U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration recently repealed the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which established that conservation should have equal priority with industry when it comes to accessing leases for U.S. public land. That shift in priorities will apply to 245 million acres (99 million hectares) of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). That’s roughly 10% of U.S. land that the agency leases for a multitude of private uses including grazing, mining, energy development and, until recently, conservation. In the federal register the Department of the Interior (DOI) said, “[b]y rescinding the 2024 Rule, the BLM eliminates mechanisms — such as restoration and mitigation leasing — that threatened to restrict productive use of the public lands.” An example of the decision’s impact can be found in the state of Montana. Roughly 950 American bison (Bison bison) have grazed on 63,000 acres (25,495 hectares) of federal land there since 2022. However, the DOI, which oversees BLM, revoked that grazing permit on May 8, just days before repealing the Public Lands Rule. Interior secretary Doug Burgman said that according to federal grazing laws, public land leases can only be given to animals, “intended for use primarily for their meat, milk, or other animal products.” He added that “considerable evidence” suggests the bison are intended for “for some other purpose, such as conservation.” Before western settlement, upwards of 100 million bison roamed the plains, serving as “ecosystem engineers shape[ing] healthy and diverse ecological communities,” the DOI acknowledged in its 2020 Bison Conservation…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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