VIDEO: U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) delivers opening remarks at a hearing to examine how the BLM land use planning process under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) affects permitting before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, November 19, 2025.  

“The Federal Land Policy and Management Act, or FLPMA, says something pretty simple: it says that the Bureau of Land Management should look at the lands it manages and decide how to manage those lands for multiple uses,” said Heinrich. “The BLM has a complicated job—it has to figure out how to fit energy development, and wilderness and grazing and wildlife habitat and mining and fishing and timber and camping and cultural resource preservation on the lands it manages.” 

“Finding ways to accommodate the broad range of everything from wilderness to mining is not easy, but the planning process makes sure that all uses are considered, and everyone’s voices are heard,” continued Heinrich.  

“The BLM has not been able to keep up with revisions to keep these plans aligned with today's priorities and technologies,” Heinrich followed, emphasizing the importance of updating resource management plans. “On BLM land alone, recreation supports 76,000 jobs and contributes to more than $12 billion in economic output... I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about how we can make the planning process more efficient.” 

A video of Heinrich’s opening remarks can be found here.  

A transcript of Heinrich’s remarks as delivered is below: 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to add my welcome to our witnesses here today to talk about how we decide what to do with our public lands. 

Talking about resource management plans might not be everyone’s idea of a great way to spend their Wednesday morning, but personally, I’m glad that this Committee is looking at this important element of public land management.  

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act, or FLPMA, says something pretty simple: it says that the Bureau of Land Management should look at the lands it manages and decide how to manage those lands for multiple uses.  

The BLM has a complicated job—it has to figure out how to fit energy development, and wilderness and grazing and wildlife habitat and mining and fishing and timber and camping and cultural resource preservation on the lands it manages. 

One approach could be a free-for-all—whoever puts the land to use first gets to decide what happens there going forward.  

Our nation did that for a long time, giving away public land via homesteading and mining claims and granting lands to railroads to facilitate western expansion. 

But conservationists, like Teddy Roosevelt, began to recognize that if we kept going down that path, we’d have no public lands left, which would mean most Americans would be locked out of the nation’s open spaces.  

A few decades later, Congress passed FLPMA and directed the BLM to keep public lands public and to manage public lands under the principles of multiple use and sustained yield.  

To do that, it requires the BLM to periodically produce land use plans to guide its management decisions. 

Now recognizing that multiple use can’t mean every use on every acre, these land use plans ensure that all uses have some of those acres.  

Land use planning is a robustly public process, integrating information and priorities from local residents, from businesses, from tribes and local governments, and public land users from across the nation.  

Finding ways to accommodate the broad range of everything from wilderness to mining is not easy, but the planning process makes sure that all uses are considered and everyone’s voices are heard.  

Now, unfortunately, these plans are updated far too [in]frequently, that is something that I think we agree on, and are intended to be in place for about 20 years. 

The BLM has not been able to keep up with revisions to keep these plans aligned with today's priorities and technologies. 

Some plans in place now were written well before utility-scale solar was common, and few are ready to facilitate the increase in geothermal energy production that’s on the horizon.  

Many current plans don't accommodate the explosion in outdoor recreation that our public lands now host.  

Recreation on public lands is now an economic powerhouse, generating $128 billion in economic activity every year and driving $6 billion in federal tax revenue. 

On BLM land alone, recreation supports 76,000 jobs and contributes to more than $12 billion in economic output.  

Those numbers are very different than they were 30 or 40 years ago, when many BLM land use plans were actually written, and in fact, we weren't even keeping track of recreation statistics when many of these plans were written. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about how we can make the planning process more efficient and more responsive to changes in how we use our public lands, while making sure that our public lands continue to serve the public for generations to come. 

Thank you, Chairman. 

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