By Alan Barton, NMFWRI Director
In my column for the June edition of this newsletter, I wrote about two landmark laws that are celebrating their golden anniversary in 2026. In October, 1976, President Gerald Ford signed into law the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), the organic act for the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), a key statute for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), ushering in the era of federal land use planning.
Both NFMA and FLPMA required their agencies to produce periodic, detailed, landscape-scale management plans, and both were built on a previous landmark statute that is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946. The APA came into being as the United States was emerging from World War II, a war fought to defend principles of freedom and self-governance against agents of tyranny. Recognizing the need to ensure democratic checks and balances over the growing number of federal administrative agencies, Congress installed requirements for public participation into the APA, charging agencies with carrying out rulemaking and adjudications with transparency and guidance from the public. Agencies were required to share information about their actions with the public, and take comments to help them make better decisions.
Building on procedures set by the APA, NFMA and FLPMA require the USFS and BLM to engage with the public as they periodically update their plans. By pushing requirements for public participation, Congress demonstrated a deep trust in the American people, and also set an ambitious agenda for the agencies, as effective public involvement takes time, skill and dedication. In New Mexico, the five national forests began revising their original plans, completed in the 1980s, after the Forest Service adopted a planning rule in 2012 that requires plans to be based on a complex process of adaptive, science-based management. The Santa Fe, Carson and Cibola National Forests started their plan revisions around 2013; they completed the process and issued their final revised plans in 2022. The Gila and Lincoln National Forests began revising their plans in 2015, and are nearing completion of the planning process. The final plans are important documents that guide all management decisions through to the next revision. And the process of preparing a plan, while extensive and time-consuming, is an ongoing opportunity for democratic governance in action.
Land use planning is a celebration of Constitutional principles that form the bedrock of the American system of governance. Planning is a rational, future-directed act that effectively represents the operation of a sovereign government of laws. Planning encourages the people of the United States to participate directly in their government, providing managers with locally derived information that helps them create plans that lead to better management decisions. Planning processes may be slow, but outcomes are always better when they are the product of processes that are deliberative and rooted in a widely sourced range of data.
The Preamble to our Constitution—“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…”—establishes a bold mission for the nation, one that is a constantly moving target. Rational land use planning aimed at constructing sustainable resource conservation is integral to the pursuit of a more perfect union. Through meaningful participation and engagement in agency planning, we can all aspire to better stewardship of our nation’s land and natural resources.