Tempo
2025
Why would we want to do this?
Why should we get rid of, or gut, America’s Public Lands Rule?
Are we looking at senseless government bureaucracy or sensible protection?
And what are the economics at play?
America’s Public Lands Rule is the authority Congress gave to the Bureau of Land Management decades ago to…
- Improve land health and cultural resource protection.
- Include Indigenous Knowledge in decision-making.
- Address climate change alongside energy development.
- Conserve wildlife habitat and watersheds.
Each of these objectives sounds like a perfect target for lobbyists whose clients cut, drill and graze.
Sadly, there is a movement afoot in Washington to scrap the Public Lands Rule.
May calm heads prevail. When the discussion turns to economics, as it inevitably does, let’s keep the finances in mind. Capitalism and conservation can sleep together just fine.
In 2023, outdoor recreation, tourism, food and lodging was a $1.2 billion business. That’s more than twice the revenues of public land forestry and agriculture, and one and a half times the economic output of mining and oil and gas development.
Tearing apart crippling bureaucracies is good. Tearing apart land which needs our protection is not.
