ACRA urged the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to revisit its proposed conservation rule to incorporate a “more comprehensive view of landscape, how such places came about, and how such places have been maintained over the centuries.”
BLM’s proposed Public Lands Rule would, among other things, reprioritize its almost 50-year old multiple use mandate to put conservation and recreation on an equal footing with grazing and resource extraction.
According to BLM, the proposed rule would “establish a framework to ensure healthy landscapes, abundant wildlife habitat, clean water and balanced decision-making on our nation’s public lands. . . .By putting conservation on an equal footing with other uses, the proposal would help guide responsible development while safeguarding important places for the millions of people who visit public lands every year to hike, hunt, camp, fish, and more.”
In its comments, submitted July 5, ACRA says it welcomes BLM’s efforts to establish this framework, noting that CRM firms, which often conduct work for the BLM or on BLM lands, “need clear and consistent direction and precise language and definitions on protocols and procedures for landscape treatment.”
ACRA’s comments raise concerns with a number of provisions in the proposed rule, which establishes rules for ecosystem resilience (proposed 43 CFR 6100). For example, ACRA notes that the new rules make little mention of cultural resources or cultural landscapes, nor does it establish a relationship between ecosystem resilience and long-term Tribal management of landscapes and their ecosystems. ACRA urges BLM to ensure greater “recognition that some resources may have greater value to the Nation than others, largely because of their unique and nonrenewable nature.”
Read the comments here.