Rodriguez, C. (2023, June 22). What Biden’s proposed conservation rule would mean for America’s most vulnerable public lands. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-bidens-proposed-conservation-rule-would-mean-for-americas-most-vulnerable-public-lands/
A proposed Conservation Rule under the Biden administration would give the land under the Bureau of Land Management more protection for conservation, recreation, and restoration purposes. Currently, only about 14 percent of the land managed by the BLM has sufficient protection (about 200 million acres unprotected). Most of the land is available for extractive industries. The goal is for the BLM to encourage restoration, community benefit (including future tribal co-stewardship), and responsible development, including compensatory mitigation if needed as well as conservation leases, in which a third party requests the BLM to support restoration or mitigation.
While it sounds beneficial for many reasons, I wonder if there will be any drawbacks to energy-driven sectors, or if a transition to more renewable energy is enough to account for our energy consumption. Most of the land is up for lease for mining and drilling. To my knowledge, the BLM won’t alter current law but will act as more of a facilitator, as most of the language describing explicit actions the Beareu is very vague. I’m interested in seeing the numerical data with the possible benefits it can have with oxygen production and population restoration since those are the main two effects of hostile extractive industries.
Excellent follow up paragraph to this article, Francisco. This is the epitome of the Muir-Pinchot approach, right? How to manage the land? One of Biden’s first moves as president was to limit mining/fracking on federal land, and of course many people passionately opposed this (so political). You are right to think about energy though… whether it is fracking for nat. gas or mining for lithium we need for batteries, if it’s on that land, people are going to want it… and maybe they should be able to get it. So is your take on this situation that the BLM is going to have a new style of management? Do you think that’s possible if its the same people involved? Or do they need a shake up with new management and oversight?