The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to resolve one of its most contentious land-use proposals in years by scaling back the area recommended for conservation in southwest Wyoming after more than a year of fierce opposition from congressional and state lawmakers.
At issue is BLM’s proposed update to the Rock Springs resource management plan, which had originally proposed imposing conservation designations on more than half the 3.6-million-acre area.
The latest proposal, outlined in a final environmental impact statement, would cut back the number of “areas of critical environmental concern” from 16 to 12. It proposes to shrink the territory covered by ACECs from 1.6 million acres to about 936,000 acres, while also maintaining BLM’s plan to protect another 227,000 acres through other conservation designations, mostly wilderness study areas.
While the proposal represents a substantial effort to protect unique land that advocates say is important for wildlife and recreation, the plan detailed in the final EIS is a substantial compromise from last year’s draft plan.
Among other things, the final proposal dramatically shrinks the acreage in the Rock Springs area that would no longer allow new oil and gas leasing, from 2.1 million acres to 1 million acres.
“The proposed plan provides for a balance of opportunities to use and develop public land resources within the planning area, while conserving the area’s cultural, scenic, and natural heritage,” BLM said in announcing the final EIS updating the land-use plan for the Rock Springs Field Office.
The planning area includes the Red Desert to Hoback migration corridor for mule deer — the longest migration corridor for the deer in the world. It also includes the region between the Big Sandy and Sweetwater rivers, north of Wyoming Highway 28, what wildlife biologists call the “Golden Triangle,” in part, because it’s home to some of the planet’s highest populations of greater sage grouse.
“The proposed Rock Springs RMP will help safeguard world-renowned wildlife habitats in the Northern Red Desert and Big Sandy Foothills, plus important cultural areas and hunting, fishing and OHV access,” said Julia Stuble, Wyoming state director for the Wilderness Society. “It balances local infrastructure and energy needs with our obligation to steward these special lands for future generations and protect our Wyoming way of life.”
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, acknowledged the final plan unveiled Thursday is a compromise from the original proposal.
But Barrasso said it would still harm his state.
“The Rock Springs Resource Management Plan strangles responsible natural resource development,” Barrasso said in a statement. “While I’m grateful for the efforts of those on the ground in Wyoming who worked to improve the original proposal, the plan unveiled today directly jeopardizes Wyoming’s economy and our way of life.”
But it’s clear BLM heard the howls of protest from Wyoming’s congressional delegation, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon and the state Legislature. In March, the Legislature approved a spending bill Gordon signed into law that blocks the sale of a state-owned parcel inside Grand Teton National Park to the federal government if the bureau approved the original plan.
Gordon said in a statement Thursday that the latest proposal, though better than the draft plan last year, “does not meet Wyoming’s expectations of durable, multiple use of public lands.”
“A cursory review makes it clear where the BLM considered local and cooperative input, and where the agency chose to force through national agendas,” Gordon said. “It is important to compare this document to the current status on the ground, and not by how much it has shifted away from the BLM’s worst-case scenario. Much work is left to ensure the BLM is staying within the bounds of state and county policies, as well as federal law.”
The final EIS will be formally published in Friday’s Federal Register, kicking off a 30-day administrative protest period running through Sept. 23, and a 60-day governor’s consistency review.
“I will examine the FEIS closely, but make no mistake, the State of Wyoming will be filing protests where our comments were disregarded,” Gordon said.
BLM released the draft plan update for Rock Springs in August 2023.
The Rock Springs planning area is one of the largest in the Lower 48 states, covering portions of five Wyoming counties, including Uinta and Sublette, which are home to substantial historical oil and gas development, as well as tens of thousands of acres of priority greater sage grouse habitat.
The management of resources in the Rock Springs Field Office region is currently outlined in the Green River RMP, which was last updated in 1997. The area also includes the Jack Morrow Hills, managed under a coordinated activity plan last updated in 2004.
Southwest Wyoming is rife with conservation-worthy parcels, conservation groups told reporters during a Zoom call earlier this month.
Among other things, the region includes the Adobe Town area, which is part of Wyoming’s Red Desert and features 1,000-foot cliffs and pinnacles that stretch for 25 miles above the Skull Creek plain.
The Adobe Town area has been a target of the oil and gas industry for years, despite objections from environmentalists who have asked BLM to place the region off-limits to drilling activity.
Tom Christiansen, a wildlife biologist who retired five years ago as Wyoming Game and Fish Department sage grouse coordinator, called the Golden Triangle region between Big Sandy and Sweetwater rivers in the planning area “the core of the core for sage grouse,” arguing that it “warrants management that reflects that status.”
Even with the scaled-back proposal, the plan in the final EIS falls in line with the focus of BLM’s recently implemented conservation and landscape health rule that elevates conservation as a formal use of federal lands, on par with livestock grazing and energy development.
The rule emphasizes designating ACECs as a prime tool to protect large, intact and undisturbed landscapes and make them more “resilient” to the impacts of climate warming.
Wyoming joined Utah in filing a federal lawsuit in June challenging the rule.
Stuble said BLM is following the right approach with the Rock Springs planning area.
“We do still have some concerns with the plan,” she said. “Among other things, the Rock Springs RMP doesn’t adequately protect stopover and highly used areas of big game migration corridors and we believe the Red Desert to Hoback corridor deserves greater recognition.
“But overall,” she said, “the plan represents a step toward more holistic and thoughtful management of these public lands.”
Matt Skroch, who leads the Pew Charitable Trusts’ work in the Intermountain West, called the plan a good compromise.
“BLM deserves credit for listening to stakeholders and finding balance in this plan that’s been in the making for more than a decade,” Skroch said. “Nobody gets everything they wanted, and that’s often a good indication that the agency found a good landing spot with managing the multiple uses that occur in the Rock Springs area.”
But the state has been clear about its opposition. Among the items in a report submitted to BLM in January by a state task force formed by Gordon was a statement that the “majority of the task force has grave concerns about the adoption of new or expanded ACECs” in the preferred alternative.
This, the task force report said, is due to “the potential negative impacts these ACECs could have on the economy, customs, and culture” in the planning area.
Opposition has also come from Wyoming’s congressional delegation.
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) has sponsored a bill, H.R. 6085, that would forbid Interior Secretary Deb Haaland from allowing BLM to “finalize, implement, administer, or enforce” the updated resource management plan if it includes the conservation designations.
Barrasso reminded BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning of the state’s criticism of the plan during a June committee oversight hearing.
“The governor, the state Legislature, county commissioners, local communities, all strongly oppose this plan,” Barrasso told Stone-Manning. “So why are you ignoring Wyoming’s opposition to the plan across the board?”
Stone-Manning responded that there has been “a lot of hyperbole about facts that were not true about the plan,” though she did not offer any specifics. She said the agency has “done a lot of education work with your constituents about what’s in the plan,” and has “worked with the governor” on a final version, including potentially incorporating some of the task force’s recommendations.
“We’re digging in, looking at those recommendations,” she said, “and I am certain that Wyomingites will see their voices reflected in the final” plan.
Barrasso responded, “Well, I just hope the BLM does not dig in, but actually reverses course on this issue.”
