The US Interior Department has cancelled a rule that placed conservation on an equal footing with development on public lands, as the Trump administration seeks to boost drilling, logging, mining and grazing. The 2024 rule, adopted under Joe Biden, allowed public land to be leased for restoration in the same way oil companies lease land for drilling.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued the rule could have blocked access to hundreds of thousands of acres, preventing energy and timber production and harming ranchers. Supporters of the rule said conservation had long been a secondary consideration at the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees about 10% of US land.
Bobby McEnaney of the Natural Resources Defense Council said repealing the rule “means less protection for clean drinking water, less protection for endangered wildlife, and less accountability when corporations leave these landscapes damaged”. Industry groups and Republicans in Congress had strongly opposed the rule, saying it violated the “multiple use” mandate for federal lands.
The repeal takes effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, scheduled for Tuesday. The move is part of a broader push by the Trump administration to boost fossil fuel production on taxpayer-owned land, which is concentrated in western states such as Alaska, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
