Bureau of Land Management

Don’t Do Dat: Advice for the New Admin on “Sharp Sticks in the Eye” BLM Decisions

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Right now, there’s much concern in some media about bad things the new Admin is doing, which has effectively eclipsed stories on bad things the previous Admin did, especially at the end of the Admin.

Why do we care about that? Isn’t it old news? The reason is that if we’re not careful, the New Admin will notice the sharp sticks in the eye from the previous Admin, and sharpen even more sticks in retaliation. Say, for example,  the last Admin moved RMP decisions from the District Manager to the Director? The new Admin can move them from the Director to.. the White House! It all reminds me of the quote above from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think it’s important for us to send the message to the new Admin to resist the tendency to one-up the last Admin on bad procedural ideas. We can disagree on the policies, and agree on the processes. The processes are the glue that hold us together, and the more dependable they are, the more trust people have in government to deal with contentious issues.

The relationship between local federal employees at the BLM and Forest Service and the local public is not exactly a sacred bond (sometimes it seems like it may have been a shotgun wedding?), but it is a relationship. That relationship is key to success in federal land management in all kinds of ways. If people in DC call down and make decisions about RMPs or wind or solar or oil and gas projects disregarding local input, it makes public processes seem like a waste of time, reduces trust and so on.

Let’s look more closely at the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan (12/20/24), although it’s certainly not the only example. The ROD was signed post-election, and there was great resistance in Wyoming. This means it’s likely to be overturned, leading to more work by employees (and involvement by the public).

It was signed by Nada Culver, as Principal Deputy Director, in DC .

For at least some of the recent decisions, we’ve heard that the Director and Deputy contacted the District Managers directly via phone to tell them what to put in the plan, so that the actual exchanges are not FOIAble, nor discoverable. That runs against transparency, and again, building trust.  If you are the Director or Deputy and you want to direct decisions, that’s fine, elections have consequences, but you should also be willing to put it in writing so people can understand the decision process and who made the call. Otherwise it makes it seem like the career folks are negotiating in bad faith; when in fact, their honest negotiations have been overruled from above.

My BLM retiree sources tell me that RMPs are usually signed by the District Manager. When decisions cross Districts, they are signed by the State Director. When they cross States, they are signed by the WO. That pretty much follows a reasonable logic path. So this recent approach is relatively unusual and apparently hands-on by DC, and in my view, not to be copied nor one-upped by the Trump Admin. I’d argue to return to traditional processes.

In addition to returning to that norm, traditionally, after the required Governor’s Consistency Review for RMPs, States and Feds try to work out disagreements. This apparently did not happen with this RMP. From the ROD:

The Governor of Wyoming submitted a Governor’s Consistency Review Letter dated October 22, 2024. The Governor’s Consistency Review Letter listed several areas of inconsistency: ACECs, proposed withdrawals, inconsistency with county land use plans, resource management, Cooperating Agencies, and  recommendations and Proposed Action. The BLM Wyoming State Director responded on November 18, 2024, providing detailed responses to these consistency issues; no changes to the RSFO Proposed RMP/Final EIS were necessary to addresses the listed areas of inconsistency.
The Governor of Wyoming was presented the opportunity to appeal the BLM Wyoming State Director’s responses pursuant to 43 CFR 1610.3-2(e) within 30 days, ending December 18, 2024. The Governor of Wyoming appealed the BLM Wyoming State Director’s responses in a letter dated December 13, 2024. The BLM Director notified the governor in writing and published a notice in the Federal Register of the reasons for the BLM Director’s determination to reject the Governor of Wyoming’s appeal recommendations, in accordance with 43 CFR 1610.3-2(e).
No changes to the Proposed RMP/Final EIS were necessary as a result of the Governor’s Consistency Review letter or appeal.

Again, usually the Governor’s Office and the State Office would tend to work things out. Otherwise why have a Governor’s Consistency Review as a required part of the process? But “no changes required” seems unnecessarily sharp stick in the eye-ish.

Again, I recommend the new Admin return to traditional processes, even (especially) for this Admin, when D governors are in place.

Why? because I think Admins should take the win and find an alternative that most can live with.  You don’t have to be a psychic to predict that when Admins leave with a sharp stick in the eye to others, that others will redo the work, and there can be two results 1. apparently endless back and forth between Admins (think sage grouse or Monumentizing), or 2. the next Admin redoing the plan  with worse outcomes for your Admin’s interests.  Now, cynical people may think that that’s a good result in terms of fundraising for various groups, or increasing employment for lawyers; but endless fighting is  not a good result for employees, who are caught in the middle with whiplash,  nor the public, nor the relationships among employees, the public and elected officials.

Those of us who have been involved as federal employees know that there are always opportunities for approaches that take into the consideration the views of different stakeholders.  That is their job- finding paths toward some kind of peace.  When decisions are made based on phone calls from DC, it’s not good for employees, nor the public nor their relationship.  Sure, an administration should put their finger on the scale, but there a wide range of latitude between putting a finger on the scale and effectively giving a finger to Governors.

The new Admin should support decisions that will hold over the long term.

To my mind, there should be a compelling reason for disrupting historic and expected ways of working that have served federal lands and people over the last century of management. Given that we have always, and are always going to have, disagreements, at least people know what to expect of the process, and that builds trust. By empowering local federal employees, citizens can  speak directly to the persons involved in  making the decision, and that builds trust. Knowing the decision is informed by concerns of people talking to the team, and public comments read by the team, builds trust. And trust makes everything run more smoothly, now and into the future.

I guess I just don’t understand the need for a post-election flurry of decisions that local and State elected officials don’t support, are highly likely to be overturned, and make extra work for employees. One hypothesis is that such actions are intended to promote a future-fundraising opportunity for groups from which the appointees came and to which they are returning? Since this has been going on for awhile, perhaps it’s as simple as what’s known in the trade as “packing their parachutes” or auditioning for better post-government positions. Yet, it happens at the expense of the credibility and increases needless work for federal employees.

