Bureau of Land Management

 

 

I’ve attached the numbers (find them in this court document about DOI RIFs).

The numbers for the State Offices seem very large, do those numbers include the field offices? I think “covered employees” mean covered by union agreements (unions are the plaintiffs) but the ratios of covered to non-covered seem to vary widely across states. I wonder if that is real, and what the explanation for these differences is.

Now, you might wonder what TWS’s position is on coal, given that the Miles City Amendment (approved by Director on the 20th) closed off coal leasing.  TWS is pretty open about it, and it’s not very positive.

You might also wonder whether it takes more than three business days to negotiate a high-level job offer.  Further you might wonder why TSM couldn’t have recused herself from this one and let Nada Culver sign it, as she did the Rock Springs RMP.  Perhaps BLM-knowledgeable folks could explain.

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The Center for Western Priorities reported that the Senate voted to pass Congressional Review Act resolutions for the Miles City and North Dakota RMP’s.  We’ve discussed using the Congressional Review Act before here.  The CWP talking point is that it “invites chaos” for Congress to use the CRA.. I’m not so sure about that, and I don’t know why some post-election decisions are being redone administratively and some by the CRA.  If we look at the talking points on Rock Springs, we find “overturns years of public involvement”- a shading of the truth, and the CRA plans “every management plant will be overturned:”

If the Senate votes to rescind these RMPs, the immediate effect will be to void the current management plans for millions of acres of public land. But the consequences don’t stop there.

First, the “substantially similar” clause would bar the BLM from issuing replacement plans that resemble those Congress just overturned, leaving vast landscapes without a modern management framework. The agency might have to revert to decades-old plans — some dating back to the 1980s — written before the rise of GPS, modern wildlife science, or modern mining and drilling technology. These plans are often out of step with today’s realities, creating confusion for ranchers, energy developers, and conservationists alike.

Yet the post-election BLM decision (approved by BLM Director Nov. 20, 2024) in the bill was actually a plan amendment. According to the bill,

This Miles City Field Office RMP Amendment made no acres available for coal leasing and 1,745,040 acres unavailable for further consideration for coal leasing.

The decision was in response to a court order, and required BLM employees to analyze some of the most-bogus numbers I’ve ever been involved in generating… projections of damages from climate change from the output of specific coal mines.  Coal analysis was always very difficult for me as in “we know they’re bogus, the plaintiffs know they’re bogus, the judge probably knows they’re bogus but we have to generate them anyway.”  So this Amendment was only about stopping coal leasing and removing it…keeps the RMP as it was, not creating confusion for anyone.

Here’s the response to the Governor’s Consistency Review from the ROD.

On May 17, 2024, the BLM initiated a 60-day Governor’s consistency review on the publication of the Final SEIS/Proposed RMP Amendment in accordance with 43 CFR 1610.3-2(e). The BLM received a response letter, dated July 16, 2024, from the Governor’s office. The letter identified a recommendation to withdraw the Proposed RMPA/Final SEIS and develop alternatives to consider additional plans, policies, and programs. The letter also identified inconsistencies with State laws, policies, programs and Plans. On August 12, 2024, the BLM Montana/Dakotas State Director responded to the Governor’s letter clarifying how the Final SEIS is consistent, to the extent practical, with state laws, policies, and/or plans. It also addressed the Final SEIS as being responsive to the court order which directed BLM to consider limited leasing and no leasing alternatives and to complete a record of decision by December 3, 2024, and therefore, BLM cannot withdraw the Final SEIS. No changes were made to the Proposed RMPA/Final SEIS.

On the face of it, the court directed the BLM to analyze it, not for the BLM to select the no leasing alternative.

The Governor submitted an appeal to the BLM Director on September 18, 2024, appealing the State Director consistency response. In accordance with 43 CFR 1610.3-2, the Director notified the Governor the reasons for the determination to reject the Governor’s recommendations. A Notice of Availability of the Director response is available in the federal register.

