Bureau of Land Management

Presidential election has consequences for BLM plan?

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The Rock Springs (WY) office of the BLM has recently released a draft of its resource management plan.  The DEIS includes the traditional four alternatives:  no-change, protection, development, and “balanced.”  As Governor Gordon’s natural resources policy advisor put it, “In this case they kind of broke precedent and chose (alternative) B, the most resource-restrictive development.”  A retired BLM employee has alleged that presidential politics played a role.

The most balanced plan for managing millions of acres of federal land in central Wyoming — and the alternative that Bureau of Land Management employees and others put the most time, effort and money into — was rejected by the past two presidential administrations, a retired BLM employee said.

The Trump administration likely would have pushed Alternative C because it favors more drilling for oil, he said.

But the Biden administration has gone to the opposite extreme, so the BLM now is pushing forward with Alternative B, which designates 1.8 million acres as “areas of critical environmental concern” (ACES).

Evans said it’s disheartening that two presidential administrations boosted the plans with the least amount of effort put into them.

“The science and the work to do that was all done on D,” Evans said. “And it’s kind of a shame that what the people in the field office and the cooperators spent all that time doing was rejected.”

Now many of those same BLM insiders who worked for years and spent millions of dollars fleshing out a balanced alternative instead have to push the administration’s preference and sell it to Wyoming residents and officials.

The State of Wyoming is considering suing over the plan (even though is not final yet).  Road management and minerals are key issues.

Based on my experience, I would agree that there may not be a precedent for selecting the most resource-restrictive land management plan alternative .  I also have not seen this level of direct political involvement in picking an alternative in Forest Service planning.  Typically in the Forest Service, any political “wants” would be built into the “balanced” alternative that would end up being selected.  Please let us know if anyone has had a different experience.  (Maybe this is a result of the different structures and cultures of the Forest Service and BLM.)
I have mixed feelings about this approach, where all but one are essentially straw alternatives.  Legally, all action alternative must be given equal treatment in the effects analysis, but that doesn’t preclude more serious thought being put into to the design of one alternative.   If one of the others is actually selected it would create the problem the employee described here – it has to be prettied-up at the end of the process.  I think it is important to meaningfully evaluate all reasonable alternatives, but there is a difference between “reasonable” meaning “what would meet the purpose and need” and “reasonable” meaning, “what the agency could realistically select.”  I think what is missing from public disclosure is the actual iterative alternatives that are considered in building the preferred alternative.
On October 9, the BLM extended the public comment period to January 17.  I guess that would buy them more time to refigure out the details of this alternative, or as they point out “In any resource management planning process, the final plan may mix and match portions from all the alternatives.”   “Rebalancing” them I suppose.

House of Representatives v. BLM – monuments and the public lands rule

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Grand Staircase – “visitutah.com” (Larry C. Price)

Dismissal of a lawsuit against President Biden’s proclamation restoring the boundaries of the Grand Staircase and Bears Ears national monuments allows the NEPA process to develop a management plan for these areas to proceed unhindered.  Biden ordered the BLM to work on replacing the Trump Administration’s resource management plan, and the BLM published its draft RMP on August 11 for public comment.

BLM may proceed unhindered, that is unless Congress decides to hinder them.  The FY2024 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Bill the House Appropriations Committee passed in July, which the full House of Representatives is expected to vote on in September, includes a rider that would require the BLM to manage the Grand Staircase NM in accordance with the plan finalized after Trump reduced the monument.

Which is the better planning process – RMPs based on public involvement through NEPA or RMPs based on appropriations riders?

The bill would also deny funding to implement the BLM’s public lands rule (a popular topic with many posts here from Sharon).  Another bill would force BLM to withdraw the rule (without considering all those public comments).

Kya Marienfeld, wild lands attorney for SUWA, called the Utah congressional delegation’s lack of support for the state’s public lands disappointing but adds that opposition is offset by more enlightened members of Congress who actively support the Grand Staircase and other public lands.

Appropriation riders seem to be kind of crap-shoot in the turmoil of budget negotiations, so I have no idea what the betting line would be on President Biden signing off on this one.  The “more enlightened members of Congress” may have more of an influence on defeating the withdrawal proposal.  Is that a bad thing?

 

 

BLM Range Whistleblower and Potential Risks of Bundy-Phobia

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he Rio Grand River flows on Feb. 16, 2022, near Monte Vista. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

The Denver Post had an intriguing story  about a BLM whistleblower:

Melissa Shawcroft, who has been a BLM rangeland management specialist since 1992, is facing a two-week unpaid suspension after her supervisor disciplined her over discourteous emails and a failure to follow rules. Shawcroft is arguing that the discipline is retaliation for her insistence that the Bureau take action to stop area ranchers from trespassing by allowing their livestock to graze on BLM property without permits.

The illegal grazing has gone unchecked for years on the nearly 250,000 acres she manages and her pleas for enforcement, which must be authorized by her supervisors, have gone unheeded, she said. Shawcroft has documented damage to the land and riverbanks and has heard repeated complaints from ranchers who pay to use BLM land.

The way the above sentence is written it sounds as if illegal grazing has gone on on all 250K acres. This seems unlikely.

