bureau land blm bak

1019 bak

see bernhardt and pendley

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AN 12 25

After President Donald Trump returned to the White House, his administration aggressively downsized a wide range of federal government agencies with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its then-leader, Tesla/SpaceX/X.com head Elon Musk. Democrats warned that the cuts — which targeted everyone from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) to the National Weather Service (NWS) to the Internal Revenue Service (IRA) — would have painful results in the red states that voted for Trump in big numbers in 2024, but Trump claimed that he was only targeting "waste, fraud and abuse."

In an article published by **Politico on December 15, Montana-based journalist Cassidy Randall details some of the negative effects that Trump Administration/DOGE cuts are having in her state — which Trump carried by roughly 20 percent in 2024.

According to Randall, "DOGE cuts to public lands agencies" are "hitting rural, conservative communities — one of this administration's strongest voting bases — the hardest." And the result, according to Politico, is a "revolt" that threatens to "wake a sleeping political giant" in a deep-red state.

"Starting in February," Randall reports, "an estimated 5200 people have been terminated from the agencies that manage the 640 million acres of federal public lands in the U.S. That number doesn't include the many who took the (Trump) Administration's buyout or early retirement offers also meant to cut staff. Further, Trump's 2026 budget proposes more budget cuts and a reduction of nearly 18,500 more public lands employees."

Terry Zink, a 57-year-old hunter who lives in Montana, voted for Trump in 2024 but is now criticizing the effects that Trump Administration/DOGE cuts are having on rural public lands.

Zink told Politico, "You won't meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn't vote for this…. We have to listen to our wildlife biologists. We have to be strong advocates for those people."

Zink said of rural areas, "You cannot fire our firefighters. You cannot fire our trail crews. You have to have selective logging, and water restoration, and healthy forests."

*Read Cassidy Randall's full article for Politico at this link.

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Environmental attorney named to Pendley’s former BLM post

By DENNIS WEBB Dennis.Webb@gjsentinel.com Feb 23, 2021

Nada Wolff Culver, Deputy Director of Policy and Programs.

An attorney who long has worked for conservation groups on Bureau of Land Management issues in Colorado and elsewhere has been named to fill the high-level BLM position formerly occupied by William Perry Pendley.

Nada Culver, who most recently served as vice president of public lands and senior policy counsel at the National Audubon Society, in a position based in Denver, will serve as the BLM’s deputy director of policy and programs.

In that capacity, the Interior Department confirmed, Culver will in effect be running the agency for the short term. Pendley likewise ran the agency while holding the job Culver is taking, as there long has been no BLM director in place.

The BLM directorship position is subject to a Senate confirmation process following nomination by the president. President Joe Biden hasn’t yet nominated anyone to serve as the director.

According to the Interior Department, Culver’s BLM position is the first position in the agency’s succession order, so she will be performing delegated duties of the BLM director.

Culver previously served as senior counsel and senior director for policy and planning at the Wilderness Society, where she helped create that organization’s BLM Action Center in Denver, which works with people on participating in land use planning processes and management decisions. At the Wilderness Society she was involved in projects such as protecting land on the Roan Plateau west of Rifle from oil and gas development, and protecting sage-grouse habitat.

Before joining the Wilderness Society, Culver started her career in the private sector, working on environmental issues including energy development and environmental remediation, and was a partner with the law firm Patton Boggs, nowSquire Patton Boggs.

The Interior Department announced Culver’s appointment Monday, one of numerous appointments made by the department since President Biden took office Jan. 20.

“Interior’s political team proudly reflects the diversity of America, with more than 50% identifying as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and 80% as women,” Interior said in Monday’s release.

Culver stands in stark contrast to her predecessor, Pendley. An attorney and Evergreen resident who previously was president of the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, he joined the BLM as deputy director of policy and programs in mid-2019 and immediately began running the agency.

He helped pursue the Trump administration’s energy dominance public-lands agenda and also led the agency’s relocation of national headquarters jobs in Washington, D.C., to numerous locations in the West, including to its new national headquarters in Grand Junction. While Pendley’s position remained based in Washington, he spent a lot of time in the job visiting Grand Junction and other western BLM locations.