We see a pattern here.. election happens, once and future ENGO leaders make decisions and blow off Governors, and we’re told by some groups that Govs trying to remove the sharp stick in their eyes is a bad thing, either it goes against “decades of public involvement” or it “invites chaos.”  I just hope media folks look into this themselves and don’t simply regurgitate talking points.

 

I’ve gotten interested in the Rock Springs RMP -mostly from news stories like this..from Wyofile which seem to accept a framing of  a) concerns about the RMP were those of ‘conservatives” and b) by redoing it, they are overruling local people.  While all the facts are true (no doubt the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society folks said those things) if you just read the Wyofile story,  you would get a different impression from the Cowboy State Daily story I’ll reference later.

The highly anticipated and unusual redo comes just nine months after the Rock Springs resource management plan was completed in December. That plan set off a firestorm of criticism from conservative critics for being overly restrictive. Now, conservation groups lament that what they considered a widely supported compromise cemented under the Biden administration is at risk of a massive overhaul by the Trump administration.

There was a “widely supported compromise”.. no, there were phone calls from folks in DC.. please! And blowing off the Governor’s concerns (which makes me wonder a bit why is there a consistency review at all?) And not just conservatives were critics.

The BLM’s actions signal a disregard for conservation measures supported by 92% of public comments submitted during the planning process, as well as a majority of a local stakeholders group convened by Gov. Mark Gordon, the Sierra Club noted.

A curious person might wonder how many of those public comments were form letters, and how many of them were clicks on something like “if you don’t want people to destroy federal land…”.  And shouldn’t we be a bit skeptical of what the Sierra Club says about the stakeholders group?  We could look at another story in Western Ag Network and find what the Gov said:

Gordon said stakeholder comments and recommendations helped claw this document away from the BLM’s preferred, absolutely unworkable, Alternative B, which favored conservation over all other uses. Gordon said there is evidence that BLM considered local and cooperative input in places, but chose to force through national agendas in others.

Further,  they seem to be reopening the decision, which I would think means that they haven’t disregarded any “conservation measures” yet.  Like any RMP, it’s a hodgepodge of different decisions at different levels, mostly impenetrable to someone who doesn’t know the area, the process and decisions made in plans, nor the history. Interestingly in the Cowbory State Daily story, Stuble’s statement was specifically:

“The plan incorporates conservation measures supported by 92% of the public comments submitted on the draft plan, plus 85% of the recommendations made by a group of local community members that Governor Mark Gordon assembled to suggest improvements,” according to the statement.

While it’s portrayed as oil and gas folks vs conservationists (e.g. the bad guys vs. good guys), I checked out a letter (note that all the below are comments on the draft, which was changed before the final)  from the renewable industry written by attorneys at . And this one by motorized folks.

This even though nobody knows what the designation of over 1.5 million acres of FO lands as ACEC will mean in practice. Consider a common complaint about ACEC as described by Senator Barasso and his colleagues in a letter to Director Stone-Manning:
… this designation creates more ambiguity around the BLM’s use of ACECs. The BLM national office has no accurate database of ACECs. There is no standard format for reporting information about ACECs within the agency or to the public. The BLM in recent years has used ACECs to restrict recreational demands, obliterate grazing rights, and hinder economic development in lower-income communities. The absence of a standardized format of ACEC data, while the BLM pushes for more land to be designated as ACECs, is already leading to a growing delta of distrust of what this draft RMP could mean for future BLM land decisions.

Further concerns are raised when it is understood that BLM is in the process of implementing a rule that may dramatically redefine what an ACEC is and does. From the Conservation Health Rule (emphasis added):
As part of this rulemaking, the BLM proposes establishing procedures that require consideration of ecosystem resilience, landscape-level needs, and rapidly changing landscape conditions in designating and managing ACECs. The BLM may also revise the ACEC manual and develop an ACEC handbook to integrate the existing rule as well as the changes proposed in this rulemaking, if finalized, into policy. The BLM would thus provide additional guidance for how to incorporate ACECs into resource management decisions in a way that considers trade-offs among environmental, social, and economic values during land use planning.