So, while there’s a few years between now and then for this Admin, I’d put “sharp sticks” as well as “last minute easily overturned decisions” on the Don’t Do Dat list.

What Retirees Are Saying to the New Administration

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This one’s “Forest Service and Bureau of Management retirees arm in arm with forests and grasslands in background.”

Letters from NAFSR (Forest Service retirees) and PLF (BLM retirees) have been sent to the Transition Team.

Common themes: respect skilled career professionals, keep decisions decentralized, keep appropriate people in DC, wildfire, recreation.

Interesting that BLM asked for help increasing efficiency.

Here’s a link to the NAFSR letter.  It has a long and short version. Here is the short version:

In the attached white paper, we provide more specific thoughts to help guide a solutions-oriented
agenda for your administration in the following areas:
• Maintain the skilled workforce of career professionals, including a career Chief.
• Actively manage our forests and grasslands to help reduce wildfire risks, provide economic and public benefits, and maintain healthy, resilient landscapes and long-term sustainability.
• Support practicable actions to alter our current path of continuing wildfire disasters.
• Provide for the increasing public outdoor recreational demand on National Forest lands, acknowledging its importance as an economic driver for many communities.
• Maintain partnerships with State, Private and Tribal landowners.
• Be mindful of the importance of Forest Service research and its linkage to rural economies and community protection.

Sample from the long version.

Retirements and other factors have led to workforce capacity issues and challenges for the agency. Maintaining expertise is essential for the successful implementation of Congressional and Administration intent and meeting public expectations and needs. We recommend that the Administration involves agency leadership and employees in efforts to streamline processes, and fund and fill the necessary employee gaps that hinder the agency’s ability to provide all-important on-the-ground services that the Congress, the Administration, and the public expect from them.

NAFSR also recommends keeping field decisions as close to the ground (regional and forest level) as possible. Functions in Washington, DC headquarters should appropriately be associated with budget development, establishing policy, coordinating with Congress, the Department, other agencies, and public lands interest groups and organizations.

PLF Letter

They don’t have a short version and a long version, so I am posting all their bullets below. Here’s a link to their letter.

1. Support the BLM Organization – BLM is a very small organization with a very large mission. The agency manages 10% of the lands in the United States with a multiple use mission. The Bureau budget is approximately $1.7 billion annually, however, it deposits $8 billion to the treasury each year from mineral and other receipts. Approximately 30% of the mineral production in the US is located on public lands. The BLM employees are almost entirely located on the ground in State and Field Offices in the western states where the bulk of the public lands are located. These employees can help you accomplish your goals if you seek their input and take advantage of their experience and natural resource knowledge. We respectfully request that you recognize that efforts at reorganizing the agency will expend valuable agency time and staff resources from accomplishing other higher priority land management and resource program goals of the administration.

2. Help the BLM Become More Efficient – Employees of the agency are asked to follow many processes as they accomplish their land use planning, permitting, and management activities. Those processes should be reviewed looking for more efficient timelines and outcomes. Land Use Plans should not take 10 years to develop with all of the cooperators working together. Permitting streamlining should be considered. For example, we believe authorization of an Application for Permit to Drill (APD) should not need to undergo the environmental review process mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at three different levels (planning , leasing, and permitting) as is currently the case. Each level becomes very time consuming. We recommend the transition team look at the NEPA requirements, the land use planning process, and the various governing regulations and seek the counsel of senior managers and resource specialists to get their recommendations to improve processes and fine tune the organization to assist in efficient management.

The land use planning process indeed.

3. Maintain and Enhance the Delegation of Authority to the Field Level – BLM is organized with most of the employees located in the 175 State and Field Offices throughout the western states. Most resource management decisions are made and implemented at the State or local level through a delegation of authority. This has proven to be a very efficient model that should be maintained or enhanced. This is signicantly different than most Federal agencies that are located regionally. This field oriented model allows for a more collaborative process resulting in much less controversy. Because the BLM offices are located within western communities, the employees are able to work diligently with local and State Government, interested parties and cooperating agencies to find common ground as the issues are unique based on location. We recommend reviewing the delegation of authority and assuring that it remains robust and well understood. Functions remaining in Washington, D.C. should appropriately be those associated with developing budget, establishing policy, and coordinating activities with Congress, the Department, other agencies, and public land interest groups and organizations.

4. Manage Public Lands for Resiliency to Withstand Wildfire, Invasive Species and Disease – Fire and invasive species are two of the most significant threats to our public land forests and rangelands. These threats do not stop at land ownership boundaries, and are risks to private, State, and Tribal lands in addition to public lands. We suggest the administration convene a broad based working group to establish immediate and long term actions to deal with this crisis.
The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and the unanimously agreed to recommendations of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Council can be used as a base to build upon.

5. Support the Agency in Managing the Exploding Recreation Use on Public Lands – Recreation use on public lands is a significant economic driver in western communities. It comes in the form of hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, camping, off highway driving, etc. The use occurs in developed sites, along trails and waterways, or dispersed across 245 million acres of public lands. We recommend that you evaluate the extensive growth in the recreation program and assist the agency with a strategy that works in collaboration with local communities and results in constructing additional developed sites, securing easements to access landlocked public lands, and staffing and managing the heavily used areas to resolve ongoing resource damage, trash dumping, and sanitation issues. Fifty-seven million people now live within 25 miles of public lands, so this situation is literally in many American’s back yards.

