BLM Proposed Rule: Read Our Letter Of Support

A Golden Opportunity For Communities, Climate and Conservation

 This year the America The Beautiful For All Coalition released its first annual policy agenda with twenty actions this Administration and Congress can take to advance the goal of conserving 30% of US lands, freshwater and ocean by 2030, using a Justice40 lens. In just six months, we have seen action by the Biden Administration on several priorities, including the announcement of a draft Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Public Lands Rule.

For most of its history BLM has prioritized extraction over conservation to the detriment of Tribes, frontline communities and wildlife habitat. This Rulemaking comment period is an opportunity to tell the BLM to give all Americans the chance to enjoy their public lands and see their own stories be preserved there. The Rule would also have massive implications for the frontline communities that face the first and worst impacts of climate change.

The science is clear that protecting 30 percent of lands and waters in the U.S. by 2030 would create a nature-based climate solution to absorb carbon, regulate heat, and purify air and water. BLM lands account for one-eighth of the area of the country, and protecting them would bring us that much closer to lasting protections for the benefit of the people, communities and Tribes that have historically been excluded from decision-making, and face the greatest risks from a failure to act.

Read: Our Letter Supporting BLM’s Proposed Rule

“The America the Beautiful For All Coalition (the Coalition) writes today to support the  Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) proposed Public Lands Rule. The Coalition was formed as a response to the Biden Administration’s ambitious call to save 30 percent of land, freshwater and ocean in the United States by 2030, and embracing equitably distributed funding and community-led policies and projects through the Justice40 initiative. The America the Beautiful for All Coalition is the largest and most diverse coalition ever assembled for the most ambitious land and water conservation goal ever set in the United States.

The urgency of addressing the twin goals of protecting 30% of US lands and waters by 2030 and importantly to ensure we avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change and the biodiversity crisis while also investing in communities of color through its Justice40 initiative couldn’t be more clear. To accomplish these goals, the federal government must continue to act in an all-of-government approach including through modernizing land management agencies within the Departments of Interior (DOI).

In January 2023, coinciding with the two year anniversary of President Biden’s Executive Order establishing the goal of conserving 30% of US lands and waters by 2030, the Coalition released a 2023 Policy Agenda which outlined 20 policy priorities to make major progress towards both 30×30 and Justice40 goals. This fist annual policy agenda was developed by the coalition’s workgroups and steering committee, representing nearly 150 organizations, and released with the inaugural endorsement of the 16 Steering Committee member organizations. Moderning BLM management through rulemaking is included in this list and emerged from this collaborative process with strong support across the Coalition.

There is a clear sense of urgency regarding the mission of America the Beautiful for All. We believe this is accomplished by making meaningful improvements like the proposed BLM Public Lands Rule that ensure science is a cornerstone for policy and that agency policies make certain equity, opportunity and inclusion for all people on public lands. Without modernization, progress toward our collective goal is much more difficult to sustain, the curve for progress is notably more steep, and the opportunity for meaningful action by federal Agencies and Congress markedly more difficult. 

The history of the agencies within Interior and Agriculture is marked by visionary leadership in advancements in science, conservation, protection of wildlife and cultural resources invaluable to our nation. Yet, these Departments continue to operate by working with often outdated, antiquated processes that hamper its ability to move forward as a 21st century agency and implement the vision and values of its leadership and the American people. This is highlighted in the agency’s continued use of antiquated definitions and criteria to determine value and merits of land preservation and protection as well as the reality that climate change has an acute and disproportionate impact on people of color who continue to suffer from the negative impacts of pollution, energy siting, production and storage, which is all too often the result current and historic actions taken by the Department of Interior and BLM.

The BLM’s proposed Public Lands Rule is an encouraging measure of progress towards putting conservation and communities on equal footing when managing our public lands and we encourage the BLM to move forward with this effort to better conserve and manage cultural and natural resources, wildlife habitat, waterways, recreation and climate resiliency values on BLM lands including by strengthening and update processes for prioritizing, designating, and managing Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, wildlife habitat connectivity, and other management tools available including the application of land health standards to non-grazing lands and the rule’s proposed conservation leasing concept to ensure durable compensatory mitigation when impacts to public lands, including disturbance of wildlife habitat is unavoidable. We also applaud and encourage the proposed rule’s prioritization of Tribal co-management agreements and the incorporation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge to better conserve the values of these lands to benefit communities, the climate and nature.

These actions will ensure the long-term viability of ecosystems and the preservation of biodiversity, which is part of the BLM’s responsibility under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. By giving equal importance to wildlife conservation, the BLM can better address the threats posed by habitat destruction, climate change, and human activities on public lands. Ultimately, the Coalition is excited to see these proposed changes and clarifications, as they will provide BLM with the tools it has long needed to safeguard the overall health and vitality of our public lands for people, wildlife, and our climate.“

Signed, 

Mark Magaña, Founding Member and Co-Chair of America the Beautiful For All Coalition, Founding President and CEO of GreenLatinos

Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, Founding Member and Co-Chair of America the Beautiful For All Coalition, Executive Director of Children’s Environmental Health Network

Marce Gutiérrez-Graudiņš, Coalition Steering Committee, Executive Director of Azul

Teresa Martinez, Coalition Steering Committee, Executive Director of Continental Divide Trail Coalition

Patrick Gonzales-Rogers, Coalition Steering Committee, Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at Yale Center For Environmental Justice, Lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment 

Katherine Baer, Coalition Steering Committee, Executive Director of River Network

Kevin Chang, Coalition Steering Committee, Executive Director of Kua’aina Ulu ‘Auamo 

Dr. Tracy Farrell, Coalition Steering Committee, North American Region Director of International Union for The Conservation of Nature

Kim Moore Bailey, Coalition Steering Committee, Executive Director of Justice Outside

Jamie Williams, Coalition Steering Committee, President of The Wilderness Society

Katie Huffling, Coalition Steering Committee, Executive Director of Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments

Chris Hill, Coalition Steering Committee, Senior Director of Our Wild America Campaign of the Sierra Club

Abbie Dillen, Coalition Steering Committee, President of Earthjustice

Sample Tweets 

• Read our letter in support of a @BLMNational Rule that will help Tribes and Indigenous communities stop the looting, vandalism and other destruction of cultural resources on ancestral lands that are also #publiclands.
  
• Rural communities and #communityhealth depend on healthy #publiclands. This proposed @BLMNational Rulemaking can help people mitigate the worst climate impacts in their communities. #AmericaTheBeautifulForAll @WhiteHouse
• We support the proposed @BLMNational Rule that will help protect people’s clean air and water, mitigate #climate impacts, preserve #wildlife habitat and connectivity, and preserve stories and cultures for ALL Americans.  @Interior @WhiteHouse