General
Throughout March, Congress was divided on several major issues, including the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, the SAVE America Act, and ongoing efforts to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) amid a partial government shutdown. Lawmakers ultimately left for a two-week recess without resolving the DHS funding impasse. As Congress returns on April 17, attention is expected to shift back to the appropriations, public lands, conservation funding, and access legislation that BHA is tracking.
Boundary Waters
There has been no movement on H.J.Res. 140 in the Senate since last month, which is a positive sign. This resolution would overturn a long-standing mineral withdrawal in the Rainy River watershed upstream of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, opening the door to proposed copper-sulfide mining by Twin Metals Minnesota.
Under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), the resolution can pass with a simple 51 vote majority and avoid the filibuster in the Senate, but only within a limited 60 legislative day window. We estimate that the window will close between April 17–27, depending on the Senate schedule. If the CRA doesn’t go to the floor for a vote before then, it would face a 60-vote threshold and become far less likely to pass in the Senate and become law.
With that deadline approaching, BHA is focusing on whether Senate leadership brings this to the floor in the next two weeks. We are actively engaging congressional offices and distributing a video toolkit to chapter leaders to generate messages urging Senators to oppose the resolution or keep it off the floor.
Visit BHA’s Action Alert to make your voice heard.
Roadless Rule
There were no major developments on the Roadless Rule in March, but the issue remains a top issue for BHA. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is still expected to release a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) at the end of April or early May. This DEIS will evaluate the impacts of rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protects 58.5 million acres of roadless areas across 39 states. It will also likely look at the impacts of an alternative- the details of which remain unclear- though some speculate it could target changes to Wildland-Urban Interface areas and previously roaded portions of roadless areas.
Last month, BHA has been lobbying on the importance of the roadless rule and joined Trout Unlimited and Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership in a letter to the ESFS backed by more than 60 signatories underscoring the Roadless Rule’s importance for fish, wildlife, and outdoor economies.
BHA will continue tracking the environmental review process and notify members when the public comment period opens, so hunters and anglers can make our voices heard.
Forest Service Shakeup
On March 31, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced a sweeping restructuring of the USFS. The plan would relocate the agency’s headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, shifting at least 260 positions closer to western forest landscapes.
The plan also calls for eliminating the agency’s 9 regional offices and replacing them with 15 state-based offices, while consolidating its research footprint. As proposed, 57 research facilities, including all 5 regional research stations, would be closed and reorganized under a single research entity based in Fort Collins, Colorado. Details remain limited, but the scale of these changes could significantly reshape how the agency operates.
Grand Staircase Escalante
On March 4, Senator Mike Lee and Representative Celeste Maloy introduced resolutions under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the current management plan for the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument. If enacted, the resolutions would nullify the Bureau of Land Management’s Resource Management Plan governing roughly 1.87 million acres of the monument and prohibit the agency from issuing a future plan that is “substantially the same.”
The legislation would not change the size or boundaries of the monument itself but would remove the current management framework that guides recreation, access, grazing, and resource protection across the landscape.
BHA has concerns with using the CRA to overturn large-scale land management plans, particularly when doing so could lead to expanded road access without the funding needed for maintenance, noxious weed control, and wildfire mitigation. For hunters and anglers, that kind of imbalance risks degrading habitat, reducing hunt quality, and undermining long-term access to healthy public lands.
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