Some U.S. Senators want to speed up decisions on how wide swaths of federal lands are managed and give local officials more of a say in the process.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) led a Nov. 19 hearing about the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees 245 million surface acres and 700 million subsurface mineral acres of land in the U.S.
He said the agency’s planning and permitting process has become “rigid, slow, and often detached from the intent Congress expressed.”
In 1976, Congress gave the BLM a dual mandate: manage public land for “multiple uses” and a “sustained yield.” That means the agency has to balance priorities like recreation and conservation with grazing, timber harvesting and energy development.
Micah Christensen, the natural resource counsel for the Wyoming County Commissioners Association, testified saying those priorities have been subject to political whiplash as presidential administrations change.
“These landscapes and resources cannot be managed on four- or eight-year terms from D.C.,” he said.
Last year, the Biden administration finalized the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan, which guides management and conservation for roughly 3.6 million acres in southwest Wyoming. It was more than a decade in the making. The Trump administration later announced it would change that plan, in order to open up more land to industry.
“We desperately need the federal government to empower local land managers on the ground,” Christensen said.
BLM field staff do spend time engaging the public locally before finalizing plans, though Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) said there’s still been “federal overreach.”
“Ultimately so many of the final decisions aren't made locally, but they're made in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
There was some bipartisan support for speeding up the planning process, but Democrats, like Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), said there may not be enough staff for that because of recent federal worker layoffs.
“I'm very concerned that the current administration has taken actions that will only exacerbate the BLM's backlog in resource planning,” she said.
This all comes as the agency could soon see new leadership. President Donald Trump nominated former New Mexico congressperson Steve Pearce to lead the BLM. Pearce has a history of supporting energy development on federal land. The Senate will decide whether to confirm him.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
