Buncha Hippies At Interior Just Made New Rule For Public Lands And We're So Happy We Could Cry
This land is our land, this land is our land.
The US Department of the Interior has a nice little present for America: a new “Public Lands Rule” that will fundamentally change how the government manages public lands. For the first time ever the US will require that recreation, conservation, habitat preservation, and clean energy development balance out land use policy, which for most of US history has been aimed primarily at handing over parcels of public lands for commercial exploitation.
As the Washington Post explains (gift link), this is a big fucking eco-deal, man.
Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, known as the nation’s largest landlord, has long offered leases to oil and gas companies, mining firms and ranchers. Now, for the first time, the nearly 80-year-old agency will auction off “restoration leases” and “mitigation leases” to entities with plans to restore or conserve public lands.
Why yes, this is also part of that “whole-of-government” approach to addressing climate change that Joe Biden talked about right after he was inaugurated. Public lands make up about 10 percent of the US land mass, and this basic shift in how the government treats our land — which as you may recall, was made for you and me — is going to have a huge impact, as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
As stewards of America’s public lands, the Interior Department takes seriously our role in helping bolster landscape resilience in the face of worsening climate impacts. Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come.
During the Biden administration, the BLM has focused not only on making clear it’s the government agency that rightwingers hate rather than the social protest movement rightwingers hate, but also on protecting public lands from climate change and from freaking developers who want to pave paradise and put up parking lots.
The rule directs BLM to “manage for landscape health,” to consider land use in terms of protecting ecosystems, “especially as conditions shift on the ground due to climate change.” That’s a fundamental change for an agency that environmentalists have sometimes mocked as the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining.”
The Post also points out that, in a hell of a change for the BLM, the rule will require the agency to “incorporate Indigenous knowledge into its decision-making.” That’s been a top priority for Haaland, who of course is the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary. That said, involvement of tribal and other minority communities has been a core tenet of Biden climate policy from the get-go, just like that “whole of government” stuff. Biden has also emphasized the protection of Native American lands in his designations of national monuments and related orders.
The rule requires BLM to identify public lands that need restoration, and creates a system for leases of up to 10 years to do that restoration work.
The rule as originally proposed used the term “conservation leases,” but that was changed in the final rule to “restoration” and “mitigation,” perhaps to prevent rightwing heads from exploding over the scary lefty word “conservation,” but also to clarify who’s buying the leases and why. All the leases will involve restoring land that’s been degraded by prior uses, but “restoration” leases will be purchased at will by nonprofit organizations and even private individuals for straightforward do-gooding, while “mitigation leases” will be sold to purchasers of leases for ranching, mining, drilling, and the like, to offset the impacts of those land uses, as a condition of getting such leases.
Here’s how that would work, as the Post explains:
Mitigation leases will allow lease holders to offset the impact of their activities. For example, a rancher whose cattle grazing is degrading the land could be required to purchase a mitigation lease during the permitting process. The rancher could then work with a local conservation group to restore nearby habitat for the greater sage grouse, an imperiled bird of the West.
University of Nevada Las Vegas law professor Bret Birdsong, an especially aptly-named expert in public land law who worked at Interior during the Obama administration, told the Nevada Independent that the new rule essentially reorients the BLM’s mission. When it was established in 1946, he said, its primary job was “managing private access for economic development of public lands,” while conservation was something of an afterthought.
Officially, the agency was always supposed to manage for “multiple uses,” but that tended to skew toward uses that used up the land. The new rule’s goal of putting conservation on an equal footing with exploitation changes that for good, he said.
“[The BLM is] going to really think about achieving conservation goals from the get-go, and not sprinkling them on like salt and pepper on a dish that’s fully baked of oil and gas, and solar development, and rights of way for roads and highways,” Birdsong said.
Birdsong also pointed out that, by creating a system for granting restoration and mitigation leases that will last up to a decade, the rule locks in those uses, even if another, less environmentally friendly administration were to come into office. Ahem.
Not surprisingly, oil, gas, and other extractive industries, as well as their pet members of Congress, are aghast at this intrusion of the federal government into how private industry uses federal government lands. The WaPo article has several samples of their indignant splutterings, including a link to a particularly weird claim by Utah Congressman Dan Curtis (R), who called the rule a “land grab.” Of, uh, public land.
Sen. John Barasso (R-Wyoming) also vowed to repeal the rule using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to eliminate regulations with a simple majority. Barasso whined in a statement that “With this rule, President Biden is allowing federal bureaucrats to destroy our way of life,” a statement that really needed to define who he means by “us.”
But we aren’t going to waste more time than this on the griping. There will undoubtedly be lawsuits, but the rule seems perfectly in line with federal law requiring that land be managed for “multiple use,” not specifically “multiple uses by those out to make a buck.”
For now, let’s celebrate a hell of an achievement, sing a round of “This Land Is Your Land” (with the 1944 line about the “no trespassing” sign not saying anything on its other side), and remember why we like government being run by adults who give a damn about making America better for all of us, not just the greedheads.
With this rule, the commons are a bit less tragic.
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[WaPo (gift link) / BLM / E&E News / Nevada Independent]
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Somewhere out in the desert, the ghost of Ed Abbey is raising a beer and grumbling, "Took you long enough!"
Remember Ryan Zinke? Just a reminder that when you vote for repubs, you get pricks like him. Haaland is just one more great reason to give President Biden four more years.