BLM Proposes New Conservation and Landscape Health Rule

The Bureau of Land Management has released a new national level rule that includes a plan to rebalance its policies to promote healthy landscapes, habitat connectivity, ecosystem resilience and Tribal costewardship. The BLM has launched a 75-day comment period to gather public input on the proposed rule, which will update and modernize the agency’s tools and strategies for managing America’s public lands. The policy clarifies that conservation, which includes restoration and protection, is a multiple use within the agency’s management framework.

The new rule highlights Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) as the primary tool for protecting intact landscapes on BLM lands and offers new tools such as conservation leasing for achieving restoration goals and extraction mitigation. It also requires all BLM lands to be inventoried for landscape health utilizing best practices while placing equal emphasis on incorporating the best available science along with Indigenous Knowledge into monitoring, management and decision-making. More information on the new rule, as well as how you can submit a comment can be found here.