Federal officials finalized new land-management guidelines Friday for 3.6 million acres of southwest Wyoming, prescribing future management for beloved landscapes like the Red Desert and the Little Mountain region.
The move comes only weeks before President Joe Biden will leave office and only hours before a possible federal government shutdown. It drew a strong response from Gov. Mark Gordon, who accused the Biden administration of ignoring feedback from the state.
Revisions to the resource management plan for the Bureau of Land Management’s Rock Springs Field Office were 13 years in the making. On Friday afternoon, the federal agency published a “record of decision” document, closing the door to additional changes.
“I’ve worked for BLM-Wyoming for over a decade … and the Rock Springs RMP has always been something that’s been ongoing,” Deputy State Director for Communications Brad Purdy told WyoFile. “It does feel very nice to get that across the finish line. We can have some good resource management in that area that isn’t from 1997.”
The resource management plan cemented by the decision is unchanged, Purdy said, from what the BLM proposed in the final environmental impact statement, released in August.
The revision leaves 70% of the field office available for fluid mineral extraction. Highly protected “areas of critical environmental concern,” meanwhile, increased from 226,000 acres in the old plan to 935,000 acres in the just-updated one. Mule deer and pronghorn migration routes are safeguarded under the revised plan by the state’s policies, which are more permissive of development than what BLM proposed in its draft environmental impact statement.
Gordon had asked for a number of changes last week via an administrative appeal. Those requests were rejected by BLM Principal Deputy Director Nada Culver “immediately” before the decision was published, according to a statement from the governor’s office.
“While it is not surprising that Wyoming’s comments were figuratively dumped in the trash,” Gordon said, “it is disappointing that despite years of collaborative work between state agencies, impacted counties, concerned citizens, and interest groups, all Wyoming is left with is this parting shot from the Biden Administration.”
Gordon decried the BLM for hastening the record of decision out the door before incoming president Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20. Gordon will sit down with the Wyoming Attorney General to determine if the record of decision meets the Wyoming Legislature’s conditions for certification of the Kelly Parcel sale, he promised in a Friday statement.
Located 100 miles away from the BLM field office within Grand Teton National Park, the 640-acre state-owned Kelly Parcel became intertwined with the Rock Springs plan update by the Wyoming Legislature. The budget passed during the body’s 2024 session enables the federal government to acquire the parcel from the state, but only under certain conditions related to rights-of-way and energy development in the Rock Springs plan decision.
The governor committed to “reviewing and pursuing all the options we have to claw back this misguided ROD.” Among the options GOP lawmakers have considered is using the Congressional Review Act to overturn the land-use plan — which would be a novel use of that oversight tool.
“With President Trump in office, former [North Dakota] Governor [Doug] Burgum at the head of the Department of the Interior, and a Republican Senate and House,” Gordon said, “I am confident that we will have the ability to finish the job and right a course that has been so far off track over the last four years.”
U.S. Sen John Barrasso — who’s slated to become the second most powerful GOP senator next Congress — declared the Rock Springs decision a “misguided and malicious midnight rule.”
“Given that Wyoming Governor Gordon just submitted his review of this plan … it is clear that the Department of the Interior did not seriously consider or respond to his concerns. I look forward to working with President Trump to repeal this disastrous plan.”
In 2023, the draft stage of the plan revision sparked outrage from many Republicans in Wyoming, who worried the plan leaned too far toward conservation at the expense of industrial activity. Major changes were made following the backlash in the early stages of the revision process.
“Between the draft and final, we had an extraordinary amount of public comment, interaction with cooperators, interaction with the governor’s office,” Purdy said. “That allowed us to put together a really good final EIS. After we put that together, and we looked at everything, we didn’t see any reason to make any changes to the [decision].”
An analysis led by environmental groups found that 85% of the recommendations from a Gordon-appointed task force after the draft stage were included in the final Rock Springs plan, which carried over unchanged to the decision.
Conservationists cheer, industry fumes
Wyoming’s conservation community celebrated the end of the longstanding land-use dispute and urged elected officials to leave it alone.