“I’m sick and tired of them telling me it’s my job to solve the problem when I don’t have the authority to do it,” Shawcroft told The Denver Post. “I jabbed at them and they fired back.”

The Bureau has the power to impound livestock or levy fines, but managers are timid because they fear another armed standoff similar to the ones led by the Bundy family in Oregon and Nevada, Shawcroft said. In 2014 in Nevada, Cliven Bundy, his family and an armed militia organized a standoff with federal agents who had come to round up the rancher’s cows that were illegally grazing on federal land.

“They come right out and tell me we don’t want another Bundy situation,” Shawcroft said.

Steven Hall, the BLM’s Rocky Mountain communications director, said the agency does not comment on personnel issues, but the agency takes unauthorized grazing seriously and is adopting measures to better enforce the rules, he said.

Under federal law, livestock may graze on Bureau of Land Management property when a rancher holds a permit authorizing the land use. Permits are passed down through families and rarely become available for purchase.

The permits determine how many cattle, sheep or horses a rancher can place on federal land and which months the animals are allowed to feed on it. Those rules protect the land from overgrazing and give grass, brush and water time to recover throughout the year.

Shawcroft manages rangeland along the Rio Grande River where property on the east side is private and cows and horses are crossing the river to the federally-owned Rio Grande Natural Area on the west side, she said.

If it’s true that BLM managers said that.. is Bundyism (fear of armed conflict) a real thing, or an excuse?  Reminds me a bit of the FS claiming escaped prescribed burns were due to climate change.  Bundys are a thing. Climate change is a thing.  But both things can also be used as excuses for not doing better.  When we read these things, we need to think about which is which.

Interestingly, the ones who are most irritated are .. other ranchers.. who apparently are not going All Bundy on the law-breakers.

Area ranchers who pay for the permits are complaining that law-breakers are ruining the land for their livestock. It’s such a problem that “chronic livestock trespass” was on the June agenda for the BLM’s Rocky Mountain Resource Advisory Council meeting.

At that meeting, Dario Archuleta, the acting field manager for the BLM’s San Luis Valley field office, said there is a “fine-tuned administrative process they believe will be vastly more effective than the criminal approach,” according to minutes from the meeting.

Archuleta told the meeting’s attendees that the process for impounding livestock is lengthy and complicated and that courts have been lenient on violators.

The BLM has assigned up to 14 employees to address unauthorized grazing through site visits that require a minimum five-hour time commitment, including travel, Hall told The Denver Post.

The agency also has implemented a new GIS tracking tool to collect data such as identifying livestock and the improved documentation has resulted this year in trespass notices being issued, Hall said.

Shawcroft is represented in her complaint by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a non-profit that works with public employees who want to point out government wrongdoing.

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The Bureau of Land Management named Shawcroft its range management specialist of the year in 2012 and she’s only had one other disciplinary action taken in her 31-year career, Jeff Ruch, PEER’s Pacific director said.

“She doesn’t mince words and apparently some of her male supervisors took offense,” Ruch said. “The idea that you’re being hit with a heavy sanction when you use words like ‘gumption’ in an email strikes me as an overreaction.”

Now, having been involved in a variety of different personnel difficulties, I am sympathetic to everyone involved, and especially the HR and Labor Relations who I’m sure are trying to sort things out. I wonder what the maleness of (some) supervisors has to do with it. Perhaps this is intended to imply that male employees can get away with more acerbic statements? Curious.

Here’s what PEER says:

On July 28, 2023, Melissa was served with a proposed 14-day suspension without pay for a series of four emails dating back to December 2022 in which she expressed consternation at BLM’s hands-off posture on grazing trespass. In one email, she questioned the agency’s lack of “gumption” and in another whether the agency would “live up to the task of taking care of our resources.” For those emails, she is charged with “discourteous” behavior.

IF this is all it is.. I would say I have read many snarkier emails in the FS about FS activities. On the other hand, when it comes to personnel issues, there are at least two sides to every story.

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Why Monuments and Not National Conservation Areas? More Monument-al Reflections

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A few quotes and reflections about Monuments. In some sense, they seem more about politicians getting credit from supportive groups, rather than good things happening on the ground. And those experienced with BLM processes please correct me if I’ve gotten some things wrong.

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First of all, there’s kind of a philosophical question about “protection.” If there are the many wondrous things talked about, say, in a Monument proclamation, then existing laws and regulations must have already protected them, so no biggy, really. To protect archeological sites on far-ranging areas like 1.1 mill acres, you probably need more law enforcement. The same groups that work so hard on Monuments (I’m talking big NGOs) could easily fund those kinds of collaborative efforts.

So if we go by the rhetoric, then there are unspecific future things that could be proposed, that we need to keep from happening before they are proposed, because we can’t trust existing statutes, regulations and processes to protect the environment. And the environment in this place is more important than elsewhere, for various reasons.

So what is this desire to Monumentize really about? For the Prez, it could just be politics as usual, rewarding friends with a frisson of punishing enemies (Utah is right next door to this one). But that’s not entirely it.

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I ran across an article in the Wall Street Journal about a rich person named Elaine Wynn in Las Vegas and the Basin and Range National Monument. This story is about Congress, but the principle’s the same..important ($) people want Monuments.

