Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), joined by several allied organizations, has submitted comments in support of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) proposal to rescind its 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule.
When BLM introduced this rule last year, it claimed to promote “conservation.” In reality, the rule represented a significant and unauthorized expansion of the agency’s regulatory authority—effectively deciding for itself that it could redefine Congress’s direction for how public lands should be managed..
Now, BLM has proposed to rescind that rule, acknowledging that it violated existing statutory requirements and ignored the law’s multiple-use mandate. MSLF supports this overdue correction and urges the agency to finalize the rescission swiftly and completely.
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At issue is whether unelected regulators can create a new category of “conservation use” that could have excluded other lawful and productive activities across more than 245 million acres of public land.
For nearly 50 years, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) has governed how BLM manages public lands. Congress made its intent clear: these lands must be managed for multiple uses and sustained yield: a balance between conservation and productive activity like grazing, mining, timber, energy, and recreation.
The 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule disrupted that balance. By redefining “conservation” as a dominant “use,” BLM created a mechanism to exclude all other lawful uses of public lands. without clear statutory authority or congressional oversight. Through “conservation leases,” the rule would have allowed the agency to remove lands from multiple-use management—prohibiting the public from using public lands for activities such as energy production, forest management, grazing, mining, and recreation—without any authority to do that. FLPMA does not allow it.
In short: BLM claimed a power Congress never gave it. And then it tried to use that power to take public lands away from the public. But now BLM is trying to correct its unlawful action.
MSLF and its partners have long defended ranchers, landowners, and resource users against unlawful expansions of federal authority and misinterpretations of land management statutes. Our comments to BLM reaffirmed a simple principle: “conservation” is not a separate “use” of land under FLPMA. It’s only a value that Congress instructed BLM to consider when balancing how to enable the public to use public lands.
By supporting the rescission of the 2024 rule, MSLF continues its decades-long mission to promote lawful, balanced, and transparent management of America’s public lands.
Key Arguments
1. The 2024 Rule Violated Federal Law
The Conservation and Landscape Health Rule conflicted with FLPMA’s multiple-use mandate. Congress never authorized BLM to prioritize “conservation” as a dominant use or to prohibit lawful activities like grazing or mining, which Congress has explained are national priorities on public lands.
BLM now concedes this point, acknowledging that treating “conservation—a non-use—as a productive use for leases and permits” was “contrary to the BLM’s mandate and statutory authority.”
2. It Raised Major Questions about BLM Authority
Under the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in West Virginia v. EPA, agencies may not undertake actions of “vast economic and political significance” without clear congressional authorization.
The 2024 rule was exactly that: a sweeping regulatory overhaul with nationwide economic consequences, all without statutory authority from Congress. BLM’s decision to withdraw the rule recognizes this lack of “clear statutory authority.”
3. It Invited Litigation and Administrative Paralysis
The rule’s vague terms—like “intact landscapes” or “ecosystem resilience”—lacked clear definitions and objective standards, inviting conflicting interpretations across BLM Field Offices and giving anti-use groups leverage to sue over nearly any public land decision.
BLM itself now acknowledges that these provisions “invited third-party challenges” and created “unnecessary burdens” on agency decision-making.
4. It Ignored Economic Impacts
Federal law requires BLM to consider economic impacts when managing public lands. Yet the 2024 rule failed to account for the devastating consequences it could have on industries, small businesses, and rural communities across the West.
The rescission acknowledges that those economic effects were “materially underestimated”—a direct echo of MSLF’s 2023 warnings.
The 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule shifted BLM’s role from a steward of public lands into a gatekeeper, granting the agency discretion to close public lands to traditional uses without congressional approval.
By rescinding the rule, BLM is restoring the balance Congress demanded—ensuring that public lands remain open to the public, managed for multiple uses, and governed by law.
MSLF and its coalition partners urge BLM to finalize the rescission promptly and to reaffirm that America’s public lands remain open to the public, not bureaucratic whim.
MSLF was joined by Western Energy Alliance, Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners Association, Women’s Mining Coalition, the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, American Lands Council, New Mexico Federal Lands Council, Independent Women Center for Energy and Conservation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Energy Institute, the American Energy Association, and the Federal Forest Resource Coalition.
