As Wyoming ranching and mining industry leaders dig into the Bureau of Land Management’s lengthy final management proposal for a huge chunk of southwest Wyoming released Thursday, they didn’t like what they’ve seen so far.
They call the plan devastating for southwest Wyoming’s mining and energy industries and a thinly veiled exampled of government overreach by the Biden/Harris administration.
“I will say that we are reviewing the document, but at first glance it looks to be problematic,” Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, told Cowboy State Daily via text message Thursday.
Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, told Cowboy State Daily that he’d previously seen a summary of the BLM’s final proposal.
“I thought some of it was very positive, and some of it was very concerning,” Magagna said.
The final proposal for the BLM’s Rock Springs Resource Management Plan, at least seems better than the agency’s previously favored Alternative B, he said.
The Rock Springs BLM field office oversees roughly 3.6 million acres in Wyoming, much of it in Sweetwater County.
Alternative B would have designated roughly 1.8 million acres of that as “areas of critical environmental concern” (ACES).
The final proposal cuts the ACES designation down to just under 1 million acres.
“I think I would safely anticipate that it (the latest proposal) is far better than the horrible proposal we saw before,” Magagna said.
Coalition Blasts The BLM
While it may be a little better than a full-on Alternative B, the plan would still cripple Wyoming’s energy and mining industries, says a coalition of organizations. The group blasted the BLM in a joint statement sent to Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.
“Our industries and members are deeply concerned about the plan the federal BLM has released,” the statement says. “It disregards many relevant comments that were made by Wyoming businesses and people.”
It was issued by the Wyoming Business Alliance, Petroleum Association of Wyoming, Associated General Contractors of Wyoming and the Wyoming Mining Association.
The groups acknowledge that the BLM made improvements after a year of controversy surrounding the proposal, but not nearly enough.
The final proposal still contains “an enormous increase in the prohibition of development of BLM multiple-use lands compared to the status quo,” the groups stated.
Bad For Business
That will be bad for businesses in southwest Wyoming, they state. It also reflects a broad pattern of federal overreach.
“More challenging, it is part of an onslaught of new regulations that is making it more expensive and less efficient to do business in Wyoming,” according to the coalition.
The BLM’s final proposal also disregards years of Wyoming public and business participation in the planning process, according to the statement.
“The cooperators worked hard with the BLM for a decade attempting to find a balanced alternative that enacted the original purpose of NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act),” the groups state.
Criticism of the BLM went beyond Wyoming.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, said she thinks the feds are trying to shut down energy development.
“Western Energy Alliance will defer to voices within Wyoming, such as the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, but when we put our regional lens on this plan along with plans from other Western states, we see the Biden/Harris administration using the BLM land use planning process to all but enact a leasing and fracking ban by other means,” Sgamma said in a statement.
Lots Of Details To Plow Through
The plan is 438 pages with another 1,152 pages of supporting documents for a total of 1,590 pages.
That’s a lot to go though, so it could take a while to get a full picture of the plan’s full effect, Magana said.
From a ranching perspective, one bright spot is that “there was some response on some of the concerns we had about predator control,” he said.
But even though the number of ACES acres was trimmed, it still isn’t nearly enough, Magagna added.
“Our view on ACES designations is that they are to be used on very unique, small areas,” he said. “ACES isn’t intended for broad management.
The concerns of private interests mirrored those of Wyoming’s elected officials.
Wyoming U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, along with Gov. Mark Gordon, all slammed the BLM’s plan early Thursday.
Wyoming U.S. Rep Harriet Hagman weighed in later, and was harshly critical of the BLM.
“The BLM's most recent RMP and preferred alternative does not address the concerns previously identified, and will substantially reduce economically productive and environmentally safe land uses such as grazing, energy production, mining, recreation, and other important activities on nearly a million acres in our state,” Hageman said.
Gordon stated that he plans to file a protest against BLM’s plan after the document is officially published to the Federal Register, which is scheduled to happen Friday.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