She has remade herself as a world-level art collector and a force in public art, supporting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and using her influence to help create a national monument designation to protect land around Michael Heizer’s City—a 1.25-mile-long earthwork sculpture in Nevada. She has taken her work in Nevada education to the national level: She is chairman of Communities in Schools, which provides resources to disadvantaged children. It recently received a surprise $133 million gift from MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife.
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Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, says Wynn was a key figure in the 2015 creation of Basin and Range National Monument, which protects the 704,000 acres surrounding Heizer’s City. President Barack Obama approved the designation. “When [Elaine] started making calls to Congress,” Govan says, “somehow I was received in a different way.”

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Let’s also look at this op-ed from the Durango Herald by an outdoor businessperson from last Friday.

“There is a new community-led movement for the president to designate the Dolores River Canyon Country as a national monument, which would open new avenues for local economic growth, increase resources to thoughtfully manage these wildlands and deepen the quality of life in our community. We believe that a landscape-scale national monument would open the door to better management and conservation, and provide additional resources to land managers to accommodate for sustainable recreation and continued access.”

Hmm. “New avenues for local economic growth”- what does that mean exactly? More people coming to town? But the area is overcrowded already. And as we’ve seen with the San Gabriels, a Monument does not necessarily come with more funding attached. I don’t know about “deepening the quality of life” but in other parts of Colorado, more people does not actually deepen the quality of life. And again, the author says “provide additional resources to land managers.”

I see several problems with this thinking. 1. More growth and people is not necessarily better, not if it leads to housing problems, etc. 2. Monuments need Monument plans, which distracts managers from.. actually managing (and reopen disagreements, which doesn’t necessarily “deepen the quality of life” at least not for the people involved). 3. Even if they did get additional resources, would the new number of bodies outstrip the new resources? and 4. Even if they did get more resources, as new Monuments pop up everywhere, they will be competing with each other and who is to say that a Dolores River Monument would beat out Chimney Rock, Brown’s Canyon, or Canyon of the Ancients, or Bears’ Ears or ..

Another interesting part of the op-ed is this..

Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper are leading the way to protect the Dolores River Canyon County, and have introduced legislation to designate a National Conservation Area to protect nearly 68,000 acres of the river corridor through Ponderosa Gorge. We are very supportive of this legislation and urge the senators to do anything they can to ensure it becomes law. However, the legislation does not encompass the entirety of the watershed, and politics in Congress are so uncertain that there may not be a viable path for the bill to become law.

If you take a look at the bill, it tends to have the same feel as a Monument; it is in fact very detailed about what’s in and what’s out. It has a FACA committee to be established within 180 days.. good luck with that! It’s got motorized travel only on existing routes, no new temp or permanent roads except for public health and safety, yes to grazing, but withdrawals from future minerals (401b). Uranium crops up again..

(1) IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this title affects valid leases or lease tracts existing on the date of enactment of this Act issued under the uranium leasing program of the Department of Energy within the boundaries of the Conservation Area.

UPDATE: BASED ON CORRECTION FROM TSW READERS

So there are National Conservation Areas.  Congress gets NCAs, the Prez gets Monuments.  One can imagine if political friends of an Admin want this kind of thing, it’s much easier to get.. just a stroke of a pen (OK, so obviously they do talk to some people in advance).   But of course, as with NCA’s, first they make the decision about what’s in and out, and then have public comment and an EIS on any decision space left. Which kind of leaves the impression.. yes, NEPA is superimportant, as is public involvement, including marginalized communities.. but not for really important decisions.

It seems like an advantage of Monuments that they can do some Service-First-y things with the FS; whereas I don’t know how they handle FS land in and around NCAs.

But anyway, for now, just for the BLM, we have a variety of conservation designations – Monuments, ACECs, NCAs, Wilderness, and WSAs. Perhaps other citizens find this to be needlessly confusing? And there’s more encouragement of ACECs in the proposed BLM public lands rule.

If I were elected President (a candidate of the Good Governance Party), I’d ask the Secretaries to make a table of all the existing protected area designations on the Forest Service and BLM. The table would include what activities are allowed and which not, with maps. For each specific area, I’d ask how much funding went to work within those areas. Then I think Admins and Congress would have a better picture of the whole array of land restrictions, and where the bucks actually get to the ground. I’d also think that some of these designations could be fitted into simplified bands across the FS and BLM as to what activities are in and out, to increase public understanding of, and perhaps make it easier to enforce, the rules designed to protect from impacts.

BLM’s Landscape Intactness Index- Another National Mapping Exercise

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The second paper cited in the BLM Public Lands Proposed Rule is called “A Multiscale Index of Landscape Intactness for the Western United States.“.

Landscape intactness has been defined as a quantifiable estimate of naturalness measured on a gradient of anthropogenic influence. We developed a multiscale index of landscape intactness for the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) landscape approach, which requires multiple scales of information to quantify the cumulative effects of land use. The multiscale index of landscape intactness represents a gradient of anthropogenic influence as represented by development levels at two analysis scales.

So “intactness” is a measure of “naturalness”.

To create the index, we first mapped the surface disturbance footprint of development, for the western U.S., by compiling and combining spatial data for urban development, agriculture, energy and minerals, and transportation for 17 states.