Donald Trump eventually nominated Pendley to be the BLM director but later withdrew that nomination. Pendley was a controversial figure at BLM in part due to comments he’d made before joining the agency in support of selling off public lands. A Montana judge ultimately ruled that Pendley unlawfully served 424 days as acting BLM director because he hadn’t been confirmed by the Senate and didn’t fall in the permitted category of people can serve in an acting capacity. But Pendley remained in a leadership position at the agency until Trump left office. He “off-boarded BLM” on Jan. 20, BLM spokesperson Richard Packer told The Daily Sentinel.

Pendley has declined interview requests by the Sentinel since leaving the BLM, but issued a goodbye message to BLM employees that he also posted to his LinkedIn page (see related item).

Culver on Monday said she couldn’t comment on her new job, referring questions to an Interior spokesperson.

Scott Braden, director of the Colorado Wildlands Project, said he’s “just thrilled” about Culver’s hiring.

“I think I’m just really delighted that somebody who has such a depth and breath of experience with BLM policy is going to be at this important position,” Braden said.

He said he can’t think of a better person than Culver to help the agency rebuild after losing a lot of career staff, and thinks she will do a great job rebalancing the agency after it tilted to one side of its multi-use mission due to the Trump administration’s energy dominance focus.

“I think this is a great kind of way to correct and rebalance and rebuild a BLM for the 21st century, one that thinks about how we can use land management to tackle issues like climate change and equitable access and conservation, and bringing those things back into the mix of land management,” he said.

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance oil and gas industry trade group, said in an email, “It’s not at all surprising that many environmental activists will occupy key positions in the Interior Department. It’s well known that environmental groups wrote many of the policies in the Obama/Biden Administration, so it’s not surprising that they will occupy posts in the Biden Administration.

But she added, “Nada is a very smart, tough advocate, but she’s always been fair. We’re often on opposite sides of issues, but that’s to be expected, as we represent different viewpoints, both of which are valid and necessary for BLM to contend with.”

U.S. Senate voted along party lines Thursday night to make Tracy Stone-Manning the first confirmed director of the Bureau of Land Management since the Obama administration.

The vote, 50-45, ended a contentious confirmation process for Stone-Manning, a senior adviser for conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation who served as chief of staff to former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat.

It also represented a victory for her biggest supporter, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat for whom Stone-Manning once worked as an aide. Senate Republicans fiercely opposed her nomination, most vocally because of her ties to a 1989 plot to drive spikes into hundreds of trees.

Republicans maintained their resistance up until the last moments before the vote Thursday evening, with a parade of Western senators coming to the floor to register their opposition.

In a tense exchange, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking Republican John Barrasso of Wyoming called her “completely unfit for the job.”

“Ms. Stone-Manning lied to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about her involvement as an eco-terrorist and in the eco-terrorism,” Barrasso said, adding that Senate Democrats would be “held personally responsible” for voting to confirm her.

Tester told Barrasso he accepted that challenge.

“You’re damn right. Hold me accountable for Tracy Stone-Manning,” he said. “I’ve worked with her. I know what she does. I know she can get the job done. She can bring people together.”

Tester also seemed to lay blame for the Republican campaign against Stone-Manning on his state’s other senator,Republican Steve Daines, saying it was retribution for Stone-Manning’s support of Bullock’s unsuccessful run for Daines’ Senate seat last year.

“I’m going to point out one thing that Tracy Stone-Manning did that was wrong: She actually agreed to be Gov. Bullock’s chief of staff,” Tester said.

“If somebody wants to go in and do an investigation and find out what’s happened over the last three years, with the governor running against a sitting senator in this body and she being the governor’s chief of staff, you will find out why people stand up and make stuff up about Tracy Stone-Manning.”

In a statement after the vote, Stone-Manning said: “I am grateful for the Senate’s vote of confidence today and look forward to bringing decades of experience — working on the ground and across the aisle— to carry out the critical mission of the Bureau of Land Management. Our public lands are one of America’s finest ideas, and I am ready to get to work alongside a remarkable team to ensure future generations benefit from them like we have.”

Rebuilding the BLM

Stone-Manning will be tasked with rebuilding an agency at the center of President Joe Biden’s climate and energy agenda. The BLM oversees nearly 250 million acres of public lands, including roughly 50 million acres in Nevada, and manages the federal oil and gas leasing program.

