The BLM’s Conservation and Landscape Health Rule: An Explainer

In an article for Outdoor Life, Andrew McKean explains how the WEST (Western Economic Security Today) Act, which narrowly passed the House of Representatives and is headed to the Senate, would nullify the Bureau of Land Management’s Conservation and Landscape Health rule.

The act was pushed through by Republican legislators who see recent efforts to regulate natural resources as government overreach. “In the case of the BLM rule, the agency proposes elevating conservation to the same land-management priority that traditional uses, such as grazing, mining, and energy development have had for decades.” The rule is opposed by conservative lawmakers and traditional BLM land users such as ranching interests.

Opponents criticize the rule’s new “conservation leasing” provision, which creates two mechanisms: “One is called ‘compensatory mitigation leasing’ which would enable BLM managers to require impacts of developments like solar farms and mines to be mitigated through habitat conservation measures on BLM land. ‘Restoration leasing’ would empower the agency to consider market-based solutions for measures that improve the ecological health of BLM land.”

According to one source, the rule doesn’t radically change what the agency can do or the tools available to it. “What the rule does is make the application of conservation tools more consistent and less scattershot.”