This change in priority will apply to 245 million acres (99 million hectares) of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
US President Donald Trump’s administration recently canceled 2024 Public Lands Rulewhich established that conservation should be given equal priority with industry in accessing leases for US public lands.
This change in priority will apply to 245 million acres (99 million hectares) of public land Bureau of Land Management (BLM). That’s about 10% of the land in the United States that the agency leases for private use, including grazing, mining, energy development and, until recently, conservation.
in Federal Register “(b)y rescinding the 2024 rule, the BLM eliminates mechanisms – such as restoration and mitigation leases – that threaten to limit the productive use of public lands,” the Department of the Interior (DOI) said.
An example of the impact of the decision can be found in the state of Montana. Approximately 950 American bison (Bison Bison) has grazed on 63,000 acres (25,495 ha) of federal land there since 2022. However, DOI, which oversees BLM, withdrawal That grazing permit on May 8, just days before the repeal of the Public Lands Rule.
Home Secretary Md Dr. Doug Bergman According to the Federal Grazing Act, public land leases may only be granted to animals, “primarily intended to be used for their meat, milk, or other animal products.” He added that “substantial evidence” suggests that the bison are intended for “some other purpose, such as conservation.”
Before Western settlement, more than 100 million bison roamed the plains, serving as “ecosystem engineers shape (shape) healthy and diverse ecological communities,” the DOI acknowledged in its 2020 Bison Conservation Initiative. Today, only 530,000 remain, mostly livestock.
Historically, bison were vital to the survival of Native Americans throughout the western U.S. “Bison are our kin. We have an ancestral and spiritual obligation to care for them, as they do us,” J. Garrett Renville, chairman of the Native American Coalition of Large Tribes, wrote in one formal protest DOI decision. “Our success as a people depends on their success. Our history, our future and our destiny are intertwined.”
Allison Fox, CEO of American Prairie, the Montana-based NGO that owns the bison herd in question, said in a statement that “this decision abandons decades of consistent federal policy.”
D Western Watershed ProjectAn Idaho-based NGO, said the BLM is “inventing a whole new standard for cattle grazing permits to justify their cattle bias.”
Renville said that as the decision reads, “it is unlikely that any tribal government or tribal citizen buffalo herd will ever be eligible for BLM grazing leases.”
The BLM said American prairie bison must be removed by Sept. 30 In an email to Mangabe, American Prairie said, “We are still awaiting a decision on our request for a preliminary injunction.”
The BLM declined to comment because the case is pending.
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Previously published with news.mongabay Creative Commons Attribution
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