Biden temporarily paused that program and ordered a review of federal policy when he took office. A federal judge this summer ordered the program be renewed. The Interior Department, of which the BLM is a part, has said it is working to restart leases.

Stone-Manning will oversee the agency’s move back to Washington from Grand Junction, Colo. The move reverses a controversial decision during former President Donald Trump’s administration to relocate the agency to the West, where nearly all BLM lands are.

Opponents said the decision hollowed out the agency influence in the nation’s capital and drove out experienced workers. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced this month the headquarters would be relocated back to Washington.

The agency has lacked a Senate-confirmed leader since Neil Kornze stepped down at the end of President Barack Obama’s term in January 2017. Under Trump, anti-public lands attorney William Perry Pendley ran day-to-day operations as the deputy director for policy and programs, but was never confirmed as the director.

The lack of a Senate-confirmed director led to uncertainty in the agency, including a Montana federal judge invalidating some decisions the BLM made during Pendley’s time in office.

Tree-spiking incident

Days after Stone-Manning’sconfirmation hearing earlier this year at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where Republicans were already skeptical of her political work and opposition to fossil fuel development, the conservative site Daily Callerpublished a report detailing Stone-Manning’s involvement with a 1989 tree-spiking plot while she was a graduate student at the University of Montana.

Though the episode was already public, it was not well known in Washington and the article intensified Republican opposition.

Court records and Stone-Manning’s own account show she mailed a letter in 1989 to the U.S. Forest Service threatening that loggers who attempted to cut down a portion of Clearwater National Forest could be hurt by spikes driven into them in an attempt to sabotage a sale—a federal crime.

She has said, including at her confirmation hearing for a state post in 2013, that the scheme’s organizers approached her and asked her to mail the letter. She said the ringleaders intimidated her and that she wished to warn loggers who may have been in harm’s way. She later testified against two men who were convicted for the tree-spiking.

Other accounts, including froma Forest Service investigator, said she was more involved in planning than she’d indicated. Republican senators also took issue with her response on a pre-hearing questionnaire that she had never been the target of a criminal investigation.

On the Senate floor on Thursday night,Idaho Republican Jim Risch accused Stone-Manning of perjury in a Senate floor speech and said she would have no credibility when she appears before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the BLM, as director.

But it was Tester who had the last word before the vote.

“Now, we’re going to take a good woman, a good woman who the state of Montana knows well, who, in fact, was vetted in the state of Montana and they said all these accusations have no merit,” he said. “And we’re going to run her through the ringer here. Character assassination like I’ve never seen before.”

The aggressive Republican campaign against Stone-Manning belied the reputation she’d built as a consensus builder on conservation issues. She won bipartisan backing from the Republican-led Montana Senate in a 2013 vote to become the state’s director of environmental quality.

Biden administration plans to move the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters back to Washington but will convert the current headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., into a Western hub with additional staff assigned there, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told bureau employees today.

“I intend to restore the national headquarters of the BLM to Washington, D.C., ensuring a presence in the nation’s Capitol with all the other land management agencies in the federal family,” Haaland said during the 12-minute session.

The decision, which would appear to demote the Grand Junction office into a kind of sub-headquarters, would restore a BLM leadership presence in D.C. after the Trump-era relocation of hundreds of positions to Grand Junction and other state offices across the West. That move prompted dozens of senior officials to leave the bureau, creating a large leadership void and dysfunctional operation that continues today, critics have said.

Under the new plan Haaland outlined in very broad terms to BLM employees in an internal online session today, the director and other key leadership positions — presumably the deputy director of policy and programs and the deputy director of operations — will be permanently stationed in Washington.

It also appears the assistant directors who oversee the six BLM directorates, which manage everything from energy development to resource planning and compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, will also relocate to Washington, though Haaland did not say if they are included in the core group. Most of the six assistant directors are currently assigned to Grand Junction.

Haaland was quick to note, “Employees will not be required to relocate, other than the core aforementioned BLM leadership positions.”

It’s not clear how many employees will be returning to Washington. Haaland told staffers decisions like that will not be finalized until after talking to employees “in the weeks and months ahead.”

The moves will allow BLM senior leadership to be near congressional lawmakers and other key Interior decisionmakers, such as officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service.

