Joe Biden

Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 3397 - WEST Act of 2024

April 29, 2024

STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY

(House Rules)
(Rep. Curtis, R-UT, and 20 cosponsors)

The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 3397, which would nullify the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) recently finalized Conservation and Landscape Health Rule (Rule). Our public lands are facing unprecedented challenges from ever-increasing demands and from the impacts of climate change - including drought, increasing wildfires and invasive species - which pose risks to communities, wildlife and ecosystems. The Rule will help the BLM navigate these conditions while ensuring public lands remain economic drivers across America's West. The Rule establishes a framework for BLM to balance conservation and other uses of public lands, protect iconic and healthy lands, restore degraded lands - including through restoration and mitigation leases - and use the best available science to support responsible development. The BLM is committed to its core mission of multiple use and sustained yield, which this Rule promotes by managing for healthy lands today so that the BLM can deliver on that mission now and in the future.

H.R. 3397 would undermine the public rulemaking process, ignore years of collaborative effort and broad public support for responsible land management and climate resilience, and jeopardize the BLM's ability to manage for the challenges facing public lands today. The Administration strongly opposes this bill.

Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 3397 - WEST Act of 2024 Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/374888

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