One interesting thing about this is that it’s not just for BLM it’s for all lands, including FS. You can look at it here or download as a Google Earth file (KML).

The multiscale index of landscape intactness is designed to be flexible, transparent, defensible, and applicable across multiple spatial scales, ecological boundaries, and jurisdictions. The standardized index is intended to serve as one of the proposed core metrics to quantify landscape integrity for the BLM Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring program. The multiscale index is designed to be used in conjunction with additional regional- or local-level information not available at national levels, such as invasive species occurrence, necessary to evaluate ecological integrity.

It wasn’t easy for me to find exactly how it was calculated. It also looks like the data were collected between 1999 and 2014.  Conceivably in the last 10 years some places developed due to mining or renewable or other energy resources that have since been built out or are permitted to do so.

If I were going to generalize about the current fashion for mapping exercises, what they seem to have in common is:

1) Not being clear at the beginning exactly what the purpose is.. for what kinds of decisions, made at what scales, during what time period?

2) Not involving stakeholders in the development of the mapping exercises, including the development of  specific  measures and how to merge them into indices.

3) Not clear as to whether it’s a one-time thing or there is a plan to update for real-time decision making

3) Not ground-truthing before use

4) Ambiguousness about what they are to be used for and when.. need to be “supplemented by local knowledge” but can be used for “broader scale policy issues”.  Inquiring minds would like to know how information can be useful for broad-scale policy issues without being accurate at the ground level.

and

5) Not coordinating with many extremely similar-sounding exercises by other agencies and NGO’s. Even a simple explanation of why this one is needed, given the other ones would be useful.

To get people to trust, it’s all about transparency and accountability.  The steps I outlined above are not difficult.  It’s a bit head-scratchy as to why the USG, in particular, doesn’t seem to think these steps are important.

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Thinking about other efforts, I think about Pew’s and Conservation Science Partners’ mapping of “ecological value” ideas that came from the conservation science community..

We define ‘ecological value’ as the potential for a given location on the landscape (i.e., a pixel in a gridded landscape raster) to contribute to crucial ecological processes such as supporting biodiversity and connectivity and buffering organisms against the impacts of climate change through carbon storage and accessibility of favorable climate  conditions. This concept is related to that of ‘conservation value,’ as used by Dickson et al. (2014), but does not directly incorporate social/political aspects of conservation such as the proportion of an ecosystem type currently protected.

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Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but what if we jointly decided with stakeholders what was important to protect .. “integrity” vs “conservation value” and so on, and then mapped (on all lands) whatever that was,  as a joint project with local folks  ground-truthing. Oh, and decided what were the threats in that location, and how best to protect from those threats.  Hmm. that sounds like an ideal of RMPs or Land Management Plans.  I’m not a fan of the current processes, but I do like the locus of control.

Threats to the BLM Sagebrush Biome: Cheatgrass and Conifers; Cheatgrass and Fire in the Mohave Desert

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The proposed BLM Public Lands Rule regulation included two citations to papers.  I decided to take a look at them and see what helpful info I could glean from them. They are both DOI (USGS) products.

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The first one is called “A Sagebrush Conservation Design to Proactively Restore America’s Sagebrush Biome,”  with a bunch of authors and prepared in cooperation with WAFWA and the USFWS. I’m assuming it’s a bird-o-centric view. Still, they are talking about ecological integrity.

These ongoing and anticipated losses in areas of high ecological integrity have been driven primarily by the incursions of invasive annual grasses across the three ecoregions (fig. 12). By 2020 (the final year examined), more areas were moderately or highly threatened by invasive annual grasses than in any year prior, including more than one-half of the Southern Great Basin region. A sudden increase relative to 2016 (the penultimate year examined) was particularly pronounced in the Great Plains region, although none of this region had been deemed high risk. The threat of conifer expansion into the no to low category showed an increase compared with that of 2001; however, expansion into this category held steady from 2016 to 2020, especially in the Intermountain West and Southern Great Basin regions. The team also documented infill of conifer stands, showing an increase in the areas classified as high or very high risk, especially in the Intermountain West region. The footprint of human modification remained relatively constant over time within regions, but the footprints varied considerably across regions—for example, more than 90 percent of the Southern Great Basin region remained at no to low risk by 2020 compared with only 60 percent of the Great Plains region remaining at this level.

From the summary:

Given the number of threats, the scale at which they operate, and the dispersed authority and responsibility to regulate and address threats, this effort may take an almost unprecedented degree of cooperation and collaboration, a bold vision, and ambitious goal setting. To date, substantial investments in collaborative efforts to remove conifers expanding into sagebrush plant communities by Oregon’s SageCon partnership, the Sage-Grouse Initiative, and the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative have matched the rate of loss to conifer expansion within the Great Basin (Reinhardt and others, 2020).
The results in this study indicate that a similar focus could allocate limited conservation resources to where and when they have the highest probability of achieving desired uplift, which the design can inform.

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From this paper, a person could develop a regulation that would

  1.  Encourage collaborative work with other agencies and local collaboratives to reduce impacts. States and Tribes are important partners, involved in the development of any regulation (not at the comment period).