Since the release of the Draft EIS BLM officials have maintained that the designation of 1.5 million acres as ACEC would not impact any existing recreational opportunities. A September 9, 2023, article in the Cowboy State Daily includes a quote from Kimberlee Foster, field manager for the BLM’s Rock Springs office that captures this sentiment, “The most frustrating thing for us is all of the misinformation out there. We’re not closing any areas to all hunters or people walking their dogs or some of the other nonsense that has been out there.”

I think the motorized folks laid out their concerns very clearly.  They don’t trust the Biden Admin.  And why would they? The political appointees are from, and going back to, organizations that don’t support their uses (except to some extent, renewables, but then why was the draft of concern to renewable folks?). No, this decision doesn’t restrict you, but we’re asking you to buy a land designation pig in a poke from political appointees that are on record as not supporting your uses.

Then I ran across this letter from the Petroleum Association of Wyoming and the Western Energy Alliance:

The reaction to the release of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Rock Springs Field Office (RSFO) draft Resource Management Plan revision (DRMP) and Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) was one of shock that rippled through the state of Wyoming. Stakeholders’ input that had been collaboratively provided for 12 years was discarded. Never before had the BLM selected an extreme conservation alternative as the preferred alternative, one hastily developed in a single week and contrary to the balanced objectives envisioned by those involved in the multi-year stakeholder and cooperating agency process. The public’s reaction to the BLM’s decision was proportional and necessary.

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Sorry to say, when asked to “listen to the science” about a contentious land use issue I always know someone is trying to bamboozle.  We know exactly who made the calls on this one and how much those folks “listened to the people who know the lands best.”

“The plan was a compromise between many different Wyoming communities who have weighed in over the years,” Sierra Club Wyoming Chapter Director Rob Joyce said in a prepared statement. “Now, before the agency even has time to implement [the 2024 plan], we’re being asked to weigh in again. It’s time to listen to the science and to the public and let the plan live.”

Conservation groups also worry about the Trump administration’s promises to expedite actions on federal lands.

“The work behind [the 2024 plan] demonstrated what’s possible when the government listens to the people who know these lands best and operates in a balanced and transparent way,” The Wilderness Society’s Wyoming State Director Julia Stuble said. “There is no reason to redo a plan finalized less than a year ago, after decades of local input,” Stuble said. “Rewriting the plan now, especially through this fast-tracked amendment process, will undercut years of community work and end up excluding the voices of those who live, work and recreate in southwest Wyoming.”

The Cowboy State Daily article quotes State Senator Hicks:

The Biden-era Alternative B blindsided many “cooperators” who had put years of work into an RMP that matched Wyoming’s values, he said.

The cooperators included local and state officials and various stakeholders who worked with the BLM Rock Springs office to draw up a plan that “tried to strike a balance between conservation and multiple use,” he said.

Alternative B came down from the BLM’s top brass, pushing the plan in a direction that many felt was skewed toward “preservation,” rather than multiple use and prudent conservation, he said.

Same information, same state, two different views you’d get from reading the articles.   But the weird thing about this one for me is that we all know the decision came from DC politicals, so I wonder why Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society folks are going out on that particular limb?  They know, we know, they know we know, we know they know we know, and so on.

 

It seems like there are folks out there who are trying to get people worried about things.  I hesitate to call it “fear-mongering” after last time (when I said the land sales dog wasn’t going to hunt), but I think we need to dive in to some of the more histrionic claims.  We disagree and always will about how federal lands should be managed. I just think we need to be honest about the processes and how each Admin deals with getting its own way.  We can also favor a consistent application of process across Admins, and advocate for stopping  the partisanization spiral of doom wherever we see it.

