We have gotten several emails asking us to address the rule change. We have not formalized our final comments yet. But we are presenting this to help you get started. This comment period spans the holiday season where public participation naturally wanes a bit due to other obligations.

The comment deadline is January 11, 2027.

Submit comments through the Federal eRulemaking Portal. The docket is BLM-2026-0298; the regulatory identifier is RIN 1004-AF53. (See text here)

You can jump to THIS PAGE to find sample comments and a fast action item. 

Webinar and public comments

BLM will hold a public information webinar on Thursday, December 3, 2026, at 5 p.m. Mountain / 4 p.m. Pacific. The session will cover the proposal and rulemaking process, with questions and answers as time allows. Registration is required, and BLM says a recording will be posted afterward.

BLM is proposing to weaken the process that establishes how public land (including wild-horse and burro habitat) are managed.

Published November 10, RIN 1004-AF53 would rewrite BLM’s land use planning regulations under 43 CFR Part 1600. It would remove the automatic Environmental Impact Statement requirement for new plans and revisions, eliminate guaranteed review opportunities, and give the agency greater discretion over public participation. BLM calls this “streamlining.” The public would lose enforceable safeguards.

This is not the separate wild horse and burro regulatory change announced in August, whose proposed text is still awaited. This proposal changes the broader planning framework within which subsequent herd and habitat decisions are made.

The draft for wild horse and burro specific rule changes is expected any day now. 

What would change?

Public participation.

The proposal would eliminate the existing 90-day draft-plan comment requirement for planning efforts supported by an Environmental Impact Statement. Written review periods under the proposed planning procedures would generally have a 30-day minimum, with no more than 60 days total. BLM could even substitute a public meeting for a written comment period. We all know these “meetings” are where they talk at you, never listen.

Even more consequential: the planning rules would no longer guarantee a draft plan. BLM’s own explanation begins, “If the BLM decides to produce a Draft Resource Management Plan or Amendment…” The opportunity to examine a draft would depend on that decision and other applicable requirements, not a guarantee in the planning regulations. BLM would have discretion to decide to even craft and draft or not.

Environmental review.

Right now, BLM must prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement when it creates or revises a land use plan—the blueprint for how public lands will be managed. The proposal would remove that requirement and allow BLM to determine whether a shorter Environmental Assessment, or EA, satisfies its legal obligations. An EIS would remain possible, but the public would lose the guarantee that these foundational decisions receive that level of scrutiny.

NEPA requires federal agencies to examine the environmental consequences of their decisions, but not every decision receives the same level of review. An Environmental Impact Statement is the most detailed, examining significant environmental effects and alternatives through a formal public-review process. An Environmental Assessment is a shorter analysis used to determine whether significant effects (and therefore an EIS) are expected; it can end with a Finding of No Significant Impact. A categorical exclusion allows an eligible action to proceed without either an EA or an EIS because it belongs to a category of actions that normally does not have significant environmental effects. These are different levels of scrutiny, not interchangeable paperwork. Removing the automatic EIS requirement does not erase NEPA, but it opens the door to less extensive review where the agency can legally justify it.

Most of you are used to having only 30 days to comment on a gather EA. So this may sound like more of the same… but it targets a different level of decision-making.

A Land Use Plan establishes the broader framework those actions must follow, including allowable land uses and whether an area will remain designated for wild horses and burros at all. Currently, developing or revising that foundational plan requires an EIS, with at least 90 days to review the draft. This proposal would remove the automatic EIS requirement, eliminate that 90-day guarantee, and make draft plans discretionary under the planning rules. The change is not simply another 30-day gather comment period: it weakens review of the underlying decisions BLM later invokes when it says a gather or other management action “conforms to the land use plan.”

The Herd Management Area Plan, HMAP, that many of you are now familiar with due to our litigation, should fall between these two planning processes. It should be informing the Land Use Plan before any action plan (population growth suppression plan like a helicopter gather) is ever written. It should be providing the LUP with all of the in-depth information necessary on wild horse and burro management. Many of these plans have been illegally delayed by over 45 year (you know that if you follow our court cases). The HMAP is not directly impacted by this specific rule change. But we have every reason to believe it will be gutted in the wild horse and burro specific rule change coming soon. So commenting on both planning changes is important.

Governmental oversight.

The proposal would remove consistency requirements for Tribal plans and other federal agency plans. Governors’ consistency review would drop from 60 days to 30 days, and the appeal to the BLM Director would disappear. Coordination would remain, but those distinct procedural protections would not.

The shell game: “just zoning” becomes the defense

Land use plans are not harmless paperwork. BLM’s Wild Horses and Burros Management Handbook states: “LUPs are the basis for every on-the-ground management decision that the BLM makes.”

Those plans establish the management framework and determine which Herd Areas will be managed as Herd Management Areas. More detailed herd management plans must conform to the underlying land use plan. (The HMAPs we talked about earlier where our litigation has proven in the majority of HMAS, these have been illegally delayed by over 45 years or, in the few that exist, not updated in over 40 years).

Here is the accountability problem.

At the planning stage, BLM can characterize the land use plan as broad “zoning,” with specific actions and their detailed analysis to follow.

Later, when a management decision (the detailed analysis noted above) is challenged, that same land use plan becomes the defense: the action conforms to the established land use framework. 

First, the plan is treated as too general to resolve the consequences. Then it is treated as established direction supporting the decisions that produce those consequences.

That is a shell game: not whether conformity answers every legal question, but whether the underlying management choices ever receive meaningful scrutiny before they become the framework BLM invokes. Removing the automatic EIS requirement and making draft-plan review discretionary weakens accountability precisely where those foundational choices are made. It does not remove their downstream authority.

Why this matters to wild horses and burros

A removal decision does not answer every question about the habitat and management priorities that produced it.

In a nutshell:

BLM could propose ending management of an area for wild horses inside a much larger land use plan (zeroing out an HMA).

Under this proposal, the public would no longer be guaranteed a draft plan to review, and BLM could substitute a meeting for a written comment period where other requirements allow. People following a mining proposal or wildlife-corridor plan might never realize that the same process could decide their local herd’s future.

There would still be a 30-day protest period when BLM publishes its proposed plan, before approval—but only people who had already participated would qualify to protest.

If advocates miss the change, they might not recognize what happened until a later roundup proposal calls for removing every horse.

By then, BLM could say: “The land use plan already settled that. This roundup carries out the decision.” A protest opportunity is not meaningful protection if people do not know their herd is on the chopping block.

Defending wild horses therefore requires defending scrutiny of the land management framework, not waiting until helicopters are scheduled.

The central demand is simple: examine the consequences when the management choice is made. Do not postpone the analysis and then use the resulting plan to defend the choice.

You can jump to THIS PAGE to find sample comments and a fast action item. 

Our team is working hard. 

We need your support to keep our teams engaging lawmakers, our team fighting in the court, our team running in the field covering the roundup schedule.