As critics work to roll back new Bureau of Land Management rules, public lands advocates are defending the agency's move to put conservation uses on equal footing with extraction and development.

Matthew Kirby, senior director of energy and landscape conservation for the National Parks Conservation Association, said the new rules can be used to benefit national parks, for example, by reducing pollution from oil and gas drilling on the 3.3 million acres of BLM-managed mineral rights in eastern Colorado.

"Thousands of feet higher than where the actual drilling is happening, you can go up to Rocky Mountain National Park," Kirby recounted. "You can't even see on some days, (in part) because of pollution that is coming from drilling activities."

The rules also identify conservation tools to restore degraded lands owned by all Americans, and to keep natural landscapes intact. Industry groups have called the rules a land grab. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., have promised to repeal the rules finalized in April, claiming they block access to public lands and subvert the multiple-use requirement under the Federal Land Policy Management Act.

Ninety percent of lands managed by the BLM remain open for oil and gas development. There are more than 31,000 orphaned wells within 30 miles of national parks and the new rules update bonding requirements to prevent more abandoned sites. Kirby noted until now, corporations have run the show.

"Industry was allowed to lock up land for less than the price of a cup of coffee," Kirby asserted. "They could speculate, they could develop, all at the expense of the taxpayer and the public that was no longer actually able to recreate on that land. But thanks to this new rule, we're really on a path to fix that broken system."

The new rule also gives the BLM tools to steer any future oil and gas development away from national parks. More than 80 national park units sit adjacent to public lands managed by the BLM and Kirby argued any development affects parks, connected waterways and wildlife migration corridors.

"Wildlife migrate across borders, water moves across national park borders, air flows in and out," Kirby stressed. "What happens outside of national parks really is critical to national park resources."

An update to the 30-year-old Northwest Forest Plan is expected soon. The plan has a been a critical tool for managing 19 million acres of federal forest lands in Oregon, California and Washington. In December, the U.S. Forest Service announced its intent to amend the plan, with a draft environment impact statement expected for release this summer.

Susan Jane Brown, chief legal counsel for the Oregon-based nonprofit environmental law firm Silvix Resources, said the biggest threat to forests when the plan was adopted in 1994 was logging.

"Today, it is much more about climate change and drought and insects and uncharacteristic wildfires that are a threat to these forests. So, we need to revise our expectations of how we're going to manage these lands," she explained.

Brown said the original plan came after years of clearcutting in the region's forests. The Northwest Forest Plan reduced logging by 75%. The Northwest has the most intact old-growth forests anywhere in the lower 48 states.

Bill Gaines, executive director of Washington Conservation Science Institute, said one threat to the region's forests is wildfires. He says the plan will have to find ways to address this.

"We're going to need to use tools like managed wildfire, prescribed fire, and so the management direction is going to have to allow for those tools to be applied in order to hang on to some old forests into the future. It's a real challenge," he explained.

Brown added the new amendment has potential to help the region.

"It's a really great opportunity that we have here to improve upon what was already pretty good to start with and to address not only the climate crisis but also the biodiversity crisis and to make sure that we include community perspectives and tribal perspectives that really just were not at the table the first time around," she continued.


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A coalition of groups are criticizing plans for managing about 4 million acres of national forest lands in Idaho and Montana.

Conservation groups in the region, as well as the Nez Perce Tribe, have submitted their objections to the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests Land Management Plan from the U.S. Forest Service.

Nick Gevock, Northern Rockies field organizer for the Sierra Club, said the plan would expand the land available for clear-cutting.

"This is really a debate about the highest and best use of these lands," Gevock explained. "This would degrade hundreds of thousands of acres of prime wildlife habitat."

Gevock noted hunting and angling groups have also expressed criticism about the plan because of its effects on wildlife. The Forest Service said the focus on timber harvest is to reduce fuel for wildfires in the forest. The agency is processing feedback and expected to finalize its plan this summer.

Jeff Juel, forest policy director for Friends of the Clearwater, said harvesting more of the forest will exacerbate climate change, taking away trees that naturally sequester carbon. He argued it would also harm endangered species in the region.

"Take for example species that are on the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests," Juel outlined. "The wolverine, the Canada lynx, Chinook salmon, steelhead and grizzly bears, which are slowly trying to make their way back from adjacent areas, especially in Montana and farther north in Idaho."

Gevock added the coalition is concerned, considering the plan will drive management in the region for the next 20 to 30 years.

"It's a really diverse group just coming out and saying this type of management plan is not acceptable in 2024," Gevock stressed. "We need to more thoroughly consider the needs of wildlife and the people who love wildlife."

As Congress prepares to start work on a new Farm Bill this week, hunters and anglers say billions of dollars in investments in private-lands conservation are at stake.

The previous Farm Bill expired last year but was given a one-year extension until this Sept. 30. It is an omnibus, multiyear law governing agricultural and food programs, including habitat conservation.

Mark Kenyon, outdoorsman, author and filmmaker at the media production company MeatEater, said the outcome of the bill is crucial for access to lands and waterways in Illinois and other Midwestern states.

"Historically, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana; these states had prairie, they had oak savannas, a lot of open ground, the kind of habitat that supports a lot of wildlife," Kenyon pointed out. "Most of that has disappeared, transformed by agriculture."

The last five-year Farm Bill was approved in 2018, but a renewal effort stalled in Congress last year. The House Agriculture Committee is scheduled to begin marking up the bill later this week. Kenyon emphasized the bill contains crucial policy and funding changes certain to affect access to fish and wildlife habitat for five years and beyond.

Kenyon noted a key provision of the bill is to fund private land conservation through a plan to pay farmers and other landowner to convert portions of their cropland to a land trust for wildlife habitat. He stressed there is a lot at stake.

"It's known as the Conservation Title, and this piece of the Farm Bill allocates something around $6 billion a year to conservation programs," Kenyon explained. "So this is no joke, this is actually the largest funding source annually for conservation programs in the nation."

Aaron Field, director of private lands conservation for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said most of the bill's conservation programs are funded by the hunters and anglers who will use the preserved lands and waterways.

"The system by which we fund wildlife conservation in this country is heavily dependent on the contributions of hunters and anglers," Field asserted. "Hunters and anglers pay excise taxes every time they purchase hunting or fishing equipment."