BLM sources tell me that prior to Trump 1, BLM line folks mostly decided on preferred alternatives in RMPs but Trump 1 changed that and politicals made the calls.. This may not be true, so people who know, have at it in the comments.  Then, in the Biden Admin, the local folks were told by phone call by the then-Director and another individual exactly what to do.  I don’t know why those politicals didn’t write it down, as it seems likely we would find out anyway. Perhaps it’s a legal thing? Certainly elections have consequences, so they are entitled to do that, but that’s not the traditional way.  Picking a side might help politicals get their next job, but it’s heck on the career folks and the communities.

Then there’s this comment in Outdoor Life, which is kind of funny given what we have observed with at least the Rock Springs RMP:

“These RMPs aren’t political documents,” they say, speaking only on condition of anonymity. “They’re developed from the ground up, with people who live on and around these public lands helping direct the priorities of the agency. In my view, having a top-down, politically motivated decision like this is absolutely contrary to the local control that most conservatives say they want.”

Here’s a quote from a fellow at the Sierra Club:

Today’s votes set a dangerous precedent for the management of our public lands,” says Athan Manuel, director of the lands protection program at the Sierra Club. “RMPs are carefully crafted plans developed with robust input from local communities, Tribes, and local stakeholders—they’re examples of how our system should work. It’s concerning that House Republicans without expertise or local connections would inject themselves into this process, overrule the people most affected by the plans, and introduce chaos into the management of millions of acres of our most treasured public landscapes.”

Perhaps it was the last Admin’s RMP phone pals who didn’t have expertise or local connections.. just a guess. Maybe some of the House reps are from those districts..  It sounds like someone is saying that the Biden Admin never did what we know they did.  It would have been helpful if the source had not been anonymous; it’s a “former BLM staffer” so conceivably not speaking out of turn.  By the way, here’s the representatives of the Governor’s Task Force who gave recommendations on the Rock Springs RMP:.

And here’s a story on Governor Gordon’s appeal:

Kimberlee Foster, BLM Rock Springs field manager, said Gordon’s appeal will be handled by BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning. It will be Stone-Manning’s call to decide if more modifications are made to the plan based on the governor’s recommendations, or to keep it as is.

What was that about “overruling”  “the people most affected by the plans” again?

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“House members just effectively joined the administration’s efforts to dismantle and undermine federal agencies like the BLM by voting to undo decades’ worth of local planning,” says Justin Meuse, government relations director at The Wilderness Society. “Overturning land management plans in this unprecedented way could throw our public lands into chaos, threatening to expose thousands of permits, leases and rights of way to legal challenge.”

My question is… if the new plans took effect early this year, wouldn’t they just go back to the old plans?  And how many new permits and leases have been issued since then? Also if I remember that once a lease is issued, it has a certain legal standing.

Now, we can imagine that certain members of Congress may take issue with the decisions of several recently-decided RMPs. Perhaps especially those with ROD’s issued after the election.  It was not easy to find them, but it looks like the Rock Springs RMP (discussed here), the Central Yukon Planning Area (11/12/2024). AI generated these:

December 19, 2024	Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments for Utility-Scale Solar Energy Development
January 8, 2025	North Dakota Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement

and the Outdoor Life article included Miles City (12/03/24).

Now the hoopla seems to be about Congress using CRA.  CRA has timelines- which maybe someone can explain because it seems kind of opaque.

So taking this at face value, we have to ask the question:

Why doesn’t Congress just ask the Admin to withdraw the decision and pick another alternative?  After all, that’s what the Biden Admin did with Alaska Roadless, and of all those recent RMP’s it seems likely that the Admin would agree with withdrawing them.

Back to CWP- I still don’t understand how this would affect “every management plan”; and there are valid existing rights.. this seems like quite a stretch.  What am I missing?

As Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Aaron Weiss explains in a new blog post, if courts interpret this action broadly, every management plan written since 1996 could be challenged in court—potentially invalidating oil and gas leases, grazing permits, and threatening public access to trails and campgrounds.

