Final rescission of the Public Lands Rule dismantles modern safeguards for public lands and shuts out the public
May 11th, 2026 – The Trump Administration today finalized its rescission of the Public Lands Rule, eliminating much-needed modern safeguards for America’s public lands through a process that limited public participation and ignored clear public opposition. The decision advances a broader effort to weaken public land protections while prioritizing extractive industries, despite strong public support for conserving public lands and ensuring continued access.
Despite the administration offering fewer avenues for public engagement than under the original rulemaking promulgating the Public Lands Rule, the public response was decisive. More than 130,000 comments were submitted during the comment period for the rescission rule. An analysis revealed that an overwhelming 98 percent of commenters urged the administration to retain the Public Lands Rule, including members of Congress, local elected leaders, former Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials, Tribal representatives, and community voices from across the country.
The Public Lands Rule ensures conservation, wildlife habitat, clean water, cultural resources, and Indigenous Knowledge would be fully considered alongside development across more than 250 million acres of public land. Rescinding the rule strips the agency of critical tools needed to manage land health and respond to growing climate and ecological challenges, while also harming local communities built on recreational tourism who rely on healthy landscapes.
This action follows a broader pattern of efforts aiming to accelerate drilling and mining, weaken federal land management capacity, and advance proposals to sell off or privatize public lands. Together, these moves represent a clear rejection of the public’s demand for responsible, balanced stewardship of our public lands.
The message from the public has been unmistakable: Americans want their public lands protected, managed transparently, and kept in public hands for current and future generations.
“Public lands provide us the freedom to explore the great outdoors. Congress directed the BLM to manage public lands in a way that balances uses like outdoor recreation with needs as varied as grazing, energy development and conservation of wildlife habitat. The administration’s rescission of the BLM Public Lands Rule flouts both the agency’s legal mandate and the overwhelming wishes of the American people for public lands to be managed in a balanced and sustainable way that conserves special places for future generations.” – Alison Flint, senior legal director, The Wilderness Society
“Oregon’s high desert, its cherished fish and wildlife, expansive wilderness, irreplaceable cultural resources, boundless recreational opportunities, and the communities and economies that depend on these healthy, intact public lands were all beneficiaries of the Public Lands Rule. Who now, besides unfettered extractive industry, benefits from the Trump administration’s elimination of the rule?” – Mark Salvo, Senior Advisor, Oregon Natural Desert Association
“Today’s repeal of the Public Lands Rule abandons progress at the same moment climate change, chronic drought and accelerating habitat loss demand better stewardship from BLM. When this rule was finalized almost two years ago, the agency acknowledged then what remains true today: decades of prioritizing resource extraction has resulted in large-scale degradation of habitats which urgently needs to be corrected through improved oversight and restoration. Irrespective of today’s repeal, the realities facing our public lands remain, as does BLM’s responsibility to sustainably manage them for the benefit of wildlife, communities and future generations.” – Maddy Munson, senior planning and policy specialist for federal lands at Defenders of Wildlife
“With today’s action, Coloradans are losing crucial opportunities to conserve our public lands for present and future generations. The Public Lands Rule gave us much-needed tools to protect and restore our wildlands and wildlife habitat, provide outstanding backcountry recreation experiences Colorado is known for, and work alongside our communities to realize a vision for future stewardship of our treasured landscapes.” – Juli Slivka, Senior Director of Policy and Programs, Wilderness Workshop
“Montana voters want leaders to prioritize conservation over industrial development, but decision-makers would rather sell out our lands to enrich billionaires. Today’s decision to repeal the Public Lands Rule betrays Montanans who depend on healthy public lands and waters, and prioritizing short-term corporate gains over long-term stewardship will have lasting consequences for our children and grandchildren.” – Aubrey Bertram, Wild Montana staff attorney and federal policy director
“This repeal ignores the public, ignores the law, and ignores the real needs of local communities and those whose lives and livelihoods are deeply connected to these natural resources. That means less protection for the clean drinking water, less protection for endangered wildlife that depend on healthy habitat, and less accountability when corporations leave these landscapes damaged and degraded. Congress and the courts have been clear that BLM must manage for conservation alongside other uses. But this administration is lawlessly green-lighting extraction. If this takes effect, the drilling, mining, and logging industries will get their way while public lands are damaged and spoiled for the rest of us.” – Bobby McEnaney, director of land conservation at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)
“Eliminating the Public Lands Rule is another blow to Americans and their public lands,” said Jocelyn Torres, Chief Conservation Officer at the Conservation Lands Foundation. “Stripping away the tools that ensure conservation is a core mandate on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management undermines the health of our country’s lands, water sources, wildlife habitats, and ways of life and willfully ignores the public’s overwhelming desire to protect them. It’s another move towards privatizing the public’s lands and the Conservation Lands Foundation will continue working tirelessly with local communities and lawmakers to ensure existing laws are followed to safeguard the health of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the public’s access to them.”
