Utah's Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office

In 1976, Congress declared in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (“FLPMA”) that the BLM must manage its lands “on the basis of multiple use and sustained yield.” This principle requires that lands are carefully managed to balance uses like recreation, farming, cutting trees, preserving wildlife, and protecting ecosystems. The State’s goal is to manage these resources in a way that allows for their renewal and continued availability for future generations to ensure long-term sustainability and maintain access to all public lands. 

A few issues with the Public Lands Rule are that:

1. The rule provides a very narrow definition of conservation and prioritizes conservation over other congressionally mandated uses such as recreation, livestock grazing, timber management, resource development, among others that are Congressionally approved uses established in FLPMA. 
2. The rule paves the way for the BLM to adopt a museum management approach, which is “just look, don’t touch”, and the BLM has a legal obligation to manage for multiple-use and sustained yield.
3. The rule allows for restoration and mitigation leases, a land use authorization that the BLM can utilize to limit approved uses and activities that legally occur on our public lands. 
4. As an executive rule, the Public Lands Rule circumvents (or violates) existing law and established processes set forth under FLPMA.

Multiple use is the principle that land and natural resources should be managed in a way that allows for various uses and benefits simultaneously. Rather than focusing exclusively on one specific use, multiple-use management seeks to balance and accommodate a variety of activities, including conservation, timber production, recreation, wildlife habitat preservation, grazing, water resource management, among other uses.

Sustained yield is the practice of using natural resources at a rate that ensures the continued availability of those resources for future generations. This approach balances resource extraction and regeneration so that the resource is not depleted or degraded over time. Sustained yield management typically involves careful planning, monitoring, and regulation to not exceed the natural replenishment capacity of the ecosystem.

Conservation is so much more than locking up and restricting access to public lands. To the State of Utah, conservation means active land management —an essential element of the regular activities, best management practices and proper stewardship that occur on BLM administered lands every day. An effective conservation plan balances both active and passive strategies, benefiting the environment and its users.

Passive land management takes a hands-off, museum management or “just look, don’t touch” approach where more active uses could be excluded. 

Active land management involves interventions and ongoing human effort to manage ecosystems through prescribed burns for fire mitigation, revegetation after a wildfire, and landscape restoration by removing invasive and encroaching plant species. Utah has an established track record of managing public lands for multiple uses and objectives, whether it be the state park system, wildlife management areas, or wildland fire education and management.

Utah currently manages 46 state owned parks. These state parks are well visited, well managed and play a vital role in sustaining Utah’s tourism economy, providing over 600 jobs and 6 million visitors with recreation opportunities throughout Utah in 2023. 

For over 100 years, the State of Utah has provided winter ranges complete with feed and shelter to help deer, elk, and other animals survive in the snowy, winter months through the use of Wildlife and Waterfowl Management Areas (WMAs). The State and partners manage these lands and implement habitat projects to help provide food and water to maintain healthy wildlife populations. Currently, there are 194 WMAs throughout Utah, totaling over 500,000 acres, or 780 square miles. Each WMA ranges in size from a couple dozen acres to over 50,000 acres. These properties are owned and managed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources for the following purposes. These properties are not managed for multiple-use in the same way that federally managed lands are managed in accordance with federal acts.

• Conserving critical wildlife habitats
• Helping to minimize and mitigate wildlife depredation on private property
• Providing places where Utahns can go to hunt and fish

Utah’s Cooperative Wildfire System (CWS) is based on the simple principle of risk reduction wherein the state will pay the costs of large and extended attack wildland fire (“catastrophic fires”) in exchange for local governments providing initial attack and implementing prevention, preparedness and mitigation actions that are proven to reduce their risk and costs of wildland fire in the long run. This was implemented in response to the 2012 wildfire season, where several large wildfires caused millions of dollars of damage and suppression costs. The State and local governments are ready and willing to accept responsibility for risk reduction on the lands they control but due to constraints with federal policies, agencies are often prohibited from implementing activities in a timely manner. 

