Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
September 28, 2025
The U.S. Department of the Interior plans to rescind the Biden-era Public Lands Rule, which directs the Bureau of Land Management to consider the conservation of public lands to be equally important as commercial uses like oil and gas extraction, mining, grazing and timber harvesting. When they announced the rollback, administration officials said the rule placed outsized priority on conservation and threatened to curtail grazing, energy development and other traditional land uses.
“The most effective caretakers of our federal lands are those whose livelihoods rely on its well-being,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the proposal was unveiled. “Overturning this rule protects our American way of life and gives our communities a voice in the land that they depend on.”
Colorado conservation advocates said the rollback of the rule is shortsighted. The 2024 rule gives the BLM the tools to make sure the 8.3 million acres of Colorado land it manages — or nearly 13,000 square miles — remain healthy and productive for future generations, they said.
The rule provided balance so that the agency could “really embrace the most significant growing part of Western economies — the recreation economy,” said Michael Carroll, BLM campaign director for The Wilderness Society. “By not having balanced management on those landscapes, the pressure climate change is going to put on those landscapes is going to ultimately restrict the use of those lands, no matter what that use is.”
The proposed rollback is the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration to open more public land to development and relax regulations around commercial uses on them. Months after a proposal to sell some of the West’s public lands failed due to an incredible onslaught of public opposition, federal lawmakers and the Trump administration are trying other methods to weaken protections for public lands, say conservation and recreation advocates…
Public comment on the administration’s proposed rule rescission is open until Nov. 10.
