On August 22nd, the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Rock Springs Field Office released its final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for its updated Resource Management Plan (RMP). The plan outlines how the agency will manage the 3.6 million acres encompassing the majority of Wyoming’s iconic Red Desert for the foreseeable future. It’s been a long and winding road to get to this moment, following years of planning, activism, opposition, and collaboration. While the proposed final plan (which is still open to final revisions until September 23rd) contains some significant wins for conservation, there is still room for improvement.
First of all, the major conservation victories within the plan should not be diminished — reducing leasable land to oil and gas by 1 million acres, designating new Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), encouraging responsible siting of new development on the landscape, and even expanding the Steamboat Mountain and South Wind River ACECs to protect crucial habitats for wildlife and lands with cultural significance. These are big changes that will have real and lasting impacts on our landscapes, our climate, and our wildlife. But other areas of the plan require strengthening in the final version to truly achieve the balanced vision that the BLM is moving towards.
Shockingly, the BLM did not designate any Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (LWCs), even though multiple citizens' inventories of these wild lands were submitted to the BLM in 2016 and again in 2022. For an area to qualify as an "LWC" it must possess sufficient size, naturalness, and outstanding opportunities for either solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation. Wyoming is unique because places with wilderness characteristics exist; we must preserve them while we still have the chance.
Along with LWCs, the final plan removes a prescription for Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) to be managed for wilderness characteristics if they were to be released. WSAs are not formally designated wilderness areas but await a final designation from Congress, the only entity that can officially designate wilderness areas. Under the draft, the BLM was set to manage these landscapes as wilderness regardless of an official designation or not. Now, no protections would remain if Congress decides not to designate them. This was a huge step back from the draft plan and severely limited future wilderness potential within the field office.
Another blow to Wyoming conservation was the loss of several ACECs from the draft plan, including Cedar Canyon, Monument Valley, and the Big Game Migration Corridor. ACECs, as their name implies, are locations with particularly important ecological conditions that warrant special protections from the BLM. While some new ACECs are set to be designated in this final iteration of the plan, it diminished the total by nearly 670,000 acres from the initial draft. The loss of the 2,550-acre Cedar Mountain ACEC is particularly concerning since it was one of the few existing ACECs designated before the planning process and is now set to have its protections stripped in this final iteration.
Lastly, the Rock Springs Field Office should have included language that allows for Tribal co-stewardship of places of cultural importance. In 2021, upon the release of SO 3403, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland stated, “By acknowledging and empowering Tribes as partners in co-stewardship of our country’s lands and waters, every American will benefit from strengthened management of our federal land and resources. …The Earth’s lands and waters have been central to the social, cultural, spiritual, mental, and physical wellbeing of Indigenous peoples. It is essential that we do everything we can to ensure that Indigenous Knowledge helps guide our ongoing work as stewards of public lands and waters”. The Rock Springs Field Office received nominations for Tribally co-stewarded ACECs in 2022 from the Indigenous Land Alliance of Wyoming with support from the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes. However, these nominations were not included in the final plan. This vital Resource Management Plan should reflect the long-term goals of the BLM to bring all voices together in co-stewardship to manage these public lands.
The release of the plan kicked off a 30-day public protest period that closes on Monday, September 23. I'm planning to protest against the decisions regarding land protection. If you've commented on the plan earlier this year, you can too.
If you’re interested in protesting, here are some things to know:
- The deadline to submit a protest is September 23rd.
- Criteria for submitting a protest are more strict than submitting a general public comment. You can find critical information for protesting here.
- When submitting a protest, it’s best practice to refer to specific changes or impacts resulting in changes in this final version of the plan. Submitting your original comment if you can and explaining why or how these changes will impact you, your community, and your interests is important.
- Follow this link to submit by Monday, September 23rd. (Click “Participate Now” in the left-hand column. It may take a few seconds to appear.)
If you need help submitting a protest, please contact Kaycee Prevedel at Kaycee.Prevedel@sierraclub.org for more information.