The U.S. Department of the Interior is looking to overturn the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule in a move that has environmental groups decrying it as a way to favor extractive industries. … [The Federal Land Policy and Management Act] tasked the bureau with managing the following “principal or major” uses: recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife, and fish and natural scenic, scientific, and historical values. … In adding conservation explicitly as a use, the Bureau’s Public Lands Rule also formalized regulatory tools and frameworks for restoring degraded public lands and water.

Other public land news:

• KUNC (Greeley, Colo.): Interior Department moves to repeal public lands rule, shifting focus back to energy
• Inside Climate News: House Republicans’ use of little-known law to strike down public land plans could be Pandora’s Box moment
• The Colorado Sun (Denver): BLM counts on pent-up demand, offers more than 130,000 acres of public land in Colorado for oil and gas drilling
• The New Republic: Blog: Trump wants to decimate public land protections … for drilling
• The Land Desk: Blog: Trump moves to nix Public Lands rule; Alfalfa exports data dump