6. Request PLF Assistance and Advice – The PLF supports multiple use management of the public lands under the Federal Land Management and Policy Act of 1976. With hundreds of members (mostly retired BLM employees) located throughout the United States, the PLF has a wealth of knowledge regarding the BLM processes and the lands and resources managed. We are ready and willing to assist the new administration in your successful transition and look forward to hearing from you.

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If your organization has a transitions letter, please share the link below.

Actings: BLM Director and Undersecretary at USDA

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First, the grapevine says that Christine Dawe is acting Undersec over the FS at USDA.  I couldn’t find the announcement online, but if I’m wrong, let me know.
Jim Petersen did an interview with her at Evergreen here. The folks I know all say that she is a great choice, and not to be parochial, but she has always been helpful and clear in her communication with me at TSW.

From the interview, this sounds like the kind of thing that DOGE could possibly help with, if the charge isn’t too much for them. Many generations of FS employees have broken their pick against “analysis paralysis”; and I think the FS only reflects part of a wider cultural change that cultures like wildfire have somehow avoided. I suppose some public administration scholars have examined this.

Dawe: I agree. This may sound trite, but we need a bigger bang for our buck. We need to come up with better approaches to getting work done than we have had in the past. Analysis paralysis has been a real challenge for us, and it has affected both efficiency and measurable success. And that has hurt employee morale and our external relationships. Our Region’s leadership has recognized the need to change and we are working hard at that.

Evergreen: Easy to describe, hard to do.

Dawe: It has been hard, but we are doing it – the work of integrating resource management is going well, and we have some very talented and dedicated collaborative groups in this Region that see an integrated approach as key to their success and ours. It’s an exciting time, full of opportunity

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BLM Acting Director

From E&E News.

The appointments are temporary roles for Senate-confirmed positions or presidential appointments, and each is authorized to fulfill the duties of the post as outlined by the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The temporary assignments expire May 31 unless a new person is assigned to the post on an acting basis or the post is filled by a Senate-confirmed appointee.
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Raby, the new acting BLM director, was appointed as head of BLM’s Nevada office in December 2018, during Trump’s first term. He’s a career bureau employee, having worked at BLM for more than 25 years. He has also worked at the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service.

The BLM Nevada office manages 48 million surface acres and 59 million subsurface acres of mineral estate. It oversees the agency’s largest mining program, its largest wild horse and burro program, and some of the most important sage grouse habitat on federal land.

The state was also the epicenter for the Biden administration’s efforts to expand utility-scale solar power development on federal lands.

“He has lots of field experience and is well respected by career employees,” said Steve Ellis, who served as BLM deputy director of operations during former President Barack Obama’s second term. “This was a good move.”

The Worst Idea Ever?: Making the Chief of the Forest Service a Political Appointee

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From E&E News:

In calling for a forest chief nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, Lee revisits a debate that has surfaced from time to time in the Forest Service’s history.
Legislation to do so has been introduced in the past but was never enacted.
“From grazing and recreation to timber harvesting and wildfire management, the Chief of the Forest Service has an immense influence on the daily lives of Americans,” Lee said in a release. “It’s time for this position to be accountable to the people affected by its decisions through their elected representatives in Congress.”

Umm..confirmation is one point in time. I’m all for accountability to Congress, but one point in time is not the way to achieve it. Let’s take for example, the Senate-confirmed Tracy Stone-Manning. Now many folks in the West, including Governors, Congressfolk, and so on have taken issue with the Public Lands Rule. The way to hold her accountable would be to pass legislation not allowing it. There are other issues, like the Rock Springs RMP, and the Lava Ridge Wind Project, which went directly against the wishes of local and State elected officials. It just seems likely to me that politicals, whose next job might depend on the goodwill of externals, may be more likely to “reward their friends and punish their enemies” or poke sharp sticks in the eye of, say, western R elected officials, than career folks who have to deal with the aftermath. For me, as a citizen, “sharp stick in the eye-hood” promotes bad public policy, promotes division, and wastes time and morale of federal employees, and tax dollars. So stop. But at least let’s not start doing more. In fact, if I were Senator Lee, my experience would make me want to pass legislation to make the BLM Director a career slot. Yes, accountability requires paying attention and reacting over time. It would be easy if it were simply “confirm and go.” But it’s not.

The incoming chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Lee said the Forest Service’s mission has expanded beyond the logging mission that dominated its early years and into managing “vast natural resources and public lands.” The proposal would require the nominee have “substantial experience and demonstrated competence” in forest and natural resource management.

According to some of my retired BLM friends, FLPMA requires “broad background and substantial experience in public land and natural resource management.” I’m sure that I could equally write a few paragraphs for anyone from Pendley to Stone-Manning on how they meet those criteria. But some retirees feel that Bob Abbey and Jim Caswell were the only two of the bunch to meet the criteria. Anyway, my point being that if a party can get the votes, any mildly related experience will do the trick.

Anyway, back to the E&E News story:

While the chief’s position has never been subject to confirmation — the Agriculture secretary typically makes the hire — it hasn’t been completely nonpolitical.

President Bill Clinton picked Jack Ward Thomas for the job in 1993, the first political appointment since Henry Graves in 1910, according to the Forest History Society in Durham, North Carolina. Thomas had worked for the Forest Service as a research wildlife biologist and had a long career in conservation but quit in 1996 as the political stresses of the job mounted.
Clinton’s decision to make the choice himself fed debate at the time about whether a Senate-confirmed role would make more sense.

In my experience, “political” is more of a sliding scale. Jack was a Forest Service employee who hadn’t gone through the usual chairs. As a WO drone at the time, whose job included briefing the Chief, he didn’t strike me as “political” as Chief Dombeck, who had more hired advisors from outside the agency and hadn’t spent as much time in the Forest Service. If this seems kind of subjective.. well, I suppose it is. And I wonder if the hired advisors were created because of sensed pushback from career folks, or career folks weren’t enthused because , to them, the new additions got in the way of traditional relationships. Some possible chicken and eggery there.

