Over a dozen Republican U.S. senators penned a letter to the Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning warning about the consequences of a new Public Lands Rule unveiled last month.
The 16 lawmakers represent Western states and write that the BLM’s proposal jeopardizes multiple-use mandates established by Congress in the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act. The FLPMA states that public lands must be available to “best meet the needs of the people” through various purposes encompassing use from recreation to timber harvesting.
“The proposal creates a framework for ‘conservation leases’ without authorization from Congress,” the senators wrote. “The proposal specifically notes that ‘BLM shall not authorize any other uses of the leased land’ that it determines are ‘inconsistent’ with this new framework.”
The new proposal includes “protection and restoration activities” in the multiple-use definitions, potentially overriding other mandated uses.
Lawmakers are concerned that the new leasing regime will open the door for a non-competitive process that could lock away sections of land without limit to size for ten years or more. “It’s clear that anti-grazing and anti-development organizations would abuse this tool to attempt to halt ranching and block access to our nation’s abundant energy reserves located on public lands,” wrote the legislators.
The BLM manages 245 million acres of land and 700 million acres of subsurface minerals. Livestock grazed on public lands provide billions of dollars in ecosystem services while ranchers work to conserve acres grazed responsibly. And while the proposal discusses restoration work, the letter expresses concern about public recreational access.
Although three hearings will address the proposed rule, they will be held in urban areas such as Denver, Reno, and Albuquerque. Idaho senators and representatives also responded last week, urging the BLM to hold meetings in their state, where 12 million acres could be impacted.
Stone-Manning’s 2021 nomination under the Biden administration was controversial, to say the least. Aside from her supposed focus on “tree spiking”, a form of eco-terrorism used to prevent logging by spiking trees, possibly causing injury or death to workers and damage to equipment, Stone-Manning’s master’s thesis focused on how livestock grazing was “destroying the West.”
The News Review and other sources cite Stone-Manning’s magazine advertisements as reading, “It is overgrazed. Most likely, the grasses won’t grow back because the topsoil took flight.” But that’s not all she wrote, “Worse still, the government encourages this destruction. It charges ranchers under $2 a month to graze each cow and its calf on public land — your land.”
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