September 10, 2025

DENVER – Following today’s announcement by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that the Bureau of Land Management proposes to rescind the Biden-era Conservation and Landscape Heath Rule, Western Energy Alliance President Melissa Simpson offered the following remarks.

“The Conservation and Landscape Health rule upended over a century of public lands management practices that strike a balance between providing the resources our nation needs with protecting the environment. Whereas lands leased for oil and natural gas development are still available for numerous other uses such as recreation, land that would be set aside for conservation would restrict other productive uses.

“The rule attempted to unlawfully codify conservation as a multiple use under the Federal Land and Policy Management Act (FLPMA) by expanding the priorities beyond what Congress designated. Importantly, FLPMA calls for protection of the environment, water, and cultural resources, yet it does not classify conservation as a use in the same way it does other activities. Certainly, conservation is an important objective that we fully support. We’re committed to environmentally responsible operations, but we are concerned that the rule exceeded BLM’s directive.

“Under FLPMA, Congress tasked BLM with managing public lands for the ‘multiple use and sustained yield’ of resources and mandates robust public input. FLPMA specifically defines ‘principal or major uses’ as limited to mineral exploration and production, livestock grazing, rights‐of‐way, fish and wildlife development, recreation, and timber. Further, FLPMA mandates public lands are to ‘be managed in a manner which recognizes the Nation’s need for domestic sources of minerals, food, timber, and fiber.’ The BLM rule imposed unduly restrictive measures by closing unnecessarily large amounts of land to productive uses.

“FLPMA already provides BLM authority and mechanisms to address conservation, such as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), conservation agreements, habitat evaluation areas, wildlife stipulations, National Monuments, wild and scenic rivers, national historic trails and Wilderness Study Areas. Tens of millions of acres are already conserved through these and other designations. In fact, the acreage of public lands protected by restrictive designations is 20-times the amount of BLM acreage being used for oil and natural gas production.”

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