OUR SEDIMENTATION BOXES RUNNETH OVER: PUBLIC LANDS SOIL LAW AS THE MISSING LINK IN HOLISTIC NATURAL RESOURCE PROTECTION

Soil is a critical component of nearly every ecosystem in the world, sustaining life in a variety of ways—from production of biomass to filtering,.buffering, and transforming water and nutrients. While there are dozens of federal environmental laws protecting and addressing a wide range of natural resources and issues of environmental quality, there is a significant gap in the protection of the soil resource. Despite the critical importance of maintaining healthy and sustaining soils, conservation of the soil resource on public lands is generally relegated to a diminished land management priority. Countless activities, including livestock grazing, recreation, road building, logging, and mining, degrade soils on public lands. This Comment examines the roots of soil law in the United States and the handful of soil-related provisions buried in various public land and natural resource laws, finding that the lack of a public lands soil law leaves the soil resource under-protected and exposed to significant harm. To remedy this regulatory gap, this Comment sketches the framework for a positive public lands soil protection law. This Comment concludes that because soils are critically important building blocks for nearly every ecosystem on earth, a holistic approach to natural resources protection requires that soils be protected to avoid undermining much of the legal protection afforded to other natural resources.