This regulatory limbo threatens not just energy and ranching, but the entire recreation industry that fuels local economies across the West. Without modern management plans, land managers would be forced to revert to outdated frameworks from decades ago, written before today’s recreation economy took off. Outfitters, guides, and businesses that depend on reliable access for rafting, off-roading, and other outdoor activities could face years of uncertainty, permit delays, and costly litigation.

The Senate’s vote could mark the start of a new era of instability for public lands. For a closer look at the potential legal and economic ripple effects, read the full analysis on CWP’s Westwise blog.

It seems to me that those newer plans tend to be more restrictive about (certain forms of) recreation, so I’m not sure about “outdated frameworks.” I can’t say about RMP’s but I’m having a great time recreating on a National Forest with a 1984 plan (and a travel management decision in litigation, I think) so there’s that.

 

 

Forgot to add this one.

First-of-its-kind tool identifies six million acres the Bureau of Land Management could advance for sale

onX and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership today launched an interactive map that identifies lands deemed eligible for potential sale by the Bureau of Land Management. This map is the first publicly available, easy-to-use tool to inform both the public and policymakers about the locations of public land parcels that the federal government could advance for sale.

“Public lands, like those managed by the BLM, support 178.5 million outdoor recreation participants who rely on these landscapes to hunt, hike, fish, off-road, ski, climb, and bike,” said onX CEO Laura Orvidas. “The outdoor community cherishes these places, and has recently fought fiercely to keep them public. Yet the land disposal process has historically been opaque–often buried in hundreds of pages of government documents. We created this map with TRCP to bring transparency to the land disposal process, to inform outdoor enthusiasts of nearby parcels, and to encourage lawmakers to uphold existing policies that safeguard the public interest when considering any land sales.”

This map was developed using publicly available GIS data derived from 160 individual BLM Resource Management Plans in 17 western states. It reveals 6,086,900 acres of public land marked for potential sale.

“For the first time, the public and policymakers can engage with one map that spans most BLM planning areas, and see public land parcels eligible for sale in the context of other landmarks, like towns, roads, and adjoining public lands,” said Joel Pedersen, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “TRCP is proud to partner with onX to share this valuable tool that shows specific locations of land that could be considered for sale like never before.”

The six million acres depicted in the map are not guaranteed to be sold, rather, they have been identified in BLM land use plans as eligible for potential disposal or sale. Identification of lands as eligible for disposal does not trigger immediate action, it means those parcels may be considered for sale if and when a proposal is advanced. Importantly, any future sale must go through a multi-step process that includes additional opportunities for public review and comment. By showing these parcels on a map, the public can more readily participate in any future public process.

Explore the map HERE.

Learn more about the BLM’s land disposal history and current process HERE.

 

Before I link to various news stories, I’d like to raise a few questions from the reporting.

1. The Denver Post story

As head of the BLM, Sgamma, an advocate for oil and gas producers, would manage energy development on public lands, including the U.S. Forest Service.

I don’t think that’s true. Otherwise, why would Mark Rey have told us, when we visited him from the GMUG with an oil and gas leasing decision, “he didn’t want to get a phone call from Dick Cheney.”

2. The Colorado Sun brought up previous director Pendley.

Pendley served as the acting director of the agency for more than a year. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in 2021 sued the BLM over a Pendley-approved BLM resource management plan for western Colorado, arguing the acting director was never formally confirmed to run the agency.

But Nada Culver, Principal Deputy Director, signed the Rock Springs RMP, as we saw yesterday, and she was never confirmed. So is there some kind of delegation of authority that happened for Culver to sign, but didn’t happen for Pendley to sign? If there are delegations of authority, are they posted on a website so we can follow what’s going on? Hopefully our BLM and lawyer friends will clue us in. And if it’s so easy to delegate authority to the non-confirmed, why didn’t that happen in Trump 1.0?

