Bills Will Silence Voices, Keep Drilling, Mining Top Uses of Public Lands

(WASHINGTON, DC) Over 100 organizations  across the United States submitted a letter today to the House and Senate opposing legislation designed to nullify the Bureau of Land Management’s draft Public Lands Rule. H.R. 3397 and S. 1435 will “circumvent the administrative process, stifle public input, ignore the law, and halt an overdue update” to the agency’s management of 245 million acres of lands, waters and wildlife across the west.

“Americans should be outraged: H.R. 3397 and S. 1435 are built on fear-mongering and outright lies about the draft Bureau of Land Management rule from congressional members who want to keep drilling, mining and other extractive development as the dominant use on our nation’s public lands,” said Jordan Schreiber, government relations director with The Wilderness Society. “The organizations signed on to this letter represent hundreds of thousands of people across the United States who oppose these bills because they will silence their voice and their desire to see land, water and wildlife better protected with the agency’s draft public lands rule.”

The Bureau issued a draft rule in March designed to rebalance agency management so that conservation is on equal footing with other uses, including energy development, on the acres it stewards for the public. The draft rule received over 216,000 comments from all 50 states - of which a recent analysis showed 92% were supportive.

Contact: Kate Mackay, Communications Director - Landscape Connectivity, 602-571-2603; kate_mackay@tws.org