National park boundaries are largely imaginary things, without walls or fences. As a result, what happens on adjacent lands can impact parks, which is one reason there was an outcry over the U.S. Senate's decision, by a party-line vote, to scrap a U.S. Bureau of Land Management regulation intended to give the public a greater voice during that agency's planning periods.

"If you have a BLM land adjacent to the park, what happens to that BLM land doesn’t end at the park border," Eric Bontrager, senior communications manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said Tuesday afternoon. Wildlife and air and water quality inside parks can all be affected by how those BLM lands are managed, he pointed out.

Planning 2.0, the regulation that was scuttled earlier Tuesday by the Senate, was viewed by the BLM and the measure's supporters as a way to improve public involvement in the BLM's Resource Management Plans, and incorporate the most recent data and technology into that planning.

"By implementing these improvements, the BLM endeavors to enhance the way that it involves the public in its planning efforts, including measures to provide earlier, easier, and more meaningful participation," the agency said last year.

But U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, said Tuesday that the regulation was a drag on business and actually hurt local communities.

“This rule emboldened federal bureaucrats and placed special interests ahead of local communities and states in resource management decisions. I am pleased the Senate followed the House in passing this joint resolution to restore decision making power to the people who actually live in these areas. These communities need more say, not less,” he said in a release.

Agreeing with Rep. Bishop was Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, who had introduced the legislation to kill Planning 2.0 in the House.

“I am very pleased the Senate voted today to overturn BLM Planning 2.0. Planning 2.0 was a misguided and damaging attempt by the Obama administration to undermine the rights of state and local governments to manage resources and land use inside their own districts,” Rep. Cheney said. “I was honored to introduce the bill repealing 2.0 in the House, and welcome its passage today in the Senate.”

According to NPCA officials, prior to the regulation's adoption "the public was involved too late in the planning process and given too little sway in how planning decisions were scoped, resulting in imbalanced plans that favored industry over other beneficial uses. As a result, plans were frequently challenged, dragging out land-use planning for years. Planning 2.0 was set to correct these inefficiencies and make the system more efficient by giving the public a stronger voice from the beginning. It added more and earlier opportunities for public input, and improved the ability to consider national park landscapes when planning how to use nearby public lands."

How Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke came down on Planning 2.0 wasn't immediately known, though a year ago he derided the lack of local input the BLM allowed.

"The agency has consistently removed control and consideration from local communities, thereby failing to manage its assets effectively," stated a release from his office in February 2016. "Just last month, Congressman Zinke held a town hall meeting in Malta where over 150 concerned citizens showed up to voice their concerns over the proposed Flat Creek Allotment Change in Use. These same frustrations were echoed regarding Yellowstone National Park's Bison Quarantine Plan. In both scenarios, Congressman Zinke successfully led efforts with Senator Steve Daines to extend the comment period to allow for maximum local input."

"Lack of local input has become a cornerstone of the BLM's operations," then-Congressman Zinke added in the release. "The blame doesn't fall on the agency alone. Congress has passed legislation over the past 80 years that has given the federal government powers that deprive local communities from having a say in these land management decisions. It doesn't matter if it's a grazing permit change-in-use or recreational access -- at the end of the day, those who are impacted the most are not included in the decision-making process. We need to ensure there is not only more transparency behind these decisions, but also adequate time and opportunities for stakeholder participation.

NPCA's Nick Lund, the organization's senior manager for landscape conservation, said Tuesday that the Senate's vote was "a loss for the public and for our national parks."

"Repealing Planning 2.0 needlessly and purposely takes away the public’s voice in how lands and national parks are managed. National parks are only as healthy as their surrounding landscapes, and we strongly believe that the input of the people who live near and use those landscapes is critical to their proper management," he said. "Public land is owned by the public. Stripping away these badly-needed improvements, and preventing them from being implemented again in the future, is the same as stripping away the voice of the American people for how their land should be managed. To us, that is unacceptable.”

There are many interested parties, from local communities and hunters and anglers, as well as national park advocates, who would have benefitted from Planning 2.0 by gaining a greater voice in the RMP process, said Mr. Lund.

“This 2.0 (decision) is frustrating because by all accounts Secretary Zinke should have been given the opportunity to fix the rules the way he wanted," the NPCA staffer said. "He knows how planning works, he has experience around Glacier (National Park) with planning. ... National parks out West are surrounded by a lot of BLM land, and are reliant on how those RMPs are developed.”

At the Sierra Club, Lands Protection program Director Athan Manuel said, “(B)y scrapping this rule, Senate Republicans are telling the American people that fossil fuel companies know better than they do when it comes to our public lands. This is unacceptable. America’s hundreds of millions of acres of public lands must be managed in the public’s interest -- not corporate polluters’."

Also critical of the vote was the Outdoor Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of organizations that include American Whitewater, American Canoe Association, Access Fund, International Mountain Bicycling Association, Winter Wildlands Alliance, The Mountaineers, American Alpine Club, and the Mazamas.

“There were many great things about the 1980’s, but BLM land management rules were not one of them. Like the cassette tape, it was time for those rules to be updated and Planning 2.0 incorporated input from local communities to create more flexible, modern land management," said Adam Cramer, the coalition's executive director.  "Planning 2.0 improved how outdoor recreation would be managed on public lands, and the CRA sends us back to the 80s."

REI officials also were upset with the Senate action.

"The Co-op has long supported policies that protect and expand recreation opportunities on our public lands, and the effort around BLM Planning 2.0 would have been a big improvement," said Marc Berejka, REI's director of government and community affairs. "The updated policy would have allowed for broader public participation in the land management process -- including by those of us who believe that a life outdoors is a life well lived.  We are disappointed that Congress has voted to pull back from this policy improvement.  We hope that policymakers and stakeholders can come together this year to reframe and restore the innovative approach to land management decisions that BLM Planning 2.0 had offered."