My BLM friends tell me that it’s not just the political at the top who becomes a problem, there is a cascading effect. Pretty soon there’s a front office full of non-confirmed appointees. Why not an associate chief? Why not Regional Foresters? We note that the current BLM State Director is Ag Secretary Vilsack’s son. And it just gets worse with every succeeding Admin, as in “if they could do it, so can we!.” No new Admin steps in and says “wait, where does this end? or does it?. ”

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The undersecretary for natural resources and environment at the time, Jim Lyons, told a House subcommittee in September 1997 that the agency already faces substantial congressional oversight and that appointing from within gives the Forest Service continuity. On the other hand, Lyons said, making the position subject to confirmation would align it with Interior agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

“In this regard, an active role for Congress in reviewing the president’s appointment for the Forest Service is apt,” Lyons said. Usually, Forest Service career employees fill the role, as the current chief, Randy Moore, did at the start of the Biden administration. Moore was regional forester for the Pacific Southwest region, covering 18 forests in California. He’d held that job for 14 years.

In recent history, Forest Service chiefs have left the post near the beginning of the subsequent administration. Lee’s bill spells out that the president would nominate a new chief within a month of the legislation’s enactment. The president of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, Steve Ellis, urged caution for the proposal.
“In our experience, the public has been better served by having a seasoned professional run the Forest Service, one that has had years of practical, hands-on experience, that understands the science and the tools of land management,” Ellis said in a statement.

“This is a ‘be careful what you wish for’ situation,” he said. “As we’ve seen with the BLM, a political appointee at the helm has, at times, tried to move the agency to political extremes, only to have the next administration’s appointee overturn the previous administration’s policies and positions.”

Biden Good, BLM Bad: OPB and Propublica Go After Commercial Harvesting Again

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One difference I noticed on my recent trip to the field was the way of looking at the world. Not surprisingly, technology has changed a great deal in 45 or so years. Folks take tablets to the field, and not paper maps. The view is from a satellite, not from the road, looking down, not looking up. A satellite gives a very different view than even aerial photos (remember them?). Like any way of observing, it’s an additional way to look at the world. There’s a layer for almost everything, that can be toggled on or off, or made more or less opaque.

Which reminds me of (some of) the media. Sometimes, these outfits act like they have an opaque “good guy, bad guy” layer. If a “good guy” does something questionable, it’s not worth looking at. If a “bad guy” does something good, it’s also not worth looking at. Many colleagues have told me that they had interviews with reporters and the story or their comments were never used, and later the story would come out without voices that questioned a certain narrative. They effectively couldn’t be seen through the GGBG (good guy bad guy) overlay. Now, no one will be surprised, if you have been following “media on the media” stories to learn that folks like the WaPo, NYT, AP, Propublica, and various public broadcasting outfits seem to populate their GGBG overlay with partisan political views (generally D’s good, R’s bad).

It seems like in this article Propublica and OPB knows who the bad guys are. It can’t be the Biden Admin.. so it must be the BLM (employees)! In this case, it seems to be that commercial logging is also bad. Did they not interview, or include the take of say, folks at AFRC? If we want to really understand what’s happening, seems to me that we would be well served to toggle off the good guy-bad guy layer.

The BLM also has tried to avoid detailed environmental reviews as it moves to log in new areas, saying it sufficiently considered impacts in 2016. Over and over, conservation groups have sued to demand full reviews, which can be required by federal law. Over and over, courts have decided against the bureau, in most cases directing it to redo its analysis before logging can continue. The BLM lost at least three such lawsuits between 2019 and 2022, with judges ruling that it failed to take a “hard look” at impacts or calling its decisions “arbitrary and capricious.”

Are the desired “detailed environmental reviews” EIS’s? How many lawsuits did the BLM win?

The BLM is moving forward with timber sales in dozens of forests like this across the West, auctioning off their trees to companies that will turn them into plywood, two-by-fours and paper products. Under Biden, the agency is on track to log some 47,000 acres of public lands, nearly the same amount as during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. This includes even some mature and old-growth forests that Biden’s executive order was supposed to protect.

I’d ask, “how do you define mature (was it in the EO?), and exactly what projects are cutting old-growth forests?”

OPB and ProPublica compared the agency’s forest database for Oregon to its timber records and found that in the past two years, the BLM oversaw logging in more than 10,000 acres of forest it labeled as at least 80 years old — the age at which the BLM and Forest Service consider western Oregon’s conifers to be “mature.” The average number of acres of older forest logged annually since the president’s executive order is already higher than in any two-year span since at least 2013.

This whole convo, as it’s been since the Executive Order has been about mature and old-growth in some folks’ minds.

Trees greater than 40 inches in diameter or older than about 175 years are, in most cases, protected under the BLM’s 2016 management plan for Oregon’s Coast Range. But if logging does go forward here, the intact forests these trees now anchor will be transformed, says Reeder, the retired BLM surveyor. The older trees themselves, more exposed in the landscape, could be more vulnerable to windstorms. The soil around them could dry out.

Or they could do better with less competition. Might be good to hear from someone other than one person.

Environmental groups in Oregon can’t challenge every BLM logging project. “We just don’t have the capacity,” said attorney Nick Cady of Cascadia Wildlands, one of three groups that filed a joint lawsuit to stop the plan for Blue and Gold. This one stands out, he said, because of the apparent age of the forest.

It seems like the below piece may have been intended to engender some “last-minute-ism on the part of the Biden Admin, those don’t usually work, except for Monuments.

