Biden admin’s sweeping new rules would let green groups lease federal land away from oil, ranching

• The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) proposed sweeping new rules Thursday that authorize leasing federal land for conservation efforts similar to leases offered for mining, grazing and other projects.
• While the move was broadly praised by environmental groups, it drew criticism from the Center for Biological Diversity for not going far enough, according to E&E News.
• “There are so many overlays for conservation on BLM land, some of them in the law and some of them just made up administratively, that a lot of land has already been withdrawn,” Myron Ebell, at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) proposed new rules Thursday that would allow public land to be leased for conservation efforts, among other major changes to promote land health.

The proposal would expand land-health standards to the entirety of the 245 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), prioritize the designation of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) and establish a leasing framework for private partners to perform climate restoration and mitigation efforts on public land, according to the DOI. The new rule would make proposed leases for conservation efforts a valid “use” of public land, similar to mining, ranching and other energy projects under the Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976, according to the BLM.

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