2. Since  invasives are a big problem, drawing a line around an area and keeping people out is unlikely to move towards ecological integrity. Same with those pesky conifers.

3. Invasives also change wildfire frequency, and  different grazing techniques can be used to reduce fire danger.

It’s hard for me to see that mapping “intactness” which doesn’t take into account the threat of invasives, determining what is “land health” for other activities, or conservation leasing will help with any of these problems. On the other hand, if you want to keep people out and let whatever happen, that’s fine too, but it’s not promoting biodiversity, natural range of variation nor probably carbon.

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A Joshua Tree is seen as the York fire burns in the distance in the Mojave National Preserve on July 30, 2023.
(David Swanson/
AFP via Getty Images)

We’ve seen a bit of this with the current fire in the Mojave National Preserve, burning up Joshua Trees.

Interesting story on a fire in the Mojave National Preserve and the Joshua Trees from the LAist.

More than 77,000 acres of desert landscape have burned over the past few days in the York Fire, the largest on record for the Mojave National Preserve, as high temperatures and strong winds drove flames across the border into Nevada on Sunday.

Flames up to 20 feet tall have been spotted as the fire has torn through mixed desert scrub, yucca, pinyon juniper, and invasive plants like red brome, all of which saw a lot of growth during the recent wet winter.

“I was just driving through that area a week or two before the York Fire and thought ‘This place is going to burn.’ There’s just fuel everywhere,” said Debra Hughson, deputy superintendent of the preserve.

Fires like this have long been rare in Mojave desert ecosystems, with some estimates putting the fire return interval at every couple hundred years. Now, they’re becoming a feature of the landscape, increasing in frequency and jeopardizing the recovery of native species, including Joshua trees. Just a few years ago, the nearby Dome Fire burned more than 40,000 acres and destroyed more than 1 million of the famous trees.

“Fires this big are really a game changer in the desert,” said Todd Esque, research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The role invasive species are playing

Invasive species including red brome, cheatgrass and Sahara mustard are helping drive the new fire regime. The weeds thrive in the desert environment, filling in the space between Joshua trees, carrying the fire from one tree to the next. And after fire clears things out, the invasive species quickly move back in.

“They burn every 10 years, which happens in some places where there’s Joshua trees now, because of weeds…now it’s just a straw-colored two dimensional landscape of rolling hills,” Esque said.

A pullback on grazing in this area of the Mojave has led to an increase in the growth of native vegetation as well, with grasses like big galleta also carrying fire.

Joshua trees aren’t really all that adapted to withstand fire. They can re-sprout from their roots after burning, but that’s not always the case if the fire’s too intense.

Even if they do pop back up, their growth rate of roughly three centimeters per year is quite slow, meaning the landscapes we’ve long grown fond of are likely not coming back, at least in our lifetimes. They could take more than a century to repopulate — assuming they do at all. That’s because hotter temperatures and longer droughts, punctuated by frequent fires in the era of climate change, make regrowth more difficult.

The fire is also burning through critical habitat for the desert tortoise, which is listed as a threatened species.

 

IMBA on Proposed BLM Regs: Flawed Process, BLM Has Not Made Case, Concerns Over Conservation Leases

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I was alerted to this comment letter  by this Colorado Public Radio article and the headline : “What do ranchers, oil producers and bike groups have in common? They all want a say in new federal land management rules.”  Bike groups was a new one, so I decided to take a closer look.

Note: if you work for an NGO who submitted comments, please post them on your website. This makes it easier for us to hear your thoughts!

Here’s a link to the IMBA letter.  I thought they did a great job on the letter so I recommend reading the whole letter. I’ve pulled out a few sections that I think are both important, and agreed upon by many groups in the other letters I’ve read, from traditional user groups, renewables folks, the PLF and others.

IMBA Says Process is Flawed

The Proposed Rule is far too vague and undefined in its current form. If the BLM is asking general questions such as how to name new programs, what program duration and terms
should be, what areas should be eligible, what actions should be allowed, and many more questions; this indicates the BLM has not fully developed the proposed rule. What the BLM
ultimately incorporates in the final rule, after considering public comments, will be completely unknown to the public. This is an inappropriate process. This reiterates the need for the BLM to take these public comments into consideration and develop a final draft proposed rule or supplemental draft for comment. While we understand that timing is important and delay is not ideal, the BLM has stated that this is a once-in-a-generation conservation rulemaking opportunity. Therefore the BLM should ensure it gets this right. Oppositional lawsuits and legislative blocking will delay it to a greater extent and if the public does not support the outcome, that will erode public trust.

The proposed rule should have clarified the full range of actions being presented under the proposed rule so that the public can comment on them rather than answer the questions the
BLM has posed. Having the next iteration of the rule be a final rule is an improper way to handle this comment period. The public will not have the opportunity to view and provide feedback on what others may have presented and how the BLM incorporated it, which could lead to unnecessary lawsuits and a poorly considered Rule. The clarification of a supplemental Draft Rule would ensure transparency and predictability for the public and help avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations of the framework.
Recommendation:
1. The BLM should provide the public with the next iteration of a proposed rule–a supplemental draft or final draft–which incorporates the public comment from this period.
2. We recommend the BLM err on the side of extra public involvement.

