Coalition Joins Over 125 Groups in Call for BLM to Conserve Freshwater Resources as Part of the Public Lands Rule

July 5, 2023

Director Tracy Stone-Manning
Bureau of Land Management
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C St. NW, Room 5646
Washington, DC 20240
Attention: 1004–AE92

Director Stone-Manning,

The undersigned organizations value watershed health, clean water, and healthy streams and rivers and are writing in support of the Conservation and Landscape Health rulemaking. As the single largest federal land manager, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM or Bureau) has a critical role to play in addressing two inter-related crises—biodiversity collapse and climate change. Key to fighting both challenges is the restoration and protection of freshwater resources. We support the BLM’s draft rule that will implement the Bureau’s authority to conserve intact lands and waters; improve the resilience of public lands in the face of extreme events such as droughts, wildfires, and floods; and protect freshwater resources on America’s public lands.

The rulemaking’s recognition that healthy landscapes and resilient ecosystems are essential to multiple use and sustained yield management is commendable. Today, despite the ecological importance of the Bureau’s 245 million acres, nearly 90 percent of its lands are open to oil and gas extraction, with only around 10 percent safeguarded from development. This rulemaking will bring balance to the Bureau’s management by putting conservation on equal footing with development activities within the Bureau’s multiple use framework. It also promotes informed decision-making using both best available Western science and Indigenous Knowledge.

In the continental United States, BLM manages more than 250,000 miles of streams and rivers, roughly 8% of the nation’s riverscapes and 2% of its perennial riverscapes. Riverscapes are the connected floodplain and channel habitats that together make up valley bottoms. When healthy, riverscapes and their associated wetlands are critical natural infrastructure that support biodiversity, increase water security, attenuate flooding, and act as fire breaks and refugia.

BLM’s water resources are estimated to provide drinking water to¹Conserving and Restoring Riparian, Fisheries, and Water Resources in a Changing Climate: A 5-year Strategy for the BLM’s Aquatic Resources Program. January 2022. Page 9. in 10 Americans in the Western United States.[1] Additionally, the Bureau manages some of the best remaining healthy rivers in the West and Alaska including 81 designated wild and scenic rivers. While western wetlands have been reduced to just two percent of the land surface, and the Supreme Court recently undercut longstanding Clean Water Act protections for wetlands,²Sackett v. EPA, 2023 WL 3632751 (May 25, 2023). they support around 80 percent of the area’s biodiversity.

By ensuring protection and restoration, the rulemaking positions BLM to increase the health of its freshwater resources dramatically. Such an emphasis on restoration can help the Bureau restore narrow, often incised stream channels into healthy, functioning riverscapes and return life to rivers and streams that now look and function like desiccated sponges. The rule also provides important new guidance on the process for designating areas of critical environmental concern when special management is required to protect important natural, cultural, and scenic resources, systems, or processes, or to protect life and safety from natural hazards. It enables maintenance of intact ecosystems to support wildlife migration corridors and functioning watersheds. The rule recommends a process to classify the conditions of watersheds on BLM lands and it also proposes tools to support building ecosystem resilience, including conservation leasing and compensatory mitigation.

As you work to finalize the rule, we respectfully ask that you improve it in the following ways to benefit watershed health:

• Implement the assessment, prioritization, restoration, and conservation requirements of this rule at the watershed scale to come into compliance with the decades-old Unified Federal Policy for a Watershed Approach to Federal Land and Resource Management.
• Employ a science-based process at the national level to establish Land Health Standards and Guidelines for the Aquatic Resources Program and adopt related goals, objectives, and indicators. These Standards and Guidelines should include the creation and use of the Watershed Condition Classification cited in the proposed rule. Together, these Standards and Guidelines and related assessments should be used to holistically evaluate watershed health, identify restoration opportunities and recovery potential, prioritize conservation and restoration, and measure progress towards achieving its resilience and land health framework across its lands and waters.
• Require the Bureau to maintain an inventory of intact natural landscapes and high-integrity watersheds and ensure these lands and waters will not be degraded by future management actions.
• Require complete and current inventories of eligible rivers with Wild and Scenic River potential, determinations.³16 U.S.C. §1276(5)(d)(1). Consistent with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act’s requirement for all federal agencies to assess “potential national wild, scenic and recreational river areas” during planning. Also see: Oregon Natural Desert Ass’n v U.S. Forest Service, 312 F. Supp. 2d 1337 (D. Or. 2004) (holding that § 5(d)(1) “imposes a mandatory duty on the agency” to consider “potential” river areas. The rule should also clarify BLM’s long-standing authority under section 202 of FLPMA and Section 5(d)(1) of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to establish new eligible Wild and Scenic Rivers through land management planning, provide protective management requirements for eligible Wild and Scenic Rivers, and clarify BLM’s limited role in conducting suitability determinations.⁴ 43 U.S.C. § 1712(c)(4) and 16 U.S.C. §1276(5)(d)(1).
• Ensure that all eligible areas that meet areas of critical environmental concern criteria are designated as such and managed to protect the values for which they were designated.
• Ensure that BLM’s management promotes the recovery of listed and at-risk species and requires the identification and protection of areas to support wildlife migration and movement in accordance with the BLM’s interim policy issued in November 2022.
• Require older and mature forests to be protected and restored.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback and comments on the BLM’s proposed Conservation and Landscape Health rulemaking.

• 1
  Conserving and Restoring Riparian, Fisheries, and Water Resources in a Changing Climate: A 5-year Strategy for the BLM’s Aquatic Resources Program. January 2022. Page 9.
• 2
  Sackett v. EPA, 2023 WL 3632751 (May 25, 2023).
• 3
  16 U.S.C. §1276(5)(d)(1). Consistent with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act’s requirement for all federal agencies to assess “potential national wild, scenic and recreational river areas” during planning. Also see: Oregon Natural Desert Ass’n v U.S. Forest Service, 312 F. Supp. 2d 1337 (D. Or. 2004) (holding that § 5(d)(1) “imposes a mandatory duty on the agency” to consider “potential” river areas.
• 4
  43 U.S.C. § 1712(c)(4) and 16 U.S.C. §1276(5)(d)(1).