INSIGHT: Administration Moves Land Agency Away From Mission

From the Alaskan tundra to the Everglades, and every rolling hill, rocky mountain, and sagebrush step in between, our federal public lands are both beautiful to behold and embody ecosystems and resources that maintain wildlife habitat, sustain communities, and drive local economies.

Our public lands are so important that on Saturday, Sept. 28, hundreds of thousands of volunteers descended on these places across the country in celebration of National Public Lands Day. These volunteers planted trees, made repairs, picked up trash and other activities that improved the health and wellbeing of our public lands.

One-tenth of all lands in the United States are under the stewardship of the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Since 1976, the BLM has been charged with the complex mission of balancing and managing the multiple uses and sustained yield of these public lands, including oil and gas development, livestock grazing, outdoor recreation, conservation, and historic preservation, among others.

Future Being Jeopardized

But changes implemented by the Trump administration in service of its energy dominance agenda are moving the agency away from its multifaceted mission, and in doing so, jeopardizing the future of our public lands and their many benefits.

One such change stifles collaboration and limits public input. Another dictates that energy and mineral development must be the most important priority among all possible uses, impacting public land use from Alaska to Florida.

The administration’s proposal to re-organize the BLM continues this troubling trend. By moving most of the already very small Washington, D.C., core staff to offices scattered throughout the West, this reorganization will further hamper the agency.

Ensuring staff are connected to the communities where land management decisions touch down is important, but roughly 95 percent of BLM staff already live outside of the nation’s capital in the communities they serve. This move will only make it more difficult for agency leadership to work closely with fellow federal agency leaders, Congress, and other important voices. It will also make it harder to support internal coordination across multiple agency functions, enhance consistency, and apply a regional framework where problems, like wildland fire and invasive species, spread across large landscapes and require regional and even national responses.

Steps Backward

In government, form and function are inextricably linked. Proponents of this reorganization know this, too. Dividing agency leadership into distributed pieces, scattered across multiple states, will produce an agency less likely to achieve its broad mission for the American public.

These changes are not improvements; they are steps back from the future our public lands need.

At a time when demands on natural resources are growing, we need strong coordination between and within our federal land management agencies to make the best, science-informed decisions about appropriate uses across these public lands.

Conservation and economic development can exist in balance—we need not choose one over the other.

Take the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The program has a 50-plus year track record of supporting conservation projects that result in better management of complex and important landscapes and benefit local economies that rely on those lands. It is so successful that Congress permanently reauthorized the program earlier this year, and there is a bipartisan effort underway to fully and permanently fund the program.

Federal public lands are a fundamental part of America. They help ensure clean water supplies for millions of Americans and provide resources to power our homes and businesses, along with a multitude of other economic benefits, all while sustaining healthy lands, wildlife habitats and outdoor recreation opportunities for all of us.

Our public lands, their resources, ecosystems and communities depend on thoughtful, integrated management that considers economic, social, and ecosystem values. Congress has a voice in the future of our public lands, and it must use it.

Appropriations bills already moving through the House and Senate propose zeroing out funding for DOI’s larger overhaul of its management structure, including relocating BLM’s headquarters, but Congress’s work cannot stop there. Lawmakers need to take steps to bolster, not weaken, the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission, including through more funding and greater oversight.

The administration has put the BLM on the wrong path, but there’s still time to change course. Instead of advancing re-organization and policies that undermine thoughtful management of public lands, the administration should return to a balanced approach that has been developed by administrations—of both parties—over many decades.

Only then will we forge a path for our public lands we and future generations depend upon.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. or its owners.

Author Information

Lynn Scarlett is the chief external affairs officer at the Nature Conservancy. She is a former deputy secretary of the Interior in the George W. Bush administration.