I agree with this observation and recommendation. Not only that, I think most of the Groups With Concerns, that is 1. Grazers 2. PEER 3 PLF 4 Renewables Folks and 5. Oil and gas and miners would probably agree.

IMBA Doesn’t See the Case Being Made

Here they sound surprisingly like me, except quite a bit more articulate.

Recommendation:
1. According to the Federal Register Rulemaking process, the BLM must demonstrate the need for the Rulemaking and that the Rule will garner the intended outcomes or the Rule is invalid. The Proposed Rule needs to be more clear why this rulemaking is the necessary solution and more importantly why current regulations are not sufficient in achieving this despite the “ample authority and direction”.
2. What barriers stand in the way of using the existing tools? How will the new framework proposed in the Rule resolve barrier, considering current staff and budget shortfalls.
3. Please provide greater detail on why existing tools are failing the BLM.

IMBA Has Concerns About Defining Non-Use to Be Use

We assume this to mean that the use, in this context, is intended to be a “lack of use.” We find it hard to support the inclusion of protection being considered a use but employed as a lack of use.”

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Our recommendation:
1. Instead, the Final Rule should seek to ensure that conservation is an actionable management practice to weave throughout all management decisions via mitigation and restorative activities, and the outcome of these actions is land and important resource protection. Conservation as a use in the context of the rule should be about restoration and improvement activities that can often coexist alongside other uses as intended by FLPMA and the multiple use mandate. Effective protection is inherently less capable of coexisting with other uses. Protection relies upon lack of use.
2. Mountain biking is an appropriate use of public lands. It does not need to be allowed everywhere to achieve that, but under FLPMA’s multiple use mandate, mountain biking use can be compatible with resource conservation and intact landscapes.

IMBA Has Concerns About Leases Leading to Privatization

Is the term “conservation lease” the best term for this tool?
IMBA believes the Lease program should be renamed the “Restoration Lease” program and focus its efforts on restorative actions. Leases should not be used to prevent action or prevent use (see comments above). Leases should only be issued to entities for projects that result in direct improved conditions. Leases should not be issued to entities who plan only to protect existing conditions by preventing action/use. That is a slippery slope to privatization.

 

 

BLM Proposed Rule Update- Rumors, FS Response to My Questions And a Snippet from a CPR Story

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Many thanks to folks who have sent in comment letters and news stories! There seems to be a full-court press by the Powers That Be on this one. I will stay with this one and provide updates.

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Rumors

Reports are that BLM Director Stone-Manning is concerned that (some) current employees are less than supportive of the Proposed Reg.  I don’t know if they had employee feedback sessions on the draft.. also rumor has it that some employees heard about it from other Interior agencies first.  The latter is a rumor, I’m only mentioning this here because it’s hard to get documentation of non-support from current employees,and the lack of documentation means the “real” press can’t cover it.  I think a current employee would have to be pretty careful with whom they share their opinions. Media folks can give off vibes that they are on the same team as the Biden Admin, which might make it more difficult for employees to open up.  Anyway, FWIW.   Anyone with better info please contact me.

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FS Response to My Questions

I asked the Forest Service the below questions and the Press Office was kind enough to send a timely reply. It was interesting that despite no formal OIRA review, the Forest Service had reviewed the Proposed BLM Reg.  Apparently while I found inconsistencies, that I outlined in this post, either the FS didn’t or aren’t concerned, or were told not to be concerned..which is good to know.  I sent a similar email question to DOE and have not heard back.  FS definitely wins this one, thanks Press Office!  My questions are in bold.

Did USDA review the Proposed Rule, especially the definition of “conservation” that is different from USDA? (I realize the Proposed Rule did not have OIRA review, but they might have asked you as a courtesy).  If so, may I have a copy or the review? Otherwise I can FOIA it.

In the Proposed Rule, the BLM claims that it cannot respond to its challenges without a mapping exercise around “intactness” and without conservation leases. And yet the Forest Service plans to respond to its similar challenges without these tools. Could the USDA or the Forest Service provide a statement on why the Department or the FS doesn’t feel that those tools are necessary for its work?

Here’s the FS response:

The Forest Service was provided the opportunity to review the proposed rule and we are continuing to review and evaluate its impacts to federal lands. Regarding your second question, through implementation of the 2012 planning rule and our recently announced advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, we will continue to address new and existing challenges. Thanks for your inquiry, and as with any federal document, anyone can submit a freedom of information act request to ensure that proper public document release protocols are followed.

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An interesting article on Colorado Public Radio..definitely takes the political angle. but has interesting info.

Here’s a quote: “The concepts and the direction in this proposed rule arise out of years of BLM experience in implementing FLPMA and working with public land users on the ground,” said Culver. I’m not sure that’s true, although a BLM career person in Colorado I know from my past FS work assured me that his own ideas were in it and he had a hand in writing it.  Here’s another section of interest..

Many lawmakers dinged BLM headquarters for not holding hearings in rural areas of the West.

Colorado State BLM Director Doug Vilsack, and other state directors, did travel around talking with stakeholders about the draft.

His message was simple: this is only a starting point. And their suggestions would be important to change it for the better.

“Please get beyond your first reaction to this,” he said. “And look at the words in the rule. And tell how they can be changed. Cause I don’t think there is much debate about the need for actual guidance in how we do conservation in BLM.”