The new rule defines ‘intact landscapes’ as “...an unfragmented ecosystem that is free of local conditions that could permanently or significantly disrupt, impair, or degrade the landscape’s structure or ecosystem resilience, and that is large enough to maintain native biological diversity, including viable populations of wide-ranging species. Intact landscapes have high conservation value, provide critical ecosystem functions, and support ecosystem resilience."

In other words, intact landscapes are areas that are seen as healthy or “in good shape.” This definition ignores generations of good stewardship by the State of Utah, other stakeholders, and its citizens that have rendered those landscapes intact through active land management. Much of the BLM land in Utah could be considered for closures and/or access limitations despite the wise stewardship exercised by a broad coalition of users and stakeholders.

The state is concerned that different forms of multiple-use such as conifer removal projects, livestock grazing, renewable energy development, mining, oil and gas exploration, road improvements, dispersed camping, and many other activities could be deemed to “disrupt, impair, or degrade” in various situations. Management of intact landscapes under the Public LandsRule will threaten many of the activities currently occurring and enjoyed by the public on BLM lands.

A restoration and mitigation lease is a way to manage public lands by establishing the type of use(s) permitted on a specific landscape. Once a lease is issued, no other activities would be allowed on the leased land that were inconsistent with the terms of the lease. 

These heavily restrictive leases with rigid land health standards are contradictory to active land management. These leases could exclude activities like wildfire mitigation, watershed restoration, invasive species removal, livestock grazing, resource development, and motorized and non-motorized recreation. This rigid framework could significantly limit land use and access, potentially impacting a variety of stakeholders, along with recreational, economic and stewardship opportunities.

Issuance of these BLM restoration and mitigation leases would limit use for all Utahns. The State of Utah believes in managing our public lands for multiple-use and sustained yield, providing access for all users of all ages and abilities, and opposes closing any existing access on public land.

ACECs are Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, designated to provide extra protection due to their significant ecological, cultural, or scenic importance. They safeguard sensitive habitats, rare species, cultural sites, and unique landscapes while permitting certain human activities.

The BLM Public Lands Rule broadens the application of ACECs, allowing the BLM to identify and manage potential ACECs (without following public process) until they are officially designated in a BLM Resource Management Plan. This could not only take years to complete, but also could increase the coverage of ACECs across the state before an environmental study has been conducted to fully assess the resources in the area. 

The State is supportive of ACECs, but they should only be considered during a public process based on site-specific, scientifically backed studies to identify ACECs and develop active management plans. The size of ACECs matters — ACECs must be limited to the minimum size necessary to restore or mitigate the rationale for creating the ACEC. Once the ACEC purposes of the ACEC have been restored or mitigated, the ACEC should be removed from this designation.

Utah has a history of working collaboratively with the BLM and a variety of other partners to actively manage lands within our state, through programs such as the Watershed Restoration Initiative (WRI) and the Shared Stewardship program. Restoration and mitigation leases under the BLM Public Lands Rule are a threat to these productive partnerships by the potential imposition of heavily rigid land health standards or restricted management activities that are contradictory to active land management.

Utah has invested over $100 million dollars in WRI and has been an active partner in improving watershed health and biological diversity, water quality and yield, and opportunities for sustainable uses of natural resources. In partnership with state, federal, local governments, conservation organizations, and private landowners, over 2.5 million acres of land have been treated and entire ecosystems are more resilient to disturbances like wildfire and drought.

Utah’s Shared Stewardship agreement provides a framework for the State of Utah and the USDA Forest Service to work together in cooperation with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and water providers to identify forest health priorities that focus on restoration projects. The primary goals of the projects are protecting communities and watersheds from the threat of large, unwanted wildfires. Through Shared Stewardship, we are opening our conversations to include not only the State and the Forest Service, but communities, industry, organizations and users of our national forests. The Parley’s Canyon Watershed Restoration Project has been successfully implemented, along with projects in the Beaver River Watershed and Whiterocks Canyon Watershed. The Public Lands Rule does not apply to U.S. Forest Service managed lands. 

We are very concerned that the BLM Public Lands Rule would greatly hinder or prohibit the excellent work being done by these programs and we are taking action to prevent this from happening.