Conservationists on Monday decried the Trump administration’s decision to repeal the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule — a 2024 Biden administration decree that put conservation on equal footing with other uses of public lands. Gov. Mark Gordon, meanwhile, applauded the news. A Federal Register notice of publication presages the action, which is scheduled to publish Tuesday. Wyoming elected officials — along with mining, energy and grazing industries — challenged the rule in court and elsewhere, calling it an example of the BLM overstepping its authority. The agency proposed rescinding it 2025.  “This action restores balance to federal land management under the principles of multiple use and sustained yield by prioritizing access, empowering local decision-making, and aligning the BLM’s implementing regulations with statutory requirements and national energy policy,” reads an unpublished copy of the final rule from the Federal Register. A herd of free-roaming horses put up dust in the sagebrush during the Bureau of Land Management’s Adobe Town horse gather in July 2025. (Jacqueline Alderman/BLM-WY) “The 2024 Rule introduced unnecessary complexity and placed operational constraints on the BLM’s planning and permitting processes,” the unpublished copy continues. “It also inappropriately elevated conservation as a discrete ‘use’ of the public lands, contrary to FLPMA’s intent and statutory framework.” Conservation groups bemoaned the Department of Interior’s rollback as a short-sighted action that will harm critical wildlife habitat, popular recreation areas and Indigenous sites.  “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,” Maddy Munson, a Defenders of Wildlife policy specialist, said in a Monday press release.  Conservation and multi-use The Public Lands Rule advanced the BLM’s multiple-use and sustained-yield mission by addressing the health and resilience of public lands, according to a 2024 agency announcement of the rule.  The rule categorized “conservation” as a use within the BLM’s multi-use framework for the lands it manages. It also revised regulations to reflect the agency’s prioritization of designating and protecting so-called Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. “Conservation is a use of public lands on equal footing with other uses and is necessary for the protection and restoration of important resources,” the BLM stated in the 2024 announcement. “The Public Lands Rule will help safeguard the health of our public lands for current and future generations by ensuring we: protect the most intact, functioning landscapes; restore degraded habitat and ecosystems; and use science and data, including Indigenous Knowledge, as the foundation for management decisions across all plans and programs.” The rule established two new categories of leases for land use — mitigation leases and restoration leases — as well as a process for entities seeking to restore public lands or to offset impacts to secure them. The McCullough Peaks, public lands in Park county managed by the BLM as a Wilderness Study Area, emerge from the fog at sunrise. (Lisa Marks/BLM) When it was finalized in April 2024, it followed a year-long process and what the agency described as “the longest comment period on a rulemaking in recent history.” During that period, more than 200,000 comments poured in. One analysis of public comments found overwhelming support for the rule.  Within months of its release, Wyoming and Utah, which are home to more than 41 million BLM acres, filed suit, claiming the federal agency sidestepped the National Environmental Policy Act at the peril of economies and landscape health when it finalized the rule. The suit asked the court to vacate the rule.  A coalition of energy, mining, ranching and farming groups — including Wyoming Farm Bureau Association, American Petroleum Institute and Western Energy Alliance — also challenged the rule in court. Rule supporters, meanwhile, attempted to intervene in Wyoming and Utah’s legal skirmish to defend the rule.  In September 2025, the BLM, now under the purview of the Trump administration, proposed to rescind the rule.  “The BLM has determined, based on a review of the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, that the 2024 Rule is unnecessary and violates existing statutory requirements,” the proposal stated.  What they are saying Gov. Gordon, who testified against the rule to a U.S. House Committee in 2023, lauded its repeal. The action “is a welcome return to the statutory principle of true multiple use on our public lands,” Gordon said in a statement.  “I appreciate the administration’s recognition that the BLM’s mission is different from its sister agencies as set in federal law,” Gordon continued. “Agenda driven interpretations, as the Biden Administration attempted, are no longer how Washington does business.” An oil pumpjack near Rock River. (Bureau of Land Management) Conservation groups and others released a spate of statements condemning the repeal as part of a larger Trump administration effort to strip crucial protections from the country’s public lands.  “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,” Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program Director Athan Manuel said. “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.” The Mountain Pact, an organization that works with bipartisan local elected officials in Western mountain communities, also blasted the repeal as deeply disappointing.  “Western communities depend on well-managed public lands to support our economies and our outdoor way of life, and the BLM Public Lands Rule ensures that conservation of these irreplaceable landscapes is given equal consideration,” Mountain Pact Executive Director Anna Peterson said. 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