The BLM still reports to Biden until Trump takes office again in January, and it’s unclear what changes, if any, the new administration will make. Outgoing presidents often use this lame-duck period to take additional action on the environment and to protect public lands. In a statement, White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández wrote that the “Biden-Harris Administration has made unprecedented progress toward the climate-smart management and conservation of our nation’s forests.” He did not specifically answer questions about why Biden’s actions didn’t slow the BLM’s cutting of old forests — or about any further protections the administration is planning now.

But here the FS is good and BLM bad..

Unlike the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service, the biggest federal forestland manager in Oregon and the country, responded to Biden’s order by proposing to update management plans for all national forests with new regulations for protecting old growth. These plans outline how a forest will be managed — like logging parameters, species protections, restoration projects and road maintenance. The updates will include a prohibition on cutting old growth solely for commercial reasons.

But as Andy Kerr says, the FS already rationalizes the projects it does now for non-commercial reasons, so there’s that. What he asked people to say in comments:

The final record of decision should:

1. End the cutting of old-growth trees in all national forests and forest types and end the cutting of any trees in old-growth stands in moist forest types.

2. End any commercial exchange of old-growth trees. Even in the rare circumstances where an old-growth tree is cut (e.g. public safety), that tree should not be sent to the mill.

Cutting down old-growth trees to save them from potential threats is a false solution. They are worth more standing.

Mature forests and trees–future old growth–must be protected from the threat of commercial logging in order to recover old growth that has been lost to past mismanagement. They must be protected to aid in the fight against worsening climate change and biodiversity loss. And they must be protected to ensure that our children are able to experience and enjoy old growth.

Failure to protect our oldest trees and forests undermines the objectives of this amendment, contravenes the direction of EO 14072, and ignores 500,000+ public comments the agency previously received.

OK, then, I guess, Biden Admin good, FS and BLM employees (?) bad.

Western Solar Energy Plan update

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It’s past time for a follow-up to Sharon’s post on the BLM’s western solar plan.  The final plan was released at the end of August.   The BLM says it received 162 formal protests during that 30-day protest period that are being reviewed (but apparently won’t release the names of the parties, unlike the Forest Service objection process).

A number of conservation groups have protested the failure to protect the integrity of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail. Lynn County, Nevada, just southeast of Reno, is concerned the proposed plan will “result in fiscal impacts as it will be left to deal with speculative solar applications in inappropriate areas.”  Apparently, the Western Congressional Caucus doesn’t like it because it “risks taking lands offline for purposes other than solar use, limiting the potential for mining, grazing and public access.”  And, of course, enviros are unhappy, too.

According to the BLM,

“It would make over 31 million acres of public lands across 11 western states available for potential solar development, driving development closer to transmission lines or on previously disturbed lands and avoiding protected lands, sensitive cultural resources and important wildlife habitat.

Steering project proposals away from areas where they may conflict with other resources or uses will help ensure responsible development, speed the permitting process, and provide greater predictability to the solar energy industry.”

That sounds like good planning.  However, a scientist says that, instead, “It makes available to solar areas that are ecologically sensitive, areas that include sensitive species. It stands to significantly impact and alter ecosystems across the Great Basin and Mojave Desert.”  The federally threatened desert tortoise is a particular concern.

The Center for Biological Diversity would have opted for an alternative that prioritized already developed or degraded areas on public lands and rooftop solar on structures.  There seems to be some debate about whether it is necessary to essentially plow up the desert in order to install solar facilities.  But things may be different in Wyoming, where local conservationists see this as additional protection for big game habitat.

And then there’s some “sensitive cultural resources” that got missed.

There are also questions about how responsive the BLM will be to site-specific concerns that arise when more information is available for a proposed project.  We have an early example of that with the Rough Hat Clark Solar Project in Nevada.  According to E & E news, “The Bureau of Land Management is paving the way for a major solar power project to be built in a valley west of Las Vegas despite the objections of environmental groups that have petitioned the agency to protect the region.”

This is obviously a very large-scale planning effort, where it is not possible to identify more localized issues (though it seems like there was local knowledge that was provided by the public that might have been incorporated). The total acreage “available” is admittedly much greater than what is needed, so presumably further “unavailability” is expected and will be provided as future projects are considered.  As a Wyoming representative of the Wilderness Society put it, “The implementation is going to matter.”  A final decision is expected by the end of the year.

Federal Lands Litigation – Bulletin: Utah seeks to declare the BLM unconstitutional

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Grand Staircase – “Visit Utah” (Larry C. Price)

On August 20, the State of Utah asked the U. S. Supreme Court to consider its claim that parts of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that allow it to retain and manage lands as federal property are unconstitutional.  (The State’s “news advisory” includes a link to the court documents.)  It will ask the Court to:

Order the United States to begin the process of disposing of its unappropriated federal lands within Utah, consistent with existing rights and state law.

Utah argues that the Constitution does not give the federal government the authority to retain lands that it has not designated for a federal purpose.  The key language at issue in the Constitution, which has been traditionally viewed as establishing such federal authority, is the Property Clause of Article IV, which provides:

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States

Which plaintiffs interpret this way:

By its terms, that Clause empowers the federal government to regulate and “dispose of” land belonging to the United States—not to retain such land indefinitely, without regard to whether it is needed to carry out any enumerated federal function.

They read this language as requiring the federal government to dispose of such lands.  Maybe that’s ambiguous, but even it were to now be reinterpreted it this way, there is a counter-argument that any such authority was supplanted by western state enabling acts:

University of Colorado environmental law professor Mark Squillace said the lawsuit was unlikely to succeed and was “more a political stunt than anything else.”  The Utah Enabling Act of 1894 that governed Utah’s designation as a state included a promise that it wouldn’t make any claim on federal land, Squillace said.