Mr. Vilsack apparently has only worked for the BLM since last July (2022), previously having worked for the State of Colorado.  So he must be on a pretty steep learning curve about what there is a debate about. I think there is, in fact, a debate, a rather noisy one in fact. BLM folks said the same thing at our Denver meeting, that they had spoken to stakeholders about the draft. The problem with this is that it isn’t documented- so if you are a stakeholder and weren’t spoken to.. as people at the meeting I spoke with had not been, you would get the feeling that some stakeholders count, and you aren’t one of them. It doesn’t engender trust.

My Comment Letter on Proposed BLM Rule: Comments Due Today!

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I promise that this will be the last post on the BLM Proposed Rule for awhile. 

Here’s a comment letter I’m submitting.. feel free to use any parts you’d like.  Apologies for the formatting. 
Today is the last day for comments.

Here’s the link to post your comment.

Comment Letter- Proposed BLM Rule

I am (give your background). Here are my comments:

  1. Process

This Proposed Rule would work better as an ANPR than a proposal.  Similar to the Forest Service ANPR related to mature and old-growth, this effort works better as an information-gathering exercise than a rule-making.

Public

  1. Coordination with States has been lacking. States are key to the success of conservation.
  2. Public meetings in restricted areas
  3. Supposed outreach via field managers not transparent
  4. Tribal consultation not clear.

Agencies

  1. Other federal agencies need to weight in, OIRA review recommended. DOE and USDA have key intersecting responsibilities.

NEPA

  1. This effort requires more than a CatEx, preferably an EIS, when the alternatives are more fully fleshed out.

 

  1. Terms That Should Be Clarified and Harmonized With Partner Agencies

Definitions From the Proposed Rule:

Conservation means maintaining resilient, functioning ecosystems by protecting or restoring natural habitats and ecological functions.

Protection is the act or process of conservation by preserving the existence of resources while keeping resources safe from degradation, damage, or destruction.

Restoration means the process or act of conservation by assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.

If conservation means only protecting and restoring, that does not fit with definitions such as that of USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service.

“The protection, preservation, management, or restoration of natural environments and the ecological communities that inhabit them. Conservation is generally held to include the management of human use of natural resources for current public benefit and sustainable social and economic utilization.”

Now, recreation is one of the traditional multiple uses, so might not be included in the new term of conservation.  Conceivably a trail used by humans on foot, horseback, bicycles, e-bikes, or motorized vehicles would not fit into the new term “conservation”.

Intactness

  The claim is made that areas can be identified and “protected”- although it is not clear from what they are to be protected; since they are currently unprotected and are qualifying as intact.  Presumably from oil and gas, and not from renewable energy, strategic minerals, new recreation projects, invasive species, wildfires, nor climate change.  Intactness is a word that is not used by the Forest Service and would be new to them and to other partners.  Plus the idea of mapping it would be more work for BLM employees.  If it’s intact now, it must have been adequately “protected” in the past.

It seems to me also that the BLM should clarify its priorities by identifying renewable and strategic minerals sites before any intactness analysis is done. Otherwise employees will be analyzing at potential cross-purposes and industry partners may be wasting their time and delaying the energy transition.

  1. III Conservation Leases

The case has not been made for conservation leases over current BLM authorities.  The Center for American Progress and Public Lands Foundation comment letters have excellent examples of existing mitigation agreements.  Perhaps a better approach would be, instead of complicating this for all concerned, industry and the BLM, would be to disseminate training on “Best Mitigation Agreement Practices”. I hope that in any future proposals, the need would be made clear.

There is also a need for flexibility in these kinds of mitigation agreements.  As in one comment letter, what if the mitigation habitat area burns up two years into the lease?  A more flexible mitigation agreement (possibly with RAC or other public input) would allow changes at any time as needs change. Keeping the mitigation efforts as a benefit to the local environment and to local communities (with their input) would also be desirable.

  1. Land Health

My experience in the Forest Service is that seldom do new abstractions and analyses lead to any difference in the disagreements that individuals have over what should be done on Federal lands.  It does divert time and funding from doing restoration and protection work on the ground; for both employees and partners. The idea that more analysis will lead to “wise decisions” is fairly demeaning to those civil servants who are making decisions today.  If there is a need for more information, then a logical step would be coordinate with partner agencies to avoid duplication and obtain better information across landscapes.  The effort to get more information does not need to be in regulation.

  1. Capacity, Capacity, Capacity

Finally, as climate changes stresses systems and as people respond to changing conditions in the environment and economically, such as the shortage of housing for employees and housing costs, we should be careful about imposing new requirements on the already-overburdened employees. Congress is asking them to expedite renewables and strategic minerals, suppress wildfires and develop fuel breaks and wildfire mitigation, and handle expanding recreation growth and impacts with current under staffing and the difficulty of hiring more employees.  These are the things they are already required to do.  It would be preferable to engage employees and others in an effort, instead , to ask “what could be taken off your plate?” “what could be streamlined?” “what could be coordinated with the Forest Service and/or other Interior Agencies to reduce the total workload?”

Thank you for the opportunity to comment, please feel free to contact me if you have questions.