“Repealing the Public Lands Rule is the clearest example yet that the Trump administration will stop at nothing to sell out our country’s precious landscapes to private industry. The rule simply acknowledged the fact that conservation on public lands has value, but even that was too much for Trump and his billionaire backers to tolerate. By now, the administration’s playbook is clear – disregard the will of the American people, refuse to protect our public lands, hand control over to corporate polluters, then dispose of these landscapes entirely. If they’re allowed to succeed, the natural heritage we pass onto the next generation will be defined by locked gates, ‘no trespassing’ signs, and irreversible pollution.” – Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program
“The repeal of the BLM Public Lands Rule is a loss for all Californians who care about national public lands in our state. The BLM is responsible for stewarding about 15 million acres of land in California, which amounts to about 15 percent of the state. Overwhelmingly, Californians urged BLM to keep the Rule in place so that conservation and recreation would receive equal consideration to other uses on BLM-managed lands. However, our voices were ignored. Rather than balancing the uses of those lands by implementing the Public Lands Rule, BLM chose to toss out the Rule and prioritize extractive uses over all other uses.” – Linda Castro, CalWild Assistant Policy Director
“To rescind the Public Land Rule betrays the trust of thousands of citizens who believed themselves to be represented when conservation was finally given a seat at the table. Wyoming’s BLM lands, approximately 18.4 million acres representing 30% of our state, are critical to safeguarding wildlife habitat, migration corridors, and our cultural heritage. The Public Lands Rule restored accountability, science-based management, and public transparency — ensuring that conservation was treated as a legitimate use of our shared lands, and in doing so acknowledging a truer meaning of ‘multiple use.’ Working lands should work for all Americans, not just those with industrial interests at heart.” – Jennie Mans, BLM Wildlands Director, Wyoming Wilderness Association
“This is a sad day for America’s public lands. This Administration has clearly shown that not only should public land conservation NOT be on par with other uses as the Federal Land Policy and Management Act directs but that our public lands are to be used to maximize profits from extractive industries and maximize energy distribution and production for data centers all with considerably less oversight and public involvement. A sad day indeed,” says Shaaron Netherton, Executive Director, Friends of Nevada Wilderness.
“Our public lands are for everyone. They tell the story of our nation and our environment. At a time when they face unprecedented challenges – megafires, prolonged drought, invasive species, climate change impacts, and insufficient funding – the Public Lands Rule provided essential science-based tools to address these challenges and provide balanced land management, tribal co-stewardship, and rural economic opportunity. Rescinding the Public Lands Rule harms communities, tribal nations, wildlife, flora, and the long-term health of our public lands.” – Sandra Schubert, Executive Director, Tuleyome
“This repeal is part of a larger story of unprecedented hostility to public lands from this administration and a systematic and radical assault on the very idea of conservation and the multiple use doctrine in favor of the already outsized influence of industry and its designs to utilize our shared public lands for private corporate profit. New Mexicans of all political stripes overwhelmingly support conserving our public lands – they are part of our history, our cultures, our traditional uses, and our very identity. The utter disdain of public sentiment by this administration is astonishing.” – Mark Allison, Executive Director, New Mexico Wild
“In a state like Wyoming, where a third of our land is managed by the BLM, we should be using every tool possible to make sure our public lands are healthy and intact for our wildlife and future generations. That’s why it’s so disappointing to see the Public Lands Rule rescinded,” said Gabrielle Yates, Public Lands Program Manager for the Wyoming Outdoor Council. “In rescinding the rule, we are losing out on the opportunity to improve the health of our BLM lands by giving conservation a seat at the table. This is a step backward for public lands.”
“The Public Lands Rule simply clarified what was already stated by the Federal Lands Policy & Management Act: Conservation of natural resources is as important a “use” as any other. It set standards for ensuring that, including the use of best available science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. It’s unfortunate that the current administration and others are so hostile to the concept of national public lands. Fortunately, most Americans support the protection of our national heritage and want to see it managed for the benefit of all.” — Mike Painter, Coordinator, Californians for Western Wilderness
“Montana hunters and anglers depend on productive public lands and healthy watersheds to sustain our outdoor traditions,” said Frank Szollosi, Executive Director of the Montana Wildlife Federation. “The Public Lands Rule gave conservation a needed seat at the table so our interests were fully considered in BLM land management decisions. Rescinding this is a politically motivated and short-sighted step backward for Montana’s fish and wildlife, our sporting heritage, and the future of our public lands.”
“This is a major loss for the long-term stewardship of millions of acres of public land that belong to all of us, many surrounding our prized national parks. The Bureau of Land Management has an enduring obligation to protect these landscapes for future generations. This rollback represents a lost opportunity to conserve and restore the landscapes surrounding parks like Carlsbad, Canyonlands, Dinosaur National Monument and beyond.”– Beau Kiklis, Associate Director of Energy and Landscape Conservation at the National Parks Conservation Association
“America’s wildest public lands face unprecedented threats from the Trump administration and its repeated decisions to prioritize fossil fuel development and extractive industry over clean water, wildlife habitat, and wild open spaces. This is especially the case in Utah, where Trump’s policies are having direct and irreversible impacts on the nation’s redrock wilderness,” said Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “The Public Lands Rule reiterated that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had to put conservation on equal footing with other uses and laid out a framework for the agency to restore degraded landscapes and protect intact public lands for current and future generations. Americans and Utahns widely supported the Rule and we are deeply disappointed to see the Trump administration’s shortsighted effort to undo it. Our work to Protect Wild Utah continues, undeterred.”