If the court accepts the case, it will be interesting to see how many other states want to join in this “stunt.”  Utah has been preparing for this case for years, and challenges to other federal lands had been considered.  If this lawsuit is successful, would the Forest Service be immune to something similar?  This should all make the “local control” fans ecstatic.

 

 

 

CBD FOIA Finds BLMers Disagree About Lithium Mine Analysis Process

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Interesting story from E&E News, and no paywall on this one (perhaps because it came as a link from Center for Western Priorities).  When groups disagree about a project, it seems like once again the BLM is darned if it does and darned if it doesn’t..in the interests of fair use, I can’t post the whole thing, but there are good parts I am leaving out.

 

A senior Bureau of Land Management official warned the federal government might be rushing the review of a controversial lithium mine in Nevada that’s at the center of a raging fight over an endangered wildflower, according to an internal email.

“This is a very aggressive schedule that deviates from other project schedules on similar projects completed recently and concurrently at the District and State,” said Scott Distel, a supervisory project manager, in a Dec. 21, 2023, email.

Distel told Douglas Furtado, a BLM district manager in central Nevada, the review of Ioneer’s Rhyolite Ridge project was poised to move forward with limited input. “The groundwater model is approved on 12/26/2023, without any edits or comments that need to be addressed,” he wrote in the email, which was also sent to officials at Ioneer.

Check out the email yourself.  I don’t know what the right way to go about it is, but in my experience agreement about processes, analysis and documents is difficult to get.  There are naturally forces to “move it along” versus forces to analyze more.  Sometime different specialists disagree about the same topic (e.g. fish bios and hydrologists). Someone has to make a call at some point.  Or maybe agencies will just give up on trying to do things.

The email illuminates the challenges federal regulators face in complying with legally required deadlines for completing environmental reviews of complicated projects under the National Environmental Policy Act. BLM and its parent, the Interior Department, declined to comment on the email, which the Center for Biological Diversity obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with E&E News.

BLM’s ongoing environmental review of Ioneer’s proposed Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine has drawn national attention because of the sprawling mine’s potential impact on the habitat for an endangered desert flower, Tiehm’s buckwheat. The project is in the Silver Peak Range, about 40 miles southwest of Tonopah.

The CBD cited Distel’s email in an unsuccessful request asking BLM to extend the comment period on a draft environmental impact statement the agency released in April. That draft review concluded the mine — through fencing, locked gates and dust-tampering measures — would not drive the endangered wildflower to extinction.

Currently, BLM appears poised to make a decision on the mine in October. Once a record of decision (ROD) is issued, the project is expected to receive a conditional loan of up to $700 million from the Department of Energy.

According to Distel’s email, the revised schedule under NEPA shows BLM approving a “camera ready” final EIS in August along with a briefing at the agency’s headquarters, followed by a final ROD in October.

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The timing, duration and intensity of environmental reviews have become an issue both within agencies and on Capitol Hill, as regulators review projects needed to produce minerals like lithium while protecting pristine areas and critical habitat.

Distel’s email illuminates the tensions.

Kevin Minoli, a partner at the law firm Alston & Bird and a former career EPA lawyer who served during the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, said the language Distel used about the “very aggressive” schedule is not incredibly unusual for federal officials. But Minoli said it does appear to reflect a federal employee’s concern with the time frame.

“What appears to be the case is the person expressing that they wish they had more time … to do something like this,” said Minoli, who also advises clients on complying with NEPA.

Minoli said the email appears to show BLM complying with revisions to NEPA that came into effect fairly recently through amendments that set two-year time frames for agencies to complete EISs. BLM confirmed the agency is complying with the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) amendment to NEPA, which includes a two-year timeline for EISs.

“What I expect is happening is you’re seeing an agency midaction having to comply with that deadline and some concern about that being expressed,” said Minoli.

But Minoli cautioned against equating longer NEPA reviews with better work, noting that regulators can do good work quickly. He also noted that while some have been pushing for deeper reviews, especially for contentious projects, others have been long fighting to reach a final decision more quickly.

“People are probably unhappy on both sides, it’s a timing question,” he said.

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Pat Parenteau, emeritus professor and senior fellow for climate policy at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said amendments in the FRA don’t change the legal requirements for NEPA reviews. Any issues raised in the email will need to be addressed, said Parenteau, including those tied to the groundwater model, which was highlighted in Distel’s email.

“If this is, in fact, someone within BLM in a position to know, who’s raising questions about the process … if these are not corrected by the time the ROD is issued, it’ll be grounds for a lawsuit,” said Parenteau.

There is language in the law, Parenteau noted, that allows agencies to take more time to conduct reviews and EISs, but that will ultimately be up to BLM. He also emphasized that BLM isn’t alone in facing the pressure caused by artificial deadlines.

“We’re going to see a lot of these cases, a lot of these issues,” he said. “Any time you put artificial deadlines in the law, you run into this problem because it denies the reality of the way the world works.”

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Bernard Rowe, managing director of Ioneer, said in a statement last week as the public comment period for the draft EIS closed, that the company has engaged with federal, state and tribal officials, as well as community members, for more than five years, and sought a “new standard for domestic lithium project development.” Added Rowe: “Listening has made our project stronger, and we look forward to addressing feedback to the Bureau of Land Management from the public comment period.”

Conservation groups and tribes disagree and are warning the draft EIS doesn’t give a full picture of just how much water the mine will use. The critics contend the mine could drive the Tiehm’s buckwheat to extinction. The plant was listed as endangered in December 2022.

Currently, eight subpopulations of the plant have been mapped and extensively studied within the mine’s project area. The most recent population census was conducted last May and June and counted 24,916 plants.

In the draft EIS, BLM concluded that while the plant’s desert habitat would be disturbed by construction of the Rhyolite Ridge project, the agency also pointed to steps that Ioneer would take to minimize and mitigate the potential damage. The company also modified its original plan to reduce the environmental impact.

