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title=”application/pdf” />170207_TU House Letter re BLM2.0 CRA.pdf
February 7, 2017
Re: Trout Unlimited (TU) opposes the CRA Resolution against the BLM Planning 2.0 Rule
Today, the House is expected to take up the Congressional Review Act resolution (H.J. Res. 44) to terminate the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Resource Management Planning rule, known as Planning 2.0. On behalf of Trout Unlimited’s more than 150,000 members across the nation, I urge you to oppose efforts to repeal Planning 2.0.
The CRA resolution is an ill-conceived tool for jettisoning a much-needed rule to update BLM’s outdated land use planning regulations. The last comprehensive revisions to the agencies planning rule were made in 1983 and the updated regulations improve agency transparency and opportunities for public involvement, better address on-the-ground issues, make for a more nimble agency that is responsive to change, and maintain the important cooperating agency role of state and local governments.
Planning 2.0 is the product of two-and-half years of development, including public meetings, webinars, a public comment period extension, two Congressional hearings, and input from a broad spectrum of the public that resulted in significant revisions between the draft and final rules.
If it is repealed, BLM planning would revert back to the outdated 1983 planning regulations and the Congressional Review Act prevents new rules from being developed that are “substantially the same.” In other words, we’ll be stuck with an ineffective, outdated process for making public land planning decisions. This would be a heavy-handed and unnecessary action that will undermine the ability for the BLM to be good stewards of America’s public lands.
The Congressional Review Act resolution will set the BLM and public land management back three decades and TU urges you to oppose it. Instead we ask you to work with the Department of the Interior and BLM to implement the rule in ways that work for public land stakeholders, cooperating agencies and the agency. In order to implement Planning 2.0, the BLM will need to update its Land Use Planning Handbook and this is the appropriate time and venue to address any remaining concerns.
Please vote NO on CRA Resolution H.J. Res. 44.
Contact:
Steve Moyer, Vice President for Government Affairs, Trout Unlimited, smoyer@tu.org, (703) 284-9406