“The Bureau of Land Management may stop studying how its long-term blueprints for millions of acres of public lands would affect the environment, according to a document shared with Bloomberg Environment.

Land use plans are updated every two decades or more, and govern the management of more than 245 million acres of public land under BLM control. They determine, for example, which lands are developed for fossil fuels and mining, grazed by livestock, or protected from development entirely.

The BLM may propose a land use planning rule that will “remove NEPA requirements from the planning regulations,” referring to the National Environmental Policy Act, according to the document on possible changes to such rules that was shared with states and former BLM officials.

‘We don’t currently have a timeline to start the rulemaking process for this proposal,’ BLM spokesman Jeff Krauss said Tuesday. ‘If we move forward with a proposed rule, we will notify the public, as required by law.’ The BLM didn’t respond to specific questions about the proposal.”

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