A coalition of groups including the CBD, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, the Sierra Club and Earthworks argued in comments to BLM that the draft EIS is insufficient and fails to fully consider the effect on groundwater and cultural resources

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I have much sympathy for the BLM,  and wonder whether the FRA timelines are retroactive for ongoing projects.   The BLM is definitely “darned if they do and darned if they don’t”. Also,  I wonder what the weight of one employee’s concern should be, when the complete array of tedious details of substance and process will no doubt be part of future litigation.

Time for Planning and Re-Planning: Sage Grouse Edition

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Nice poster, Sage Grouse Initiative!

Somehow I hadn’t been following sage grouse, but apparently there’s another plan in the works. Pew sent out this notification…

 

Dear Wilderness Supporter,

Populations of the iconic greater sage-grouse have fallen significantly over the past six decades, with an 80% decline across their range since 1965—and half of that drop occurring since 2002. These disturbing findings, together with the Biden administration’s focus on combating climate change, compelled the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—the largest federal land manager of sage-grouse habitat—to reexamine its management of the 67 million acres of habitat in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North and South Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming.

We have an opportunity to slow the alarming decline of the sage-grouse and its habitat.
The public comment period closes June 13th! Act now to ensure your voice is heard.

The sagebrush steppe of the interior American West covers tens of millions of acres and is one of the nation’s most imperiled ecosystems. Sagebrush landscapes—which are home not only to greater sage-grouse but also to mule deer, pronghorn, pygmy rabbits, and more than 350 other species—continue to shrink rapidly because of a host of growing threats, including wildfire, energy development, and the spread of invasive plant species.

While the draft plan is a step in the right direction, science points to the need for even stronger management so that the greater sage-grouse population can recover. The BLM is requesting public input on its draft plan. Please take a moment to submit your comments so that the BLM hears a resounding message from the public urging it to:

  • Provide strong and consistent management action that takes into account changing climatic conditions to stem the ongoing population declines.
  • Protect and expand intact landscapes that support sage-grouse and the 350 other species that depend on the sagebrush steppe through designations of Priority Habitat Management Areas and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern.
  • Mitigate against any impacts across this vulnerable habitat to ensure the long-term viability of the species.

Please act today to help slow the alarming decline of the sage-grouse and its habitat. The deadline to submit comments is June 13th. Act now!

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Note: were it not for the last-minute twist I described in this post. the Obama Admin could have had a sage grouse deal that stuck. Here is what my source said:

Folks from Garfield County, CO did a FOIA and found out that the changes were associated in time with meetings with various environmental organizations, including Pew. One particular idea added during these last changes was the idea of “focal areas”. The States went ballistic.

If the Obama Admin had not listened to these groups,  it’s likely that we would have spared the sage grouse workers, BLM folks of all stripes, (and the public) two more goes at this planning effort (one Trump and one Biden).

I’m always interested in lessons learned from various efforts and it turns out that there was a paper written about Wyoming’s lessons learned.  Since 2003, Local Sage-Grouse Working Groups worked together (LWGs) , Wyoming also had an SGIT:

In 2007, a statewide SageGrouse Implementation Team (SGIT) was appointed to advise the governor of Wyoming on all matters related to the Wyoming Greater Sage-Grouse Core Area Protection Policy. The Core Area Policy was established by a governors’ executive order and provided mechanisms for limiting human disturbance in the most important sage-grouse habitats. Federal land management agencies have incorporated most aspects of the Core Area Policy into their land use planning decisions

Process and project implementation.
Successes at the statewide scale appeared to be largely the product of sound science used to inform policy making and effective leadership by Governors Freudenthal and Mead as well as the SGIT chairman, Bob Budd. While the potential for ESA listing certainly provided economic motivation for individuals and interests not otherwise dedicated to wildlife and habitat conservation to earnestly participate in the process, charismatic leadership should not be underestimated as a compelling force guiding diverse interests to work cooperatively toward a mutually acceptable outcome. Even so, challenges remain at both the local and state scale. These include:
• Increasingly infrequent LWG meetings impact group dynamics, as LWG members need to refresh their memories and reestablish working relationships.
• LWG project outcomes are often unquantified and undocumented, so their effectiveness is uncertain.
• The consensus decision-making model often results in more discussion and deliberation on an issue than would have occurred under a simple majority vote model. In the Wyoming LWGs, this appears to have led to better decisions being made. However, the resulting decisions can alternatively be a compromise that insufficiently addresses an important issue, but stands nonetheless as parties to the decision prioritize cooperation over outcome.
• Some individual LWG members harbor modest resentment of the SGIT, which has greater policy-making influence. Including more LWG representation on the SGIT could improve these relationships.
• Although adaptive management is an operative concept in the CAP, the reality is that people, and especially business, prefer stability and certainty. Consequently, resistance to change can be a difficult challenge to overcome, even in the face of compelling science.
• Overriding of advisory group recommendations by decision-makers may threaten the success of the group process. Examples of this include the federal designation of “Sagebrush Focal Areas” in the federal land-use planning process completed prior to the 2015 listing decision, the Department of Interior Secretarial Order 3353 directing review of all planning decisions made by the previous administration relative to sage-grouse, and 2016 legislation in Wyoming allowing private bird farms to collect eggs from wild sage-grouse and develop captive flocks. Each of these decisions was made with no or minimal consideration of established advisory group processes, resulting in concern from various participants that might
undermine their interest in continuing to be involved.

Paramount to all is the fact that both the local and state processes are reliant on the ability of diverse participants, who often hold adversarial viewpoints, to develop and maintain positive working relationships in seeking to achieve mutually agreeable goals. We believe the Wyoming model has potential to succeed in an era of political polarization.

