Congress, President Repeal Improvements to Public Land Management
On March 27th, President Donald Trump signed legislation into law (H.J. Res. 44) that would repeal recently completed planning regulations that increase transparency and provide more public input on resource management plans for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands.
The Planning 2.0 regulations were the first updates since 1983 for the Bureau of Land Management which manages the most federal lands of any agency. As stipulated by the Congressional Review Act, not only will the nearly two years of effort that went into developing these regulations be wasted, but the BLM will be unable to make any improvements to their planning moving forward.
This is the second repeal under the Congressional Review Act of conservation-related regulations in this new Congress. The first repealed the Stream Rule focused on restricting coal companies from dumping waste into streams.
Washington State has more than 400,000 acres of BLM lands, almost entirely in eastern Washington, including inspiring landscapes like the Juniper Dunes Wilderness, Chopaka Mountain Wilderness Study Area and the Yakima River Canyon. Later this year a resource management plan will be released for public comment making this issue particularly important for our BLM lands.
Please help us stop the more than dozen attacks on our public lands by reading our simple legislative guide and taking a moment to send an email to your members of Congress.