Anyway, back to the stories:

From Greenwire:

President Donald Trump has picked an oil and gas industry advocate to head the Bureau of Land Management, which governs the use of around 245 million acres of federal land in the West. The White House has nominated Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, to be the BLM director, according to Congress.gov. Sgamma’s oil and gas trade group has long advocated for greater industry access to public lands and less regulation of oil and gas and mining interests.

Sgamma is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated political science and policy expert who has never worked for BLM, but has been an unapologetic advocate for oil and gas development on federal land. Her confirmation by the Senate into the position would represent a seismic change in direction for the bureau after the last four years under the Biden administration, during which BLM prioritized developing green energy to combat climate warming.

BLM under the Biden administration was helmed by Tracy Stone-Manning as director and Nada Wolff Culver as principal deputy director. Stone-Manning joined the bureau from the National Wildlife Federation, while Culver came from the National Audubon Society.

Sgamma’s nomination is consistent with Trump’s campaign pledge to tap the nation’s vast oil and natural gas reserves — what he has called the “liquid gold” beneath the ground — and to “drill, baby, drill,” as he put it on Inauguration Day last month.

BLM oversees more than 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate.

Sgamma declined to discuss the matter when reached for comment late Tuesday. An Interior Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The Western Energy Alliance, which Sgamma joined in 2006, supports not only Trump’s plans to increase oil and gas production on public lands, but also unwinding the Biden administration’s restrictions.

Moving from being an advocate to a decision-maker, Sgamma would bring more than 18 years of experience and a detailed understanding of the legal and regulatory mechanics of what it takes to sink a drill bit into BLM land.

Sgamma, and the Western Energy Alliance group she heads, has her fingers on a number of lawsuits and issues currently impacting BLM.

One of the biggest is a federal lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah that challenges one of the Biden BLM’s signature initiatives, the public lands rule, which places conservation on par with oil and gas drilling, grazing, and other uses.

Sgamma served as an adviser during the first Trump administration on an efficiency group, called the Royalty Policy Committee, that debated a wide range of ideas, including streamlining the permitting and review process for drilling on public land. The committee disbanded with many of its potential reforms not implemented.

Sgamma is also a regular witness before numerous congressional committees, often invited by the Republican chairs of the various groups.

Sgamma has long argued the GOP mantra that oil and gas can be produced cleaner in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, in large part due to the vast bureaucratic network of rules and regulations governing drilling activity on federal lands.

I thought this story was interesting in that it points out that Sgamma has never worked for the BLM. So I guess I’m asking whether any Director has ever worked for the BLM? Also I’m not sure that Scott needed to add “GOP mantra” to the last sentence. Isn’t it enough to “argue that oil and gas can be produced cleaner.”

It’s actually an interesting question. Alberta did this study, but Alberta came out fairly high so there’s that.

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From the Colorado Sun:

Early Wednesday, shortly after her nomination was announced on congress.gov, environmental groups started blasting Sgamma, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer in the Persian Gulf War and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“This appointment will hand the keys to our public lands over to oil and gas companies,” said Rachael Hamby, the policy director of the Center for Western Priorities in a statement. “Sgamma will seek to lease every inch of our lands for drilling, no matter their recreational, scenic, ecological or cultural value. Her appointment is a direct threat to Western communities and wildlife that depend on healthy landscapes, clean air, and clean water.”

Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the nomination “an unmitigated disaster for our public lands. She’s a fossil fuel industry hack with breathtaking disdain for environmental laws, endangered species, recreation or anything other than industry profits. It’s hard to imagine how Trump could give a bigger middle finger to America’s public lands. Everyone who treasures the outdoors should oppose her nomination.”

With all due respect to Hamby and her hyperbole, they are not interested in leasing “every inch” because.. there isn’t oil and gas under every inch. Also, in news stories on RMPs, I seem to remember folks arguing that all the best areas had already been leased, so stopping leasing wouldn’t have an impact.