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The Trump administration is proposing to rewrite the Bureau of Land Management’s land use planning regulations to “cut unnecessary red tape” and speed up decisions on public lands.
Among other provisions, the update aims to shrink Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, which are public lands where special management attention is required to prevent irreparable damage to natural resources and historic, cultural, or scenic values.
The announcement does not mention Planning 2.0, the planning rule the BLM finalized in 2016. Congress overturned Planning 2.0 in 2017 using the Congressional Review Act, and President Trump signed the resolution into law. Under the CRA, an agency cannot issue a new rule that is “substantially the same” as a disapproved one unless Congress specifically authorizes it, making this attempt to modernize BLM's planning procedures legally questionable.
Planning 2.0 was designed to address complaints that the planning process had become “too slow and too unresponsive to the public.” It updated planning terminology, revised the provisions for designating Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, and restructured where in the process the public could weigh in. While the Interior department hasn’t published the text of the new planning rule, it appears to be similar in scope to Planning 2.0. It would also update planning terminology, revise Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, and “ensure public input occurs at the most meaningful stages.”
The proposed rule will publish in the Federal Register next week, followed by a 60-day public comment period.
Public lands were a winning issue in the 2026 midterms
In a new Westwise blog post, Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Lauren Bogard describes how Democrats and Republicans across the West ran on their support for public lands. Examples include Eric Barlow, the Governor-elect of Wyoming who denounced the sale of public lands while on the campaign trail, and Sam Forstag, the U.S. Representative-elect from Montana who got into the race because public lands faced a “full-scale assault.”
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This was a wave election, and no single issue decided it. But the pattern was consistent: in the West, candidates embraced pro-public lands positions, and rejected efforts to privatize or sell them to the highest bidder.”