Center for American Progress Comment Letter and Report: Still No Answers on Why Conservation Leasing is Needed

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In looking around the comment letters, I ran across one by the Center for American Progress.  Now this is a “big deal” political think tank, and one, who in the past I don’t remember engaging in our federal lands issues. They are notably anti-oil and gas and pro- 30 x 30 (e.g photo above; presumably roads for oil and gas on ridgetops, bad, roads for wind turbines on ridgetops, good.   So when I said “to not involve state elected leaders, someone big must be involved” CAP sounds like a likely candidate.  CAP claims to be nonpartisan, but isn’t, and clearly has a seat at the table (perhaps an entire sectional sofa).

CAP’s tagline for this article is:

A proposed tool included in the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule would allow more efficient and responsible deployment of clean energy projects while benefiting U.S. lands, waters, and wildlife.

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With this proposal, the BLM is giving clean energy and other project developers another way to meet their mitigation requirements and minimize natural resource conflicts. At the same time, the agency is unlocking a powerful tool to help restore and conserve U.S. public lands that perennially suffer from inadequate federal funding.

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As proposed, these leases are essentially legal agreements that would allow a private entity or Tribe to conduct compensatory mitigation on BLM-managed public lands over a period of time that matches the time frame of anticipated project impacts.

Of course, project impacts for wind and solar are forever, unlike oil and gas projects.  This is a very neat solution, as it could give legal rights for much greater chunks of land off the footprint of the installations themselves to corporate (or other entities) essentially forever.  It seems to me a bit like “privatization of public lands” which used to be a bad thing, but..

Since the desires of some ENGO’s are for “permanent protections”, this makes a lot of sense for them. I’m not so sure that it makes sense for the developers, though, who need to do the improvement projects and also pay for the leases.  But heck, renewables are getting an 80% rate cut in another proposed rule, so maybe they’ll have plenty of money for leases.  And not so sure it’s a great deal for BLM employees nor for the rest of us who have another not yet litigated complexity set down in the morass of existing regulations.

The CAP article has two very nice examples of how the BLM does mitigation on federal land without apparently needing conservation leasing.

In June 2022, the BLM and California authorities announced the first restoration project that puts this agreement into action. To address impacts of solar development occurring on private lands, state-required mitigation is funding ecosystem restoration on 158,000 acres in the California Desert Conservation Area located in Kern County. Restoration projects, including rehabilitation of unauthorized trails, will help improve habitat for the desert tortoise, Mohave ground squirrel, burrowing owl, and American badger, while also improving overall ecosystem health and function. Subsequently, another solar company, Avantus, announced an agreement to offset impacts of its development through a 215,000-acre mitigation project on BLM lands in this same region.

In other states, the BLM has identified specific degraded public lands that are good candidates for mitigation projects to offset anticipated impacts from solar energy projects in designated leasing areas, known as solar energy zones. For example, the agency’s regional mitigation strategies for solar energy zones in Arizona and Nevada identify certain designated “areas of critical environmental concern” on BLM lands as ideal places for mitigation projects to offset anticipated impacts of solar development on nearby public lands. Such projects could become good options for conservation leasing agreements in the future.

Like the letter from the Public Lands Foundation, I must ask, if the BLM can already do on-federal land mitigation without leases, why does it need leases?  After all, we’re supposed to interested in “saving companies time and resources” see bullet below. and hopefully BLM folks and the rest of us as well.   I’ve definitely got a vibe of hornswoggling here.

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I thought that this was a cheerful thought by CAP but .. not very realistic.  I could be wrong.. time will tell.  Reduced concerns are not alleviated concerns, and unalleviated concerns in the right hands lead to litigation.

  • Better natural resource outcomes reduce the risk of conflict and litigation. More effectively offsetting a project’s unavoidable impacts should also benefit the developers and timelines of those projects. Responsible companies want to reduce the net impacts of their projects, but more effective offsets can also reduce concerns from local conservationists, community members, and other land users, saving companies time and resources and allowing them to avoid conflicts and potentially even litigation.

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CAP also doesn’t want to wait for RMP’s.. because they’re… too slow, and possibly, involve people who disagree with them. Maybe the Biden Admin should propose a new efficient process for RMPs instead?

BLM should finalize a strengthened Public Lands Rule that provides additional clarity and direction to ensure agency staff implement the vision outlined in the proposal efficiently and
transparently. Recognizing that the process for updating RMPs has historically been slow and that this pace doesn’t match the urgent need to conserve vulnerable public resources, BLM should also evaluate opportunities to accelerate action to achieve the Public Lands Rule’s goals.
This should include considering mechanisms to act promptly on ACEC proposals and to move as rapidly as possible to identify priority intact landscapes and priority ecosystem resilience areas for conservation.

It’s OK to want what you want to happen on federal lands. And politicals notably want to reward their friends, punish their enemies, and keep both those in place long after they’ve been elected.

I just wish there were a way to do it that didn’t involve abstraction word-salads and a lot more work for the beleaguered BLM employees, partners, and industries; and possibly litigation for the next ten years at least.  And one that was built collaboratively with States, who, after all,  themselves have a great deal of responsibility for conservation.  As per the Sage Grouse efforts.