The U.S. House of Representatives voted late Wednesday to rescind resource management plans on 29 million acres of resource-rich public lands in Montana, Alaska, and North Dakota, an action that likely paves the way for wide-scale energy development but could result in years of chaotic litigation.
A trio of joint resolutions led by House Republicans nullified what are called Resource Management Plans, or RMPs: agency guidelines developed through years of public input and technical evaluations that govern everything from road access to grazing permits to drilling for oil and mining for minerals. These management plans typically direct agency priorities over 15 to 20 years. The House tapped a rarely-used tool, the Congressional Review Act, as the basis to repeal the established agency rules.
Votes to nullify the resource management plans fell mainly along party lines, with all but one Republican voting to repeal the rules. The Montana resolution passed the House 211-208, the Alaska resolution passed 215-210, and the North Dakota resolution passed 215-211. The House resolutions now go to the Senate for concurrence.
North Dakota’s RMP, managing 4.1 million acres of public land, was adopted in January 2025. Alaska’s plan, adopted in 2022, oversees management of 13.3 million acres. The Miles City Field Office’s RMP, directing management of 11.7 million acres in eastern Montana, was approved in 2024.
The House action nullifies RMP rules submitted by the BLM. In its resolution negating the Miles City RMP, Montana Congressman Troy Downing (R), sponsor of the resolution, noted that “This Miles City Field Office RMP Amendment made no acres available for coal leasing and 1,745,040 acres unavailable for further consideration for coal leasing.” Downing did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Miles City Field Office oversees mineral withdrawals in over a quarter of Montana, including the coal-rich Powder River Basin and gas fields in eastern and southeastern Montana. The area’s RMP, which spent years in development, was intended to balance resource extraction with big-game and sage grouse habitat conservation, recreational access, and protections of indigenous sites, says one former BLM staffer who helped guide development of the Miles City RMP.
But the Trump Administration’s “Unleashing American Energy” initiative sets as national policy to “encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters.” In a Jan. 20, executive order, Trump ordered an “immediate review of all agency actions that potentially burden the development of domestic energy resources.”
Presumably the BLM’s Resource Management Plans fell under that “burden,” says the former BLM staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to protect their former colleagues from repercussions.
“These RMPs aren’t political documents,” they say, speaking only on condition of anonymity. “They’re developed from the ground up, with people who live on and around these public lands helping direct the priorities of the agency. In my view, having a top-down, politically motivated decision like this is absolutely contrary to the local control that most conservatives say they want.”
The nullification of the three adopted RMPs follows a similar fate of the controversial Rock Springs RMP in southwest Wyoming. That BLM plan, adopted in December 2024, was intended to guide energy development and resource conservation on about 3.6 million acres of public land, including the ecologically diverse Red Desert, Great Divide Basin, and Adobe Town areas.
The plan was lauded by conservationists for striking a balance between habitat protections for pronghorn antelope, sage grouse, elk, and mule deer while still allowing significant fossil-fuel and renewable-energy developments. But the RMP was one of the first to be struck down by the incoming Trump administration and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who ordered a review of the RMP on his first day in office.
The collective effect of clawing back agency rules that were years in the making could “destabilize land management across the West,” say conservation groups.
A number of distinguished land-use attorneys have urged Congress not to use the Congressional Review Act to upend management plans that follow well-established public-input and review processes. Faculty at the University of Utah’s Wallace Stegner Center caution that congressional use of the CRA “would call into question the hundreds of federal land management plans finalized since Congress enacted the CRA in 1996.”
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“We take no position on the management requirements contained in the three resource management plans,” says John Ruple, a research professor with the Stegner Center. “Our concern is that using the CRA in this manner could call into question thousands of leases, rights-of-way, and management decisions across hundreds of millions of acres of land.”
That chaos, Ruple says, “could spur litigation that would grind land management to a halt and leave all Americans worse off than they are today.”
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