The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is the nation’s largest public lands manager, with over 245 million acres under its control. As a result, changes to how the BLM manages its lands have a wide-reaching impact. Historically, public lands were managed with the goal of development. “Use-it-or-lose-it” laws required public lands leased by private actors to be ‘used’ for extractive purposes only, namely mining, oil and gas development, timber harvesting, and cattle grazing.
Today, there is a growing interest in seeing conservation made a legally valid use of public lands, a concept PERC has researched and championed. Under the Biden administration, the BLM has implemented a new Conservation and Landscape Health rule which would open up leasing opportunities to conservationists and other groups for habitat restoration. This rule change has stirred both praise and criticism.
In a thoughtful and lively debate hosted by The Federalist Society, PERC’s Vice President of Law and Policy Jonathan Wood makes the case for leasing federal land for conservation.
