The Trump administration has officially dismantled a Biden-era conservation policy, asking federal land managers to weigh environmental protection equally with oil drilling, mining, grazing, and other commercial uses across millions of acres of public lands in the American West, according to a notice published by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
BLM’s decision on Monday signals a major shift in federal land policy and ushers in a push by the Trump administration to intensify energy development and mineral extraction on federally controlled lands.
BLM published a notice in the Federal Register finalizing the repeal of the 2024 “Conservation and Landscape Health Rule,” commonly referred to by environmental groups as the “Public Lands Rule.” The policy mandated the BLM to place conservation on equal footing with industrial and recreational uses in land-use decisions affecting millions of acres under federal management. There are roughly 13.5 million acres of federally-managed public lands in New Mexico.
Regulatory burden
The repeal takes effect in 30 days. In announcing the rollback, federal officials contend that the policy was an unnecessary regulatory burden and a threat to economic activity on public lands.
“The 2024 rule threatened to restrict productive use of the public lands and introduced uncertainty and unnecessary burdens in planning and permitting,” the agency said in its notice. It added that officials reviewed nearly 140,000 public comments before they finalized the decision. The repeal is in line with a series of executive actions by President Donald Trump aimed at expanding domestic oil production, mining, and mineral development.
Extraction industries in public lands
Environmental advocates say the move has tilted federal policy toward extraction industries. The decision came at a time when conservationists are pushing for stronger protections against climate change and habitat destruction.
Michael Carroll, campaign director for The Wilderness Society, warned that eliminating the public lands rule would leave millions of acres of Western landscapes vulnerable to intensified industrial activity. “They’re effectively saying, ‘We’re just going to prioritize extraction across BLM lands,’” Carroll said. “They’re going to be prioritizing industrial-scale development on those public lands. I think we’ll see that right away.”
The Biden-era policy had also allowed the BLM to issue leases specifically for conservation purposes — a mechanism supporters framed as a way to restore threatened ecosystems and protect wildlife corridors. But the agency has not issued such leases.
Environmental groups criticized another aspect of the repeal. They said thrashing away the consultation mechanism with Indigenous tribes as unnecessary is “shocking.” Carroll called the decision “shocking in terms of its disrespect to tribal nations.” He noted that several tribal communities live adjacent to or maintain cultural ties with federally managed lands.
‘Poor choice’
The repeal comes as the Senate confirms the nomination of Steve Pearce, a former Republican congressman from New Mexico, as BLM director. Pearce has longstanding ties to the oil and gas industry. As BLM director, he would oversee an agency no longer obligated to consider conservation as an equal use of public lands.
Pearce, according to Daniel Garcia, the spokesperson of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, is a “poor choice” to lead the agency. “Steve Pearce has been an outright enemy of public lands and environmental protections, beholden to the oil and gas industry above all else, and can be counted on to give this industry free rein to do as much harm as they want.”