ICYMI: During Committee Markup, Heinrich Stresses Need to Advance Conservation Bills and Protect Public Land Roads

WASHINGTON - In his opening statement at a U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee business meeting to examine pending legislation, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the Committee's Ranking Member, stressed the need for the committee to consider conservation bills in its markup agenda.

"I am disappointed that there are no conservation bills under consideration today," said Heinrich. "No bills that would protect even one more acre of public land for our children and grandchildren."

Heinrich also voiced his concerns with S.90, The Historic Roadways Protections Act, which would put the Bureau of Land Management's travel management plans in Utah on hold for decades, sowing chaos to the management of these lands.

During the markup, Heinrich stressed the importance of preserving access to public lands noting the harms of bypassing and gutting processes that the Federal Land Policy and Management Act requires to promote balanced road use and development.

VIDEO: Ranking Member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) delivers opening remarks during a Committee business meeting, February 4th, 2026

"There is no way for the courts to figure out which of these 36,000 miles of potential roads qualify for the grandfathering provision passed by Congress in 1976 in a timely manner."

"So, supporting this bill would effectively halt any agency actions indefinitely," Heinrich noted. "The solution isn't to tie the hands of land managers using the one tool that might actually get us there while we wait another 50 years for federal judges to get us out of this."

A video of Heinrich's opening remarks is here.

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

Thank you, Chairman.

We have twelve bills on our agenda today, many of which I look forward to supporting.

These bills address some important topics for our constituents-safety in national parks, places to bury loved ones, studying sites for future designations.

I am however disappointed that there are no conservation bills under consideration today. No bills that would protect even another acre of public land for our children and grandchildren.

There are conservation bills this committee could consider today, bills whose sponsors asked for them to be included on today's agenda.

Bills that would designate wilderness in Colorado, expand a park in California.

Or bills to establish new historic sites to remember national heroes like Justice Thurgood Marshall and civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy.

Now, I am glad our committee is taking care of the local public lands concerns all our communities have. It's important work.

But in addition to that, I hope our future business meetings can reflect a more balanced agenda that includes the conservation of places that make our states the places we love.

I also want to make one comment on S. 1321, to transfer some land and associated infrastructure from the Department of Energy to Grand County, Utah.

I have no objection to transferring this DOE land.

I do have some concerns about the specifics of how this site would be conveyed while groundwater remediation by the Department of Energy is incomplete.

I hope that we might work on a technical amendment to clarify the standard for completion of remediation before the full Senate considers this legislation.

Would you like me to talk about your R.S. 2477 legislation now, or?

Chairman Lee: It's up to you, I don't believe we have a quorum present yet.

Ranking Member Heinrich: Okay. I'll go ahead and do that now.

This bill seems simple on its face: Pause administrative actions until the courts can adjudicate some claims. But the problem is that these aren't just any claims.

At issue are more than 12,000 individual roads and two tracks totaling nearly 36,000 miles.

That's literally enough roadway to get from here to San Francisco and back 12 times over, or circle the Earth and get halfway around again.

And all of these ways are in just one state alone.

There is no way for the courts to figure out which of these 36,000 miles of potential roads qualify for the grandfathering provision passed by Congress in 1976 in a timely manner.

So, supporting this bill would effectively halt any agency actions indefinitely.

I also want to talk about why it matters, where roads are, and where they aren't.

As someone who used to be a guide in southern Utah, there's a reason that Congress decided in 1976 that it would no longer be legal for any person to decide to put a road anywhere on our public lands.

Public land roads serve important purposes.

They get people to trail heads and fishing holds. They provide access to neighboring private land. They facilitate energy production and transmission lines.

But they also have consequences and downsides.

Roads fragment habitat. They wash sediment into streams. They allow invasive species to spread.

88% of wildfires are started by human activity, and 95% of human caused fires begin within a half mile of a road.

So, like everything else on public lands, that means that roads need to be a matter of balance.

We need enough roads to get people where they need to go, but not so many that we lose elk habitat and trout streams.

We need access, but not at the cost of more human caused wildfires. Which means that we need to actually plan what roads should stay open and which ones cause more harm than good.

The good news is that FLPMA has provided a way for us to do this.

The BLM is directed to produce resource management plans to balance all of the many uses on public lands, including transportation.

And to do this, the BLM developed travel management plans which help resolve these road claims in Utah.

Those plans incorporated input from everyone who uses public lands, and this bill would put all that work on hold while we wait for federal judges to sort out 36,000 miles of claims on roads that may or may not have existed 50 years ago.

I would love to resolve R.S. 2477, issues once and for all. I've dealt with them for my entire adult life.

But the solution isn't to tie the hands of land managers using the one tool that might actually get us there while we wait another 50 years for federal judges to get us out of this.

So with that, Chairman, I'm going to turn it back to you.

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