The last several years we have seen a concerted effort to restrict access to our public lands. As a result, we are in some pretty big fights that attract a lot of attention. We are in court to challenge the abuse of the Antiquities Act. Our lawsuit to reopen the hundreds of miles that were closed around Moab is still moving forward. We’ve fought to protect First Amendment rights against unconstitutional film permitting rules. What often doesn’t get as much attention is the work we do day in and day out to keep our public lands open that doesn’t require litigation.
For the last year, we’ve tracked the impact that BRC members have played, and the performance is something we can all be proud of:
In the last two years, our team with your support has participated in 289 federal planning actions. These actions could include everything from a 1200 page monument management plan for a national monument or a small forest treatment to limit the risk of wildfire. Just about every week, we release one action alert where we invite you to join us in adding your voice to an agency proposal.
This year, BRC members have submitted 34,826 comments on important agency planning decisions. This participation from our members always sends the signal that we are following the agencies’ work, so they will feel persuaded to select plans that we like. We sponsored several trainings this year to help everyone who attended become more effective at writing comments. Sometimes this participation leads to an outcome like what we saw with the Grandview Travel Plan, where BLM suspended their planning progress up to that point after they were convinced of the deficiency of the plans by our substantive comments. The BLM office in Yuma Arizona has announced they will be holding additional rounds of comment in light of the substantive feedback they received from us earlier this year.
In total the plans BRC and its members participated in will affect how over 134 million acres of land will be managed. These plans will determine the future of 20,035 miles of dirt roads and trails. We have been able to keep almost 5,000 of these trails open so far.
But that is not enough. While we’re proud of the work we’ve done to keep public lands open, no one has a better, more comprehensive roadmap than us for how to roll back the closures and restrictions that were enacted during the last four years.
Many of the rules and regulations these agencies use to close down our public lands have basis in law that is either weak – or non-existent. For example, the 30×30 plan to lock up 30% of the nation’s land and water by 2030, was only an executive order. The 30×30 plan never had the blessing of any federal law.
We believe the Landscape Health and Conservation Rule that would enable the BLM to sell conservation leases on public land will likely be rescinded by the incoming Congress.
We were part of the movement to pressure the Securities and Exchange Commission to withdraw their rule to create a new financial entity on the New York Stock Exchange called a Natural Asset Company.
We are currently compiling briefing documents that can serve as a roadmap for rolling back the hundreds of decisions across all public land agencies that we plan to share with incoming agency leaders.
It is also important to recognize that all of this participation in the administrative process gives us legal standing to challenge just about every questionable exercise of power that we’ve seen.
This is also why we need your continued support. It always takes several years for the outcomes of major plans to be decided. Many times these planning processes can span multiple administrations.
2024 was a busy year for us, and you helped shoulder the load.
We believe 2025 is going to be even busier as we work to reverse much of the harm that has been done in the last few years.
