The Bureau of Land Management has enacted a new rule allowing conservation groups and other entities to lease and rehabilitate damaged public land.
The rule puts conservation uses on par with commercial uses such as grazing and mining, according to the BLM.
Companies seeking to offset their environmental impact can also lease public lands for mitigation projects.
“This rule honors our obligation to current and future generations to help ensure our public lands and waters remain healthy amid growing pressures and change,” BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement.
Environmental groups were broadly supportive when the BLM announced the new rule in April.
Shaaron Netherton, executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness, said the organization had been waiting 40 years for such a rule.
Michael Carroll, the Wilderness Society’s BLM campaign director, said the rule “gave the American people the tools we need to meet the nature and climate crisis head on.”
Nevada Assemblyman Howard Watts said in a statement that he was “encouraged that the BLM and the administration are doing more through the Public Lands Rule to protect these important places.”
Randi Spivak, public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity, wasn’t as optimistic. The new rule gives too much discretion to BLM field managers who approve leases, she said.
“Let’s face it, BLM has had the authority to protect important lands through (Area of Critical Environmental Concern) designations, including by temporary management, since the 1980s,” Spivak said. “But they have rarely done so. Whether or not this rule changes the status quo remains to be seen.”
According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, BLM manages 245 million acres of land and 700 million acres of mineral estate.
BLM manages about 1 in 10 acres of U.S. land and about 30% of the nation’s subsurface minerals.
Leases, royalties and fees from oil, gas, mining and other industries generated $23 billion in revenue in 2022 and more than $18 billion in fiscal year 2023, according to the Department of the Interior.
Nevada accounted for more than $13 million in 2022 and $16.5 million in 2023.
Spivak said the restoration and mitigation leases aren’t likely to protect public lands because they’re only for restoring already degraded land.
The maximum length of the leases is 10 years, not long enough to fully restore most areas, she said. Once a lease ends, the BLM could lease the land to another user with destructive intentions, she said.
“In the case of a mitigation lease, that lease would be given to attempt to restore degraded lands in exchange for authorizing destructive development elsewhere on public lands,” Spivak said. “That is not protection, just more degradation.”
BLM could require a company with a destructive project in mind, oil drilling for example, to take on a mitigation lease in exchange for approval for its project, Spivak said.
If the mitigation lease becomes another tool for companies to secure BLM approval, it will do more harm than good, she said.
“For mitigation to offset harmful development on public lands, the requirements should be much more rigorous, otherwise it’s more like window dressing,” Spivak said.
The new rule gives the BLM more tools to stop mining operations on protected land. It also contains new guidelines for establishing Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, which Spivak said she hopes will result in more being created in Nevada.
“Nevada has the 11th-highest biodiversity in the U.S., with more than 300 species found nowhere else in the world. Nevada is also the nation’s driest state,” Spivak said. “Underground water resources support this incredible biodiversity. Protection of groundwater that public lands ecosystems depend on is therefore incredibly important.”
Spivak said the center will take “full advantage” of the rule’s conservation focus.
“Public lands and wildlife are under assault, not only from traditional pressures from oil and gas drilling, grazing, mining and inappropriate recreation, but also from massive increases in industrial-scale renewable energy and transmission lines,” Spivak said.
rhiannon.saegert@gmg vegas.com / 702-948-7836 / @musettasun