UPDATED | NPCA: Trump Administration Limiting Public Input On Oil And Gas Lease Management Issues

Editor's note: This updates with comment from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials have moved to lessen public input involving oil and gas development on public lands by rescinding Master Leasing Plans adopted under the Obama administration, a move that threatens the integrity and environment of national parks, according to conservation groups.

Put in place in 2010, MLPs were designed to allow communities in national park landscapes to have a say in where and how oil and gas development should occur, a release from the National Parks Conservation Association said. "The process brought local business owners dependent on park visitation, recreational businesses, the oil and gas industry, tribal and cultural interests and other stakeholders together to help identify how to protect parks while allowing development."

At the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, officials said the MLP process was designed "to proactively balance energy development with other uses of public lands."

In Utah, an MLP involving lands surrounding Arches and Canyonlands national parks was formalized in 2016. It was developed by the BLM working with the National Park Service, local tourism and recreational communities, and the oil and gas and potash industries, NPCA said. The result was a plan "that was still widely open to oil and gas drilling while providing crucial protections for the national parks and their visitation experience."

Along with eliminating MLPs, BLM's new policy direction carries some significant changes, NPCA said. Among them was a decision to:

• No longer require full environmental assessments of lease sales under the National Environmental Policy Act;
• No longer require BLM state and field offices to provide for public participation during its environmental assessment of potential parcels of land to lease; and
• Reduce the number of days for both noticing a lease sale and for internal appeal of a sale once finalized.

“MLPs allowed stakeholders on the ground to work together to create landscape-level plans aimed at protecting outdoor recreation opportunities and providing economic certainty to local businesses and all industries that benefit from public lands," said Nicholas Lund, NPCA's senior manager for the group's Landscape Conservation Program. "They ensured that everyone who cares about public lands -- from county commissioners to drillers to sportsmen to tribal and cultural interests -- had a say before lands were leased.

“This sweeping rollback of the public’s role in how we protect of our national parks and public lands will only put those places in danger of irrevocable damage," he added. "Our parks and public lands belong to the American people, and to silence their voice as industry threatens to drill closer and closer to the gateways of these places is to all but resign ourselves to park landscapes filled with polluted air, pocked with rigs, and drowned out day and night by loud machinery.

“By allowing this unwanted and unwarranted change, Washington is trading the West’s economic well-being and future generations’ outdoor heritage for uncertainty and conflict, a future our national parks and Western communities do not deserve.”

At the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, President and CEO Whit Fosburgh said the Trump administration's decision to do away with MLPs could damage wildlife habitat.

“Hunters and anglers have been working for more than a decade to help strike a more appropriate balance between wildlife habitat and energy production on our public lands,” Mr. Fosburgh said. “Unfortunately, the decision by the BLM alters the up-front planning and engagement process and reduces the American public’s ability to have a say in how their public lands are managed. This could easily lead to increased and unnecessary conflict between energy development and fish and wildlife habitat.”

The official also noted the irony in the decision by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who oversees the BLM, to eliminate MLPs.

“Rolling back the MLP policy is a step backward for an administration that says it wants to deregulate and bring decision-making on public lands closer to home, because diligent and transparent up-front planning prevents the need for red tape and costly mitigation later,” said Mr. Fosburgh. “We encourage the BLM to gather public feedback early in the process, use the best available science, and listen to constituents from every economic sector reliant on public lands—including the hunters, anglers, guides, outfitters, and retailers who drive the $887 billion outdoor recreation economy.”