This commentary by Quentin Young appeared on Colorado Newsline on April 25, 2024.
A milestone was achieved in environmental conservation this month, and it has the potential to boost water health, wildlife protections and climate action across much of western Colorado.
The federal Bureau of Land Management has long offered public land leases for industry, such as oil and gas development and other extractive uses. These activities destroy natural features and contribute to pollution.
Now the agency will offer new kinds of leases for conservation. The purposes of the leases will be to restore public lands to and protect them from harm.
The potential environmental benefits of the so-called Public Lands Rule could be tremendous. The BLM manages more than 244 million acres across mostly Western states, or one-tenth of America’s land. The new rule comes at a time when the West increasingly faces water depletion, wildfire risk, habitat loss and other crises.
But the Public Lands Rule at this stage is only a promise of improvements. Republican opponents are working to reverse the rule, and, even if they fail, fulfillment of its benefits depends on how federal managers choose to implement it.
Conservation has in fact been part of the BLM’s mandate for decades. The agency’s roots go back to the country’s founding, when its lands were used to encourage western expansion. In 1976, adoption of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, or FLPMA, established the BLM’s modern “multiple-use and sustained yield” mission. The law ensured that part of the agency’s mission is to “protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archeological values.”
The new conservation leases help advance that vision.
“Having this framework and having the agency acknowledge that its authority under FLPMA really includes conserving the land for future generations, and in the long term and in perpetuity, and preventing unnecessary and undue degradation of the land — it’s all been there the whole time, and the agency has just really been pressed to develop and to allow extraction,” said Barbara Chillcott, senior attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, which participated in the rule’s development. “I think this is a big deal, that recognition in setting out these new tools.”
The rule creates two kinds of new leases, for restoration and mitigation. A restoration lease could be used to return public land that has been degraded to a natural state. A mitigation lease could be used by a developer to offset damage it causes in one area with protections in another.
An expanded conservation program could help counteract the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and promote resiliency for wildlife, water resources and other natural features.
It’s unclear who in Colorado might seek one of these leases, based on several interviews Newsline conducted with environmental advocates this week. But a BLM fact sheet says lease takers might be “individuals, businesses, non-governmental organizations, Tribal governments, conservation districts, or state fish and wildlife agencies,” but not “foreign persons or entities.”
The fact sheet offers several examples: Say a solar energy developer’s infrastructure disturbs wilderness on BLM land, and the agency says the developer should seek offsetting mitigation. That could be accomplished with a mitigation lease that restores or protects wilderness elsewhere. Or say a nonprofit wants to improve mule deer habitat. It could seek a restoration lease and foster new habitat on BLM property that currently isn’t suitable for it.
There is potential for a lot of this sort of conservation to occur in Colorado. The state ranks 10th for the amount of BLM land within its borders, and more than one-tenth of Colorado is managed by the BLM.
The rule could put the agency in a better position to respond to the climate crisis. Extractive uses of BLM lands in Colorado and elsewhere have contributed to global warming, but an expanded conservation program could help counteract the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and promote resiliency for wildlife, water resources and other natural features.
Climate action is hardly the only return on investment that could come from conservation leases, which could also serve the evolution of the Western lifestyle and Colorado’s modern economy.
“The West is sort of transitioning from a traditional extractive economy to a more diversified economy that includes a big pillar, which could be labeled as recreation and tourism, which relies on protecting some of the natural values on public lands,” said Peter Hart, legal director for Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop, which participated in the conservation leases rulemaking process.
That process included thorough engagement with members of the public, and more than 90% of public comments to the BLM supported the Public Lands Rule, Hart said.
“I think the record shows the rule is widely popular,” he said.
One of the primary voices against the rule, however, is the member of Congress who represents Colorado’s Western Slope, Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, a climate change denier and one of the most anti-environment members of the U.S. House. In a press release last week, she blasted the rule as a “misguided land grab meant to prevent oil and gas production at a time when sky-high gas prices and inflation are looting the pocketbooks of the American people.”
This criticism comes from someone who has personal ties to the oil and gas industry, and it’s similar to opposition rhetoric that other House members have labeled misinformation.
Boebert said she and other GOP members are working to overturn the rule. It’s doubtful they’ll succeed. But, even without misguided meddling from MAGA extremists, the rule could be an empty gesture if the BLM fails to fulfill its spirit.
“The real effects that this rule will have on public lands and species imperilment, for example, will depend on how its implemented and whether the Bureau of Land Management embraces its direction to really start to change individual decisions to favor nature and the environment over the extractive uses that for a century have beleaguered public lands,” Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said. “The proof will be in the pudding.”
He added, “Their track record isn’t good, so I’m skeptical.”
Adoption of the rule itself is at least a bright spot on that record. And now individual Coloradans, nonprofit organizations and even state officials have a new avenue by which to pursue commitments to climate action and conservation goals. Implementation of the rule is partly in their hands, and they should make use of it to the greatest possible extent.
Conservation leases can improve the well-being of all Colorado residents and help maintain the state as a magnificent place to visit and explore.