BLM Public Lands Rule Officially Rescinded: What It Means for Colorado Trails and Public Lands

The Interior Department published the final rescission of the BLM Public Lands Rule in the Federal Register on May 12, ending a 2024 policy that put conservation on equal footing with grazing, mining, and drilling on 245 million acres of public land — including 8.3 million acres in Colorado.

Washington, D.C. — May 18, 2026

The Bureau of Land Management's Public Lands Rule — formally known as the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule — is officially being rescinded. The Department of the Interior published its final notice in the Federal Register on Tuesday, May 12, and the rescission takes effect on June 11.

The 2024 rule, finalized under the previous administration, was the BLM's first major attempt in nearly 50 years to define what "multiple use" management actually looks like in a modern context. It directed the agency to weigh conservation, wildlife habitat, and outdoor recreation alongside the more traditional uses of BLM lands like livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas leasing, and logging.

For Colorado hikers and climbers, the BLM isn't an abstract agency in Washington. It manages 8.3 million acres of public land across the state, concentrated on the Western Slope. That includes three Colorado 14ers — Handies Peak, Redcloud Peak, and Sunshine Peak — along with 30 13ers, five wilderness areas, three national conservation areas, 53 wilderness study areas, and two national monuments. Activity on BLM-managed lands contributed roughly $8.8 billion to Colorado's economy in fiscal year 2023, and more than 39,000 Colorado jobs are tied to those lands.

Here's what the rule actually did, what changes on June 11, and what this means for hikers and climbers heading into the 2026 season.

What the Public Lands Rule Did

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 — known as FLPMA — directs the BLM to manage public lands for "multiple use and sustained yield" for present and future generations. But in practice, the agency has historically prioritized extractive uses. According to a 2024 report from The Wilderness Society, 81% of BLM-managed lands nationally were open to oil and gas leasing, while only about 14% were designated for what the agency calls "enduring conservation."

The 2024 Public Lands Rule was the BLM's effort to rebalance that math. It did four main things:

• It put conservation on equal footing with other uses. The rule explicitly recognized conservation as a legitimate, co-equal "use" of BLM land alongside grazing, mining, drilling, recreation, and timber harvest.
• It created restoration and mitigation leases. Qualified groups — businesses, conservation nonprofits, Tribal governments, state fish and wildlife agencies, and conservation districts — could lease BLM land specifically to restore degraded habitat or to offset the impacts of a development project elsewhere on public land.
• It clarified Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs). ACECs are a designation Congress directed the BLM to prioritize back in 1976, intended to protect places with significant natural, cultural, or scenic value. The rule laid out clearer criteria for how ACECs get designated and managed.
• It directed science-based "fundamentals of land health" across BLM programs — covering watersheds, plant and animal communities, and threatened or endangered species habitat.

The rule also added an explicit objective to "provide for healthy lands and waters that support sustainable outdoor recreation experiences for current and future generations" — language that recreation groups including Outdoor Alliance had pushed for during the rulemaking process.

What Changes on June 11

The rescission strips all of that out. The BLM will revert to the framework that governed land management before 2024 — primarily a 1983 regulatory structure that emphasizes extractive multiple uses.

In its Federal Register notice, the agency wrote that the rule "threatened to restrict productive use of the public lands and introduced uncertainty and unnecessary burdens in planning and permitting." It argued that "it is not appropriate, or logical, to treat conservation as a 'use' under FLPMA."

Specifically, the rescission:

• Eliminates restoration and mitigation leasing entirely
• Returns ACEC designation to the pre-2024 framework
• Removes the explicit "fundamentals of land health" management standards
• Strips out the sustainable recreation language
• Restores what the BLM calls "the traditional multiple-use framework"

The agency states that this does not change its underlying legal authority under FLPMA to consider conservation in management decisions — it just removes the prescriptive mandates the 2024 rule established.

What This Means for Colorado

Most of Colorado's BLM land sits on the Western Slope. The Grand Junction Field Office alone manages more than one million acres surrounding the largest population center on that side of the Continental Divide. The Uncompahgre Field Office in Colorado's Southwest District manages nearly 900,000 acres, including the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area, the southern portion of the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area, and four river systems: the Gunnison, San Miguel, Dolores, and Uncompahgre.

If you've hiked Hartman Rocks in Gunnison, climbed at the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area, dispersed camped along the Alpine Loop near Lake City, or scrambled up Handies Peak or Redcloud and Sunshine Peaks, you've been recreating on BLM land.

The three Colorado 14ers managed by BLM all sit within Wilderness Study Areas — Handies Peak in the Handies Peak WSA and Redcloud and Sunshine in the Redcloud Peak WSA. WSAs are an interim designation: lands the BLM has identified as potentially qualifying for full Wilderness protection under the Wilderness Act, but which Congress has not yet acted to designate. They sit in a long-running legal and political limbo, and the rules governing them are particularly sensitive to changes in BLM management policy.

The Case For the Rescission

Industry groups, motorized recreation organizations, and several Western Slope county governments support the rescission, arguing that the 2024 rule overstepped the BLM's statutory authority and threatened established uses.

The Blue Ribbon Coalition, which represents motorized recreation interests, praised the decision and seized on language from the Federal Register that "it is not appropriate, or logical, to treat conservation as a 'use' under FLPMA." The Specialty Equipment Market Association and Off-Road Business Association issued statements supporting the rescission, arguing the original rule "expanded conservation leasing and mitigation mechanisms on public lands while elevating conservation as a standalone land use within BLM policy."

