Top Line: The Biden rule wouldn’t have made any significant improvement to the administration of Bureau of Land Management holdings, regardless of who is ever president.

Figure 1. How the Bureau of Land Management branded itself in 1952. Though the agency rebranded itself in 1964 (see Figure 2), the original—alas!—more accurately represents the ethos of the BLM in 2025. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

Figure 2. A modern refresh of BLM’s logo from 1964 would lose the snow due to climate change. The tree would be replaced by a stump. Solar panels would be shown on one side of the stream and an open pit mine on the other. The stream would still be devoid of riparian vegetation due to livestock grazing. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

The author of a news article rarely gets to write its headline. This headline appeared in the New York Times on September 10, 2025: “Trump Moves to Scrap Biden Rule That Protected Public Lands” [emphasis added]. Compare that to the lead paragraph of the article:

The Trump administration moved on Wednesday to repeal a Biden-era rule that sought to protect millions of acres of public lands from the twin threats of climate change and industrial development. [emphasis added]

The Biden rule had not actually “protected” any Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. As for a rule that “sought to protect millions of acres of public lands,” the Biden rule would have likely had no significant positive effect on the management of BLM lands.

Though certainly not its intent, by repealing the BLM rule the Trump administration is doing the public lands conservation community a great service. If the BLM rule in question were in effect during the next marginally sane presidential administration, most of the public lands conservation community would try to use the rule to elevate the conservation status of the 245 million acres of BLM lands. A fool’s errand.

Fatal Flaws in the Biden Rule

In this case, the Biden administration leadership atop the Department of the Interior and its agency, the BLM, started off on the wrong foot and stumbled at every step to produce an administrative rule that would have no significant consequence other than fooling the American people that it would have consequence.

Figure 3. The Biden administration—with the support of some so-called public land conservation organizations—opened up BLM lands to further industrial development. If you are a desert tortoise, you’re dead even if this concentrated solar power plant in your habitat is producing renewable green energy rather than nonrenewable brown energy. Renewable energy development won’t happen on public lands during Trump 2.0, but nonrenewable energy development will. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

The first fatal flaw

Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), any administrative rule (aka regulation) that is “significantly affecting the quality of the human environment” must be preceded by an environmental impact statement (EIS). EISs take time—what the Bidenistas thought was too much time. (What supposed good the Biden administration sought to do was measured in years, while the bad this Trump administration is doing is measured in the same number of months.)

The Bidenistas decided that the EISs could be done by BLM field staff as they were implementing the BLM “conservation” rule on the ground. If a rule doesn’t actually significantly affect the environment (this one would not have), no EIS is necessary to finalize the rule.

The second fatal flaw

To avoid having to ensure NEPA compliance up front, the Bidenistas couldn’t promulgate a rule that actually did anything. So the rule didn’t actually require BLM field officials to do anything on the ground. Rather, it instructed BLM field officials to consider doing the “conservation” measures the rule allowed. One of the iron laws of bureaucracy is that bureaucrats loathe having their discretion limited. A regulation that required those bureaucrats to do things good for the environment (or not do things bad for the environment) would necessarily limit the field manager’s ability to manage her public lands in the best combination of uses as he saw fit, so it wouldn’t fly.

It was also the case that BLM’s top officials were unable to control BLM’s lower officials. These lower-level bureaucrats had/have more power than higher-level bureaucrats. In the interests of spacetime, I shall give but one example. In mid-2020—late in Trump 1.0—Barry Bushue was appointed state director of BLM’s Oregon-Washington office, a job for which he was entirely unqualified. Before that, for two years Bushue had been state director of the USDA Farm Services Agency (FSA), which exists to convey vast amounts of money to farmers; it is not a regulatory agency with a mission to restrain bad behaviors. Prior to that, for nearly two decades Bushue was president and CEO of the Oregon Farm Bureau Federation, which lobbies to keep getting those vast amounts of money. Bushue has been awful at BLM and is awful to this day. If I had a thousand dollars for every time a Bidenista told me that Bushue would soon be history, I could have bought a new (electric) car.

(In a future Public Lands Blog, I will rage on about the failings and incompetence of the Biden administration. It is important to remember that what immediately preceded these current horrible dark times were terrible dark times for the nation’s public lands.)

Figure 4. *A bovine bulldozer in BLM’s Agua Fria National Monument in Arizona.* Source: Bureau of Land Management.

“Equal Footing,” My Ass

The mainstream media repeated the Bidenista spin in its April 2024 announcement of “a sweeping new public lands rule that places conservation and restoration of public lands on equal footing with energy development and mining” (Greenwire), a “rule that puts conservation, recreation and renewable energy development on equal footing with resource extraction” (Washington Post). The spin continued in the September 2025 announcement of the new Trump proposal in the New York Times, which described the Biden rule as one that “sought to put conservation on equal footing with development for the first time since the Bureau of Land Management was established in 1946.”

