Western Solar Plan, also called the solar programmatic environmental impact statement.³⁷ Through proactive, regionwide planning for new utility-scale solar energy development, the BLM intends to make project permitting more efficient and direct development to the most appropriate areas, avoiding conflicts with sensitive wildlife habitat and other public lands uses and resources, while taking advantage of available energy transmission. The proposed plan would prioritize substantially more land for solar energy development and expand the scope of the original 2012 Western Solar Plan from six states to 11.

This “smart from the start” approach to responsible clean energy expansion is a far cry from the flawed legacy of fossil fuel leasing and mineral claims described earlier, particularly when paired with commonsense conservation rules that ensure the long-term health of public lands.³⁸

Accompanying these new policies, the Department of the Interior recently announced that it had smashed through its goal of permitting 25 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2025, more than doubling the projects approved by the Trump administration.³⁹ The Interior Department’s efforts to responsibly accelerate clean energy on public lands included standing up new renewable energy coordination offices to consider applications and expediting coordination and decision-making across federal agencies.⁴⁰

Oil and gas leasing and drilling

At the same time, the BLM is taking critical and overdue steps to modernize regulations for oil and gas leasing and development:

• Issuing a waste prevention rule: Final regulations released in late March 2024 will reduce wasted gas from oil and gas operations on federal and Tribal lands.⁴¹ The commonsense rule, which complements Environmental Protection Agency’s recently finalized methane rules, requires oil and gas operators to reduce venting and flaring of natural gas, submit plans to find and fix leaks, and pay royalties to compensate the public for wasted gas.⁴² The BLM estimates the rule will generate more than $50 million per year in additional royalties.⁴³
• Finalizing an onshore oil and gas leasing rule: The BLM also finalized reforms to antiquated requirements for oil and gas leasing of federal lands on April 12, 2024.⁴⁴ Among other commonsense improvements, the rule increases bonding rates so oil and gas companies must pay to clean up their own messes; ensures a more fair return to taxpayers by raising rates and fees to more closely align with levels charged by many states; and steers new leasing away from important wildlife habitat or cultural sites.

Recreation and visitation

Actions to conserve high-value lands, identify low-conflict opportunities for clean energy projects, and address oil and gas problems dovetail with the BLM’s recently finalized strategy for outdoor recreation. Released in August 2023, the agency’s Blueprint for 21st Century Outdoor Recreation aims to shift the agency to a more proactive approach for managing recreation opportunities.⁴⁵ Notably, the BLM’s vision acknowledges the importance of building a culture of inclusion and expanding opportunities for underserved and underrepresented communities. The blueprint also commits to aligning its recreation management with its stewardship of sensitive cultural and natural resources, including through improved engagement and enhanced co-stewardship with Tribes.

A dominant theme of the blueprint is the need for deeper and more intentional investment in the agency’s recreation assets and opportunities. With outdoor recreation contributing nearly three times more to the U.S. economy in 2022 than oil, gas, and coal development, that seems like a wise economic decision.⁴⁶

Under the leadership of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning, the Bureau of Land Management is completing an ambitious task: establishing a coherent framework to manage public lands for the modern era. It’s undoubtedly a lot to take on at once—and that’s not even mentioning most of the agency’s notable work to reset the Interior Department’s relationship with Tribal nations.⁴⁷

But by crafting these policies together, the BLM is weaving together something greater than the sum of its parts. Indeed, the BLM’s new framework offers the agency a chance to trade a legacy of conflict and mismanagement for a future that harnesses the many opportunities offered by our public lands for the long-term benefit of the country. On the flip side, eliminating key pieces of that framework—as Rep. John Curtis’ (R-UT) H.R. 3397 and Sen. John Barrasso’s (R-WY) S. 1435 attempt to do with the Public Lands Rule⁴⁸—would jeopardize a more promising future for the clean energy industry and other public lands beneficiaries.

To be clear, change will not happen immediately, and conflicts will not disappear. Implementation will take resources and, most importantly, sustained commitment by both government and nongovernment leaders. But thanks to these new steps, the BLM will have at least put firm stakes in the ground on a management framework that community leaders, Tribes, conservationists, recreation advocates, and energy companies alike should finally be able to come together around.

The author would like to thank CAP colleagues Nicole Gentile, Sam Zeno, Shanée Simhoni, and Steve Bonitatibus, as well as other partners who provided their feedback and input.