Nevada’s director of the state Department of Agriculture was among the critics who testified before a U.S. House committee in opposition to the Biden administration’s plan to allow public land to be leased solely for conservation purposes.

The U.S. House Natural Resources Committee held an oversight hearing on May 24 to examine the administration’s efforts, which would to limit public access to federal lands and ignore the interests of local communities.

The hearing centered on the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed Conservation and Landscape Health rule, which would establish conservation as a new “use” in the agency’s mandate to manage public lands for multiple use.

The rule would also create a conservation leasing system that could lock up parcels of land for years. It would also expand the designation of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, bringing restrictions on other uses such as grazing, mineral and energy development and recreation.

Opponents contend the rule would be devastating to western communities, and legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate to block the rule.

The agency plans to do all this without congressional authorization and a totally new use under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, said Dr. J.J. Goicoechea, director of the Nevada Department of Agriculture, former state veterinarian and a fourth-generation cattle producer.

The proposal “has had no advance discussion or notification of stakeholders, no analysis under (the National Environmental Policy Act) and no economic analysis or interagency consultation because the BLM claims there’ll be no significant economic impact,” he said.

BLM claims the rule would put conservation on par with other uses, but conservation leases would be far more powerful than any other use, he said.

“The proposed rule would give conservation and these lessees the ability to prevent other users from accessing and using public land with uses incompatible with the conservation lease,” he said.

Goicoechea is a regional policy vice chairman for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and a board member for the Public Lands Council. Both organizations staunchly oppose the proposed rule.

It is also extremely concerning that BLM has no interest in gathering the input necessary to improve the proposed rule, he said.

“The Nevada Department of Agriculture and our stakeholders want to have meaningful engagement on a proposed rule that will undoubtedly have generations of impact,” he said.

Unfortunately, lack of engagement is nothing new for the Biden administration, he said, adding that earlier this year, the administration designated a national monument in Nevada without consultation with Gov. Joe Lombardo’s administration.

The administration is also looking at producing an additional 25 gigawatts of energy on federal land, including in Nevada, he said.

“This is concerning for Nevada agriculture community because solar developments largely require conversion of a multiple use to a single use landscape,” he said.

“Public lands and agriculture are linked. The success of agriculture depends on access to BLM lands and keeping them healthy. Agriculture is conservation, and that is the conservation this committee needs to be defending,” he said.

If grazing is removed from these landscapes, “ranchers will go under, landscapes will be taken over by invasive species and will burn, wildlife will suffer and other multiple use will become impossible,” he said.

“This would be crippling to Nevada, the West and our country as a whole. The BLM should not forge blindly ahead because they believe conservation leases can be a new business venture for them,” he said.

“Their business, their mission, is to ensure they manage multiple use and sustained yield long into the future,” he said.