I think there’s probably a better way to go than Partisan Policy Ping-Pong on western lands. Hopefully the Biden Admin will ultimately pick something of a more peace-keeping and likely to be permanent nature, and not a pre-election sharp stick in the eye that would lead us into another round of (potentially pointlessly provocative) planning..

BLM Provides Offsite Mitigation for Private Land Development… Gets $ for Restoration.. Without Conservation Leasing

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From Bakersfield.com

We’ve been following the federal land preservation vs. renewable energy build-out debate for some time.  Right now this seems to have caught some media attention as the Joshua Trees vs. solar panels debate.  According to K.T. Lynn, who writes the Substack “The Joule Thief”,

Last week, a little-known conservation group called Basin and Range Watch went viral in energy and environmental circles on Twitter (now X), drawing attention to the imminent plight of the Joshua trees in the following post:

4,200 Joshua trees are scheduled to be removed are [sic.] replaced by solar panels for the Aratina Solar Project near Boron, CA in June of this year. They will not be salvaged but funds based on the size of the tree will be placed in a mitigation bank

According to its Draft Environmental Impact Report, The Aratina site sits on 2,317 acres of privately owned land in the high desert of eastern unincorporated Kern County. Project plans include the installation of 530 MW of solar PV modules, and an energy storage facility providing capacity of up to 600 MWh for the electrical grid. Located in the Antelope Valley on the western edge of the Mojave, the topography is elevated and mostly flat, and therefore highly suitable for utility-scale solar.

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The L.A. Times’ environment columnist Sammy Roth mentioned Avantus in an ode to building renewables on public lands , praising the company’s habitat restoration projects — a classic PR deflection technique that should have raised skepticism and prodded further investigation. As Mr. Roth accurately reported, Avantus purchased 215,000 acres of grazing rights in Kern County from the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in order to retire those rights and restore the natural Mojave ecosystem, including desert tortoises, burrowing owls, ground squirrels, and…Joshua trees. What the Times apparently did not bother to find out was that this land acquisition serves (at least in part) as the mitigation bank that will be used to offset the destruction of the 4,200 Joshua trees on the Aratina solar site. For those unfamiliar with the mitigation bank concept, it is a variation on the carbon offset program, where, according to Investopedia “ecological loss…is compensated by the preservation and restoration of wetlands, natural habitats, and streams in other areas.” These plans are blatantly stated on Arantina’s website:

One novel mitigation approach is the Onyx Conservation Project, which Avantus created in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). In Eastern Kern County, Onyx permanently protects 215,000 acres of critical California habitat – home to 20 sensitive wildlife species, including the Mojave desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel, as well as an estimated 80,000 acres of western Joshua Tree habitat.

The story of Joshua Tree protection is fairly interesting.  KT goes on to say:

It is likewise noteworthy that supposed environmental NGOs are fully onboard the bandwagon to build utility solar on virgin desert, without so much as acknowledging the apparent contradiction to their original missions of conservation. In a letter to BLM submitted by a coalition of advocacy groups (NRDC, Audubon, The Wilderness Society) and for-profit energy companies (EDF Renewables, Intersect Power, Longroad Energy), the unholy alliance of signatories urged the agency to hasten the construction of solar projects on federal lands (which inevitably comes at the cost of performing due diligence and thorough environmental impact studies).

What was most interesting to me, though, is the Onyx Conservation Project which “permanently protects” 215K acres of critical habitat.  It sounds like the company bought out a grazing allotment and has done some kind of deal with the State of California for that to count for mitigation for their industrial facility on private land.  From Power magazine:

The resulting Onyx Conservation Project (Onyx), in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, reflects Avantus’ creative and concerted approach to building clean energy responsibly while preserving precious land and delivering on President Biden’s America the Beautiful campaign. Onyx conserves and reallocates more than 215,000 acres — roughly seven times larger than San Francisco — from an active grazing allotment to an area permanently dedicated to wildlife forage in Kern County.

Here’s a bit more explanation:

Going beyond the requests of local residents and requirements of the WJTJCA, Avantus purchased the grazing rights on 215,000 acres of federal land in Kern County and created the Onyx Conservation Project. The contiguous land area is seven times larger than the city of San Francisco and considered among the largest mitigation projects in the nation.

The habitat is home to 20 sensitive wildlife species including the California condor, Mojave Desert tortoise, American badger, Mohave ground squirrel and golden eagles. It is also estimated to include more than 80,000 acres of western Joshua tree habitat, including 3,000 acres of dense woodland. This conservation effort will help sustain the health and diversity of the desert ecosystem, which is underlaid by designated Wilderness Areas, Desert National Conservation Lands, and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. All 215,000 acres will also be open for public recreational use, including hiking and camping.

Avantus will also invest millions of additional dollars for habitat enhancements across Onyx to jumpstart restoration for desert plants and wildlife species.

I’m glad that Avantus buying the grazing leases didn’t enable them to kick off the public.

My Questions:

1. Should federal land (possible removed from current uses) be used to mitigate private development? Since most federal land is more or less conserved, wouldn’t it be better for the environment to buy and mitigate private land?

2. If industries are using taxpayer land for mitigation (remember conservation now counts as a use, at least according to BLM PR) how much should they be paying the taxpayer? Should this be consistent? What should it be based on?

3. Is the concept of “permanent” as in “permanently dedicated” a journalistic error, or is there something going on outside the RMP process, or were they already permanently protected by  their existing RMP based status and this is just marketing for the company to claim credit?

4. If the BLM can do this kind of thing already, why did it need a new rule to do “conservation leasing”?

5. Could this increased desire for mitigation on federal lands have anything to do with political donations?

In some areas, if you take off cows, you end up with large amounts of dry grasses that are fire hazards.  Hopefully that is not the case in this area.