On the Western Slope, Mesa County commissioners — representing a county that is 73% public land — voted in November to support the rescission. Their letter argued that "true conservation comes from active management, not bureaucratic restriction" and that the rescission "rightly reaffirms Congress' intent that federal lands be managed for multiple purposes and in cooperation with local communities that understand these landscapes best."

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said when the rescission was first proposed that the 2024 rule "had the potential to block access to hundreds of thousands of acres of multiple-use land — preventing energy and mineral production, timber management, grazing and recreation across the West."

The Case Against the Rescission

Conservation, environmental, and recreation groups uniformly oppose the rescission. Outdoor Alliance — the umbrella organization representing the human-powered outdoor recreation community — submitted detailed comments urging the agency to preserve the rule. The Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and dozens of regional groups condemned the decision.

Alison Flint, acting vice president for federal policy at The Wilderness Society, called the rescission a violation of "both the agency's legal mandate and the overwhelming wishes of the American people for public lands to be managed in a balanced and sustainable way."

The public comment numbers tell a striking story. During the original 2024 rulemaking, 92% of public comments supported finalizing the rule. During the comment period for the rescission, the BLM received roughly 138,000 comments — and according to an analysis by the Center for Western Priorities, 98% of analyzed comments opposed rescinding the rule.

Colorado-specific opposition was substantial. More than 180 elected officials from Western states signed a November 2025 letter opposing the rescission. The signatories included Colorado state Sen. Dylan Roberts (D-Frisco) and leaders from Aspen, Breckenridge, Frisco, Vail, and Winter Park — communities whose local economies are deeply tied to outdoor recreation on public lands.

Critics also raised concerns about Tribal consultation. The BLM determined it did not need to consult with Indigenous Tribes before rescinding the rule, a decision Wilderness Society campaign director Michael Carroll called "shocking in terms of its disrespect to tribal nations."

What This Actually Means for Hikers

If you're heading to Handies, Redcloud, Sunshine, or any other BLM-managed peak or recreation area in Colorado this summer, your trip will look essentially the same. There's no immediate change to trailhead access, permit requirements, or trail conditions tied directly to this decision. The 2024 rule had not yet driven significant on-the-ground changes by the time the rescission process began.

The longer-term implications are harder to predict but worth paying attention to. Several specific watch points:

• Future lease decisions. Without the 2024 rule's restoration and mitigation lease mechanisms, conservation groups and other qualified parties no longer have a clear path to lease BLM lands specifically for habitat restoration or to offset development impacts. Existing extractive leasing — oil and gas, mining, grazing — continues under the prior framework.
• Wildlife corridors and habitat. BLM lands provide habitat for more than 300 federally listed threatened or endangered species and an additional 2,460 unlisted at-risk species, according to Defenders of Wildlife. The 2024 rule's focus on landscape connectivity and "intact landscapes" guided how the agency considered habitat fragmentation in planning decisions. The rescission rolls that back.
• ACEC designations. Areas of Critical Environmental Concern can affect what's allowed in a given landscape, including in places like the Redcloud Peak and Handies Peak Wilderness Study Areas. The criteria for designating new ACECs revert to the older framework.
• Agency capacity. The BLM has lost significant staff since early 2025. We've covered this elsewhere — see our reporting on the 4,400 federal layoffs across public lands agencies. A leaner agency working under a more development-oriented framework will make different choices than a fully-staffed one working under the 2024 rule.
• Legal challenges. The original 2024 rule faced lawsuits from industry groups and several Republican-led states. The rescission will almost certainly draw lawsuits from conservation groups. Expect litigation through 2027 at minimum.

What's Next

The Senate is currently considering Steve Pearce, a former New Mexico Republican congressman with deep ties to the oil and gas industry, as the next BLM director. Conservation groups have argued that if confirmed, Pearce will oversee an agency that is no longer required to consider conservation as a use of public land.

In Colorado, public lands access remains an active policy issue regardless of the federal rulemaking direction. Colorado SB-58, passed last year, restored public access to two previously closed 14ers and represented a meaningful state-level win. Corner-crossing legislation — addressing access to landlocked public parcels surrounded by private land — continues to advance in multiple Western states.

This is also a moment when local and regional planning processes matter more. With less prescriptive national direction from the BLM, decisions about specific places — what's allowed in McInnis Canyons, how the Alpine Loop area is managed, what protections exist for the Redcloud Peak WSA — increasingly happen at the field office level, often through travel management plans, resource management plans, and project-specific decisions. Public comment on those plans remains the most direct way recreational users shape what happens on the ground.

For more context on Alex's perspective on the conservation policy at issue here, see his prior commentary: Repealing the BLM Conservation Rule Isn't Conservative — It's Short-Sighted. For our broader public lands coverage this season, see our pieces on proposals to sell off public lands and the rollback of Roadless Rule protections on 58 million acres of national forest.

Alex Derr is the founder of The Next Summit, an Eagle Scout, and a Wilderness First Responder. He holds an M.P.A. in Environmental Management, Policy & Law from CU Denver and has co-founded the Fix CRUS Coalition, which successfully advocated for Colorado SB-58 restoring access to two closed 14ers. The Next Summit covers Colorado mountain news, route guides, and public lands policy with a focus on accuracy, education, and stewardship.