The Public Lands Rule has been rescinded. The rule, first proposed in 2023, would have complicated the balanced partnership between federal agencies and all multiple uses on those public lands.

In 2024, the Bureau of Land Management made the rule worse by allowing conservation to rise above the level of all other multiple uses, essentially locking public lands from use. The lands ripe for this brand of conservation would have been determined by a rather subjective set of criteria and rather than applying a balanced set of uses to public lands, conservation would have been the sole use.

This Biden-era rule flew in the face of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) that established a regulatory system for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to manage the lands. The rule was created without congressional direction or consent.

Though some decry this is a win only for the greedy ranchers paying pennies on the dollar for BLM leases, it is a win for those who believe in keeping public lands in public hands. A neighbor who is a public-lands hunter visited with me last week, and he told me there is no political party for the public-lands hunters. He said one party is trying to take his guns, and the other is trying to take his access. It’s interesting perspective and solidifies the importance of this rescinding which will continue to ensure access.

Though only one of the users, livestock grazing in the western U.S. on public lands is significant and is an important part of maintaining a protein supply chain. About half of the cattle in the west and nearly 60% of the sheep in the west graze public lands, and they do so in tandem with other uses. When this rule was initially proposed and released for comment, the opposing comments didn’t only come from grazing users. The other users who would have been locked out of lands by the rule also lodged their opposition, including energy interests, timber interests, recreation users and conservation groups. A number of western states also filed litigation, demonstrating how egregious the rule truly was.

One of the most glaring issues with the rule was the potential use of the designation of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs). Anyone may nominate an area for ACEC designation, and those lands could then be leases only for conservation. In my nightmares, NGO-funded permittees would gather conservation leases and throw ACEC nominations at the BLM and effectively lock away lands and run livestock grazing — and all other uses — off the land. It begs the question, though, about the acres grazed by the feral horses managed by the BLM and how land health assessments on those acres would reflect on their impact and whether they would be removed. It’s murky, man.

Public-lands grazing permittees do pay what seem like bargain amounts per animal unit month, but it is unlike leasing private land. We don’t graze public lands primarily due to geography, but our cows are not likely up to the challenge of sharing pasture with mountain bikers and hikers. They’re not that worldly. It works well for many permittees on public lands, and those permittees are also charged with maintaining fences and water sources. The land health assessments notably are only applied to lands with grazing leases on them, so any poor evaluations land squarely on the shoulders of grazing, despite all other activity and uses.

The rescinding of the rule also came with a landmark proposal to modernize BLM grazing regulations from rules made in response to the “grazing free by ‘93” movement. The repeal removes the conservation leases that prioritized non-use; recognizes grazing formally as a primary tool for reducing fuel loads and preventing wildfires; and provides “adaptive management” power, allowing ranchers to respond to weather and forage changes without waiting for lengthy federal approval. It also requires permit holders to be actively engaged in livestock production, something that was illustrated in real time with the recent removal of Montana BLM permits from American Prairie, a rewilding group that grazes bison for conservation rather than production.

There are a number of problems with this now-dead rule, the least of which ought to be abundantly apparent this year, and that is the removal of livestock grazing increases the risk of catastrophic wildfires on unmanaged acres.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication.