Comments closed August 14
Defend more than 11 million acres of wilderness study areas
Bureau of Land Management
- What
- The BLM may rewrite rules that shield more than 11 million acres of wild land from mining, drilling, and off-road vehicles.
- Where
- The notice names no place; see the agency’s own words under Case.
- How much
- About more than 11 million acres of Wilderness Study Areas across the American West could lose existing protections against mining, drilling, grazing, and off-road vehicle use.
- Decided
- Comments closed August 14, 2026. No decision document is on file yet.Date from Federal Register ↗, read June 16, 2026.
Where these four lines come from
- WhatOur plain-English read of the Federal Register 2026-11952 ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words under Case.
- WhereThe places and states the notice names, as PLAN read them.
- How muchThe first sentence of our What’s at risk read of the notice; the whole read is under Case.
- DecidedAugust 14, 2026, from Federal Register, the document’s comment close date (federalregister.gov) ↗. Read June 16, 2026. The decision document is the one on file in PLAN’s record.
- Read from PLAN’s record November 9, 2026.
What the proposal said, and what the decision did
No figure from the proposal has been checked against the decision on this fight yet. What the record does hold is the issues ledger below.
No decision document is on PLAN’s record for this fight yet. When the agency’s decision lands, what it answered goes here.
PLAN's read: high threat
The BLM may rewrite rules that shield more than 11 million acres of wild land from mining, drilling, and off-road vehicles.
What’s at risk
If this goes through
Our plain-English read of the official notice ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words below.
In the agency’s own words
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is seeking public comment on potential updates to BLM Manual 6330--Management of Wilderness Study Areas and is interested in receiving information and recommendations regarding whether updates, clarifications, or other revisions to existing Manual 6330 may be appropriate.
Who signs it
The notice names no signer PLAN could read. PLAN names a decision-maker only when the document names one.
The ground
The window has closed, so there’s no watch to set on it here.
The photograph on this page: Desert bighorn sheep in red-rock canyon country. It’s the country this decision sits in, not the site itself. More Than Just Parks.
In court on this ground
This fight isn’t bound to a land unit in PLAN’s record yet, so there are no court cases to show for its ground.
Who holds the vote
PLAN’s record doesn’t tie a member of Congress to this fight yet. The scorecard grades the votes and bills that decide public lands; nothing joins a vote or a bill to this decision, so there’s no member to name here without guessing.
See how your members vote ↗Know an open comment period we are missing, or spotted a wrong deadline? .
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See how your members of Congress vote on public lands
Every representative, graded on the votes that decide the fate of parks, forests, and refuges.
Open ↗The mapSee the places under active threat
A live map of the parks, monuments, and wild country in the crosshairs right now.
Open ↗A wrong fact, a dead link, a form that wouldn’t take your letter: one tap and it comes to the people who build PLAN, with this fight attached.