“I want to thank the Bureau of Land Management for honoring the wishes of our communities and adopting a plan that will help conserve Little Mountain’s mule deer for years to come,” Muley Fanatic Foundation President Josh Coursey said in a statement. “Now, we must move forward. It would be a great disservice to the hunting and angling community of southwestern Wyoming if we tried to undo this plan.”
Julia Stuble, who directs the The Wilderness Society’s state office, applauded the BLM for protecting wildlife habitat and cultural sites like the northern Red Desert and Big Sandy foothills. “While we are dismayed the BLM did not close crucial stopover sites in antelope and mule deer migration corridors to oil and gas drilling,” she said, “this plan is nonetheless a good-faith effort to provide durable guidance that balances conservation, access to outdoor recreation and energy needs.”
Alec Underwood, program director at the Wyoming Outdoor Council, declared in a statement the now-completed plan “clearly reflects local residents, industries, and expert analysis in pursuit of the balance of multiple uses that the BLM was established to manage.”
“Areas beloved by hunters, hikers, and recreationists of all kinds are protected,” Underwood said. “Moreover, continued trona mining and energy development will persist in appropriate locations and with the right safeguards in place.”
Industry representatives, however, blasted Friday’s earlier-than-expected decision.
“It is not surprising that the anti-oil and natural gas Biden Administration would drop a 550-plus page final Record of Decision for the Rock Springs RMP on the Friday before Christmas with one foot out the door and a government shutdown looming,” Petroleum Association of Wyoming Vice President and Director of Communications Ryan McConnaughey told WyoFile. “The BLM has consistently ignored input from the natural gas and oil industry, state and local governments and concerned Wyoming citizens in an effort to push this ill-conceived plan across the finish line before they leave office.”
The decision document for the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan can be read below. BLM’s response to protests, which was completed on Thursday, is also available for review.
-WyoFile staff writers Katie Klingsporn and Dustin Bleizeffer contributed to this story
Just more evidence that this democrat administration despises the working
people of America.
Sore losers. But did they really lose anything other than their sense of:
We own this place.
?
“85% of the recommendations from a Gordon-appointed task force after the draft stage were included in the final Rock Springs plan, which carried over unchanged to the decision.”
If this is indeed true, then it seems to me that no one should be whining about the ROD. Sounds to me like BLM did indeed look and listen to input. Stop with the posturing and get back to taking care of business.
This is great news. I am so glad the BLM was able to finish this up and that President Biden signed it . The governor always stands with the oil and gas and coal. The red desert is a very special place. I’ve been there camped there. It is a true wilderness and it should be preserved for all Americans to enjoy. It is a place that is very hard to travel through because if it rains or gets wet, it is clay and you will be stuck so it’s not a great place for large trucks to travel. I can’t even imagine that. they would have to blacktop roads through there and develop it in that manner to be able to get in there year-round, which as a Wyomingite I do not want.
The federal government has spent 13 years putting this plan to manage this publicly owned property, a plan to balance the needs of various stakeholders. Access to that land for recreation and hunting/fishing is important for citizens from all over the nation, not just wyomingites. The fossil fuels industries here are upset, but I think the bureau did the nation proud.
If only Gordon cared about our rights and women’s healthcare when Dobb’s “dumped those in the trash”. Cows and cash above all else is somewhere in the Bible I am sure.
So which way is it Mr. Coursey? Or maybe WyoFile is missing all of your comments? Or maybe the message changes depending on who you are talking too?
“Outside of the Greater Little Mountain area, the BLM’s plan has “disconnects” that set different parties at odds, Coursey said. If the plan as a whole is flawed, Coursey said he’d rather see Congress open it back up for amendments, following the model that was used to reach a consensus for Greater Little Mountain. That would be better than having it completely nullified by Congress, he said. The RMP as a whole needs to be reworked so it will better suit Wyoming, he said. But nullifying the entire thing would set everybody back to square one after years of work, Coursey said.”
Per your canned public relations statement: “Now, we must move forward. It would be a great disservice to the hunting and angling community of southwestern Wyoming if we tried to undo this plan.”
That is a very good question. This is a bad plan. All it does is cause controversy and make way for the solar grifters to pollute our state with panels.