# Federal Land Policy and Management Act The **Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976** (FLPMA, 43 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq.) is the organic statute of the [[Bureau of Land Management]] and the closest thing the United States has to a general public-lands charter. It ended the nineteenth-century disposal era as national policy. It declared that the public lands would be **retained in federal ownership** unless disposal served the national interest, and it put the retained estate, about 245 million acres, under a standing mandate of **multiple use and sustained yield** (§ 1732(a)). The retention declaration is what the [[Sagebrush Rebellion]] was a rebellion against. Four sections carry most of the weight in practice: - **§ 202** (43 U.S.C. § 1712): land use planning. The Resource Management Plan is the instrument that decides what may happen on any given acre. See [[Resource Management Plan]]. - **§ 203** (43 U.S.C. § 1713): sale authority. It sets three alternative criteria, requires fair market value, and requires congressional notice above 2,500 acres. - **§ 204** (43 U.S.C. § 1714): withdrawal authority. It covers Public Land Orders, sets a 20-year ceiling for withdrawals of 5,000+ acres, and includes a congressional disapproval device held unconstitutional in [[National Mining Association v. Zinke]]. - **§ 204(j)**: bars *the Secretary* from modifying or revoking an [[Antiquities Act]] national monument, while saying nothing about the President. ## The 2025–26 fights Both big public-lands fights of the second Trump term were fights over what FLPMA means. 1. **"Multiple use" versus conservation.** The Biden-era [[Public Lands Rule]] (2024) treated conservation as a use on par with grazing and drilling and created conservation leases. BLM rescinded it in a final rule published **May 12, 2026** (effective June 11). Its argument was that FLPMA's multiple-use mandate does not allow "conservation as a discrete 'use'." Of the 130,000+ comments, about 98% opposed rescission. Which reading of § 1732 is right is the question any court challenge will turn on. 2. **Disposal versus retention.** In June 2025 Sen. [[Mike Lee]] tried to use the [[Big Beautiful Bill]] to mandate sales of up to about 3 million acres of BLM and Forest Service land, pitched as housing. Interior staff had supplied his talking points. He withdrew it on June 28, 2025 after Western Republicans and a bipartisan hunter and angler coalition revolted. The attempt showed that FLPMA's retention policy could only be reversed by statute, and Congress would not do it. The pattern: the executive can re-read FLPMA's "use" language by rulemaking, but it cannot undo the Act's retention mandate without Congress. That is why sales have been pursued through legislation and task forces (an Interior–HUD housing task force from March 2025), while conservation was cut by rule. ## See also - [[Federal Land Management Crosswalk]] · [[Bureau of Land Management]] · [[Department of the Interior]] - [[Public Lands Rule]] · [[Resource Management Plan]] · [[Antiquities Act]] - [[Sagebrush Rebellion]] · [[William Perry Pendley]] · [[Mike Lee]]