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East County News ServicePhoto by Susan Massey: Bighorn rams on Bureau of Land Management property in Ocotillo, adjacent to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
Oct. 28, 2025 (East County) – The Trump administration is proposing to repeal the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule in order to fast-track oil and gas exploration.
The rule protects habitat conservation and restoration. Repeal could threaten wildlife populations including bighorn sheep.
The National Wildlife Federation has launched a petition asking the BLM not to repeal the Public Lands Rule.
Historically, hundreds of thousands of bighorn sheep roamed mountains in the American West, but today only around 50,000 are left across North America. That includes the peninsular desert bighorns, of which only about 800 are estimated to populate deserts from the United States-Mexico border to the San Jacinto Mountains, including around 273 to 500 in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which adjoins BLM land on which bighorn often roam.
According to NWF, “The good news is that bighorn populations can recover when habitats are restored. That’s why the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule is so important.”
It promotes land stewardship practices across millions of acres of public lands, NWF states in a press release.
The release continues, “The Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule is designed to conserve and restore landscapes so that wildlife connectivity and biodiversity is maintained across public lands and beyond. It promotes public-private partnerships so that conservation organizations and other interested parties can take an active role in restoring public lands and waters to benefit communities and wildlife like bighorn sheep -- for example, through the restoration of riparian areas or removal of invasive plants...
“It’s critical for land managers to have the necessary tools to conserve and restore public lands and waters for the benefit of wildlife and people.”
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