OPINION: Alaska fulfills President Biden’s land conservation order 50 years ahead of schedule

Days after taking office, on Jan. 27, 2021, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.” The order, among other things, calls for conserving at least 30% of federal lands and waters nationwide by the year 2030. The U.S. Department of the Interior estimated in 2020 that nationwide, only 12% of federal lands are being conserved in federal conservation system units.

In order to achieve Biden’s goal, known informally as 30X30, the Interior Department will need to start managing a good part of the 245 million acres of multi-use lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management as conservation lands. Congress gave federal land managers that authority way back in 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Federal land managers have been trying hard for decades to gain the specific statutory authority necessary to implement Title I, Section 102 of FLPMA to turn multi-use public lands into conservation units. BLM’s attempt in 2014 to revise its 1983 regulations on creating Areas of Critical Environmental Concern was vetoed in 2017 by passage of the Congressional Review Act. Once federal agencies regulations are vetoed by Congress, they can not be reissued if they are “substantially the same.”

Armed with Biden’s EO 14008, BLM now believes its latest attempt at rulemaking is substantially different enough from the 2014 regulations that were vetoed to take another shot at making regulations to implement FLPMA Title I, Sec. 102(11) nationwide. Once adopted, the proposed rule would give federal land managers greater authority to implement President Biden’s EO 14008 to place 30% of federal lands in Conservation System Units by 2030. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland testified in support of the rulemaking before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on March 30, stating that the rule was a “shift” in federal land management caused by climate change.

If adopted, BLM’s new proposed rule would have a dramatic effect on the Alaska public’s future ability to access more than 80 million acres of public federal lands. More than one-third of all lands managed nationwide by BLM are in Alaska.

Western state governors are up in arms over the BLM proposed rule. Governors from 16 states, as well as miners, ranchers, sheep grazers, oil and gas developers, commercial operations and motorized recreational riders have all submitted comments opposing the BLM rulemaking. Representative from states with large acreages of BLM land, such as Utah, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Minnesota, have introduced HR 3397, asking the 118th Congress to tell BLM to back off, and withdraw their proposed rule. It is interesting that Mary Pelota, the sole U.S. representative from Alaska, is not a co-sponsor on the bill, despite Alaska being the state with the largest amount of BLM lands, 82.5 million acres.

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, passed by Congress in 1980, already set aside 30% of Alaska lands in federal Conservation System Units. Even Sierra Club representative Jack Hession admitted to a New York Times reporter six years after the passage of ANILCA that “the act guarantees that a third of all the land in Alaska will be protected permanently.”

What about the promise in ANILCA Title XIII, Section 1326 to Alaska that enough federal lands had been withdrawn for conservation without Congressional approval? That promise has been broken regularly by federal land managers for decades. In 2021 alone, the Bureau of Land Management proposed adding another 8 million acres in Western Alaska to the growing list of lands with additional conservation restriction. How much of the 30% of federal lands in conservation units is Alaska expected to contribute to Biden’s 30X30 order?

Folks that hunt, trap, fish and recreate on federal public lands throughout the nation would be wise to alert their representatives in Washington, D.C., to their concerns of unnecessary restrictions to accessing publicly owned federal lands with the creation of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, as well as to the creation of a conservation leasing system proposed in BLM’s rulemaking. The proposed BLM rulemaking, “Conservation and Landscape Health,” is so vague at this point it’s hard to say what kinds of use restrictions could occur on these public lands.

The Alaska Outdoor Council will continue asking Alaska’s congressional delegation where they stand on the implementation of Biden’s 30X30 initiative and will keep the public informed.

Rod Arno is the executive director of the Alaska Outdoor Council. He has represented thousands of Alaskans who access public lands for four decades.

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