Twelve states and industry groups are supporting Utah’s lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management, arguing the agency can’t bar extractive uses on ‘unappropriated’ public lands.
More Western states are signing on to support Utah’s effort to fight the Bureau of Land Management’s new public lands rule, which allows the agency to control uses on 18.5 million acres of “unappropriated” public lands, reports Kyle Dunphey in the Utah News Dispatch.
The rule elevates conservation — or non-use — to the same importance level as logging, ranching, or other extractive uses.
States and organizations have filed an amicus brief arguing that the public lands rule “curtails state sovereignty” and that the BLM can’t hold land without designating it for specific uses. “In the filing, attorneys argue that the state’s inability to control that land causes a host of problems. There’s a different criminal code; the land cannot be taxed by the state and results in tax hikes; the state cannot exercise eminent domain; and the state can’t generate revenue from grazing fees, mineral leases or timber sales, the brief claims.”
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