In fact, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) put conservation on a footing above that of development. It’s just that all administrations since then have failed to do so. While the Biden rule provided for new designations and practices to conserve and restore BLM lands, in every case it also provided loopholes large enough to drive bulldozers, bovine, pipelines, and powerlines through with ease. The existing special interests of livestock grazing, logging, mining, and the like would not have been materially affected by the Biden rule, as the specific language specifically protected existing harmful special interests. And let’s not forget, the improvement opportunities provided in the rule were dependent on the agency field managers actually deciding to apply them on the ground.

Since the Biden BLM regulation is effectively a dead(ly) letter, I won’t detail its multiple sins. I did detail the proposed sins of the draft Biden BLM rule in an earlier Public Lands Blog post.

See Public Lands Blog post “The BLM’s Proposed ‘Conservation’ Rule: Open for Comments” (2023)

(The final version of the rule was even more sinful.) In the end, the Bidenistas were spinning their final rule not as a “BLM conservation rule” but as a “BLM public lands rule.” They caved not only on substance but also on style.

One last bitch: even though required by a Biden executive order to conserve and restore old-growth forests, the Bidenistas didn’t do a damn thing to conserve and restore old-growth forests, even though they could have incorporated it into their “conservation” rule.

See Public Lands Blog posts “Biden’s Executive Order on Forests, Part 1: A Great Opportunity” and “Biden’s Executive Order on Forests, Part 2: Seize the Day!” (2022)

Figure 5. *Industrial development is industrial development. Wildlife habitat is lost and scenery is marred.* Source: Bureau of Land Management.

What the Next Marginally Sane Administration Should Do

1. Really protect and expand areas of critical environmental concern (ACECs).

In 1976, in enacting FLPMA, Congress provided for a very strong administrative level of protection for critical BLM lands. So far, it’s been more form than substance. Regulations should be strengthened to require more and better protected ACECs.

See Public Lands Blog post “BLM Areas of Critical Environmental Concern: Crown Jewels Open to Theft” (2017)

2. Expand and prioritize the “multiple uses” of BLM lands.

FLPMA allows the secretary of the interior to define additional multiple uses for BLM lands. By regulation, the secretary should also prioritize certain multiple uses over others (a new Public Lands Blog post will elaborate on this).

3. Expand wilderness study area status for all qualifying lands.

The secretary should also extend wilderness study area status (and therefore protections) to all BLM-identified “lands with wilderness characteristics.”

4. Extend “mineral withdrawals” to the maximum extent allowed by law.

Even though the BLM has the authority to administratively designate special protection areas on its lands, it almost never uses concurrent authority to protect such areas from mineral exploitation. Just do it.

Figure 6. Industrial development is industrial development. Wildlife habitat is lost and scenery is marred. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

What the Next Congress Should Do

1. Abolish the Bureau of Land Management.

Under Trump 2.0, any last vestiges of conservation purpose, professionalism, dignity, and honor at the BLM have been extinguished. Public land conservationists should not seek to go back to the bad past but rather forward to a good future.

See Public Lands Blog post “Abolish the BLM and Replace It with a U.S. Desert and Grassland Service” (2016)

2. Transfer BLM lands to other public land conservation systems.

• Forested lands should generally be transferred to the National Forest System.

See Public Lands Blog posts “National Forests in the Western United States: A Magnificent Start and More to Establish” (2017) and “O&C Lands Act, Part 4: Repeal the Act and Transfer the Lands” (2024)

• All BLM holdings in Alaska (be they forested or not) and lands critically important to wildlife should be transferred to the National Wildlife Refuge System.

See Public Lands Blog posts “The National Wildlife Refuge System, Part 1: An Overview” and “The National Wildlife Refuge System, Part 2: Historical Evolution and Current Challenges” (2017)

• National park–like and national monument–worthy lands should be transferred to the National Park System.

See Public Lands Blog post “The National Park System” (2016)

• Remaining lands should be transferred to a new US Desert and Grassland Service .

See Public Lands Blog post “A National Desert and Grassland System” (2016)

Figure 7. *Industrial development is industrial development. Wildlife habitat is lost and scenery is marred*. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

Bottom Line: Legislation should be enacted by the next Congress that would bring the administration of Bureau of Land Management holdings into the twenty-first century.

BLM “Conservation” Rule to Be Trumped. Good!

New Old Forests in New England, Part 2: Is the Vision Visionary Enough?