A Welcome Course Correction: BLM Rescinds the Biden-Era Conservation and Landscape Health Rule

This week, the Center for Regulatory Freedom (CRF) filed comments supporting the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) proposed rescission of the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule—a sweeping regulation issued in the final year of the Biden Administration that prioritized permanent conservation over the productive use of America’s public lands.

Far from a routine policy reversal, the BLM’s action represents a long-overdue restoration of statutory fidelity to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA). For decades, federal land administrators have drifted from FLPMA’s clear multiple-use and sustained-yield mandate, gradually transforming public lands from national assets intended for active management and responsible development into de facto wilderness preserves managed according to shifting ideological priorities. The 2024 rule was the culmination of that drift, elevating “conservation” as an eleventh “use” equal to—or in practice superior to—grazing, mining, energy production, recreation, and timber harvesting, which sidelines the local communities and industries that depend on access to these vital resources.

The Center for Regulatory Freedom emphasized in its comments that rescinding the rule is legally mandated. By inverting FLPMA’s historical “duty to dispose” of federal lands and treating them instead as a permanent federal estate, regulators opened the door to endless bureaucratic re-purposing under the banner of vague, ever-expanding, ideologically charged conservation goals. The rescission reins in that overreach, reaffirms the multiple-use framework, and returns decision-making authority to a balanced, transparent, and statutorily grounded process. America’s public lands belong to all Americans—not to unelected agency ideologues—and their management must serve the broad public interest rather than narrow conservationist agendas. The Bureau’s proposed action is an essential step toward accountable, lawful federal land management that honors both our natural heritage and our nation’s need for responsible resource utilization.