The decision will also allow BLM to maintain what congressional lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called a strong Western presence. It also seems designed to please Colorado Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, who lobbied to keep the headquarters in their home state, as well as the Grand Junction local community, by committing to increase the number of employees at the Western hub.

Haaland did not say how many employees will stay in Grand Junction.

Controversial from the start

The decision ends months of evaluation by the Interior Department and even more speculation as to what the Biden administration might do with BLM’s headquarters.

Hickenlooper signaled he was supportive of the move to create a Western hub.

“A Western BLM Headquarters in Colorado will help ensure we have a fully functioning agency that understands the West,” Hickenlooper said in an emailed statement.

“We’ll keep working to secure jobs in Grand Junction, including senior leadership positions,” Hickenlooper added. “To succeed, the Western HQ must be a strong, permanent presence that engages the community and adds a Western perspective and value to the BLM’s mission.”

But GOP leaders who support the Trump-era move of the headquarters to Colorado blasted the latest decision.

Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, the ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, labeled the move a “misguided, partisan decision” that he said “has nothing to do with executing good land management and everything to do with centralizing and growing big government.”

He added, “A two-quarterback BLM system with one headquarters in D.C. and another headquarters in Colorado will layer bureaucracies, further confusing and complicating an already confused and complicated agency.”

Interior completed the move to the newly christened Robert F. Burford Bureau of Land Management Headquarters in Grand Junction in August 2020 (Greenwire, Aug. 6, 2020).

It was a more than yearlong effort, beginning when BLM announced in July 2019 it would move its headquarters to Grand Junction as part of the reorganization that also included relocating hundreds of D.C.-based positions to state offices in the West.

Then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt promoted the effort as designed to get senior bureau officials closer to the 245 million acres they manage and the people most affected by the bureau’s land-management policies and decisions.

But the move was controversial from the start.

Critics noted that 97 percent of BLM staffers at the time already worked in the West, where 99 percent of the lands the bureau manages are located. They also accused the Trump administration of scattering BLM’s leadership away from policymakers to weaken it, and drive career officials out in an effort to dismantle an agency the administration viewed largely as an impediment to energy development.

The relocation effort was marked to some degree by a lack of transparency and information provided by Interior’s leadership to BLM employees, who complained that their input, when solicited, was often ignored.

There was also either confusion or misinformation by Interior officials on critical details. Bernhardt told a Senate panel last year that 174 D.C.-based staffers had been reassigned to Grand Junction or the other state offices — higher than the 153 to 159 employees BLM had said were relocated (E&E News PM, March 5, 2020).

And William Perry Pendley, the former BLM deputy director of policy and programs whom a federal judge ruled had served as the bureau’s de facto director illegally for more than a year, publicly stated several times that most D.C.-based staffers had agreed to move West.

“Now the naysayers in Washington, they said, ‘Oh, almost everybody will refuse to go.’ No, two-thirds said yes,” Pendley told a conservative Colorado radio station in early 2020 (E&E News PM, Feb. 13, 2020).

Pendley’s numbers were later supported in a formal BLM statement to E&E News.

“We are still comfortable estimating that 2/3 of folks have accepted relocation,” that statement said.

But the Trump Interior Department refused to release the exact numbers to the public, even after the relocation was completed last year.

After President Biden was sworn into office, Interior released statistics that showed 328 positions had been relocated, and 287 employees, or 87% of those reassigned, left the bureau rather than move (E&E News PM, Jan. 28).

There was also disappointment among some Western leaders that BLM had not permanently relocated as many staffers as promised.

About 40 staffers were supposed to be permanently stationed there, but vacancies created by an employee exodus, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic that had most BLM staff working from home, saw only a handful working in the new office.

mont ppr

Letter to the editor: BLM has director it deserves

Save

The mission of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is simple: "To sustain the health, diversity and productivity of public lands for the enjoyment of present and future generations."

For two years this mission was challenged by the appointment of Acting Director William Perry-Pendley. Mr. Perry-Pendley was never confirmed by the U.S. Senate and proudly advocated the sale of public lands to private entities.

The absence of response from U.S. Sen. Steve Daines was almost deafening.

Today, we stand at a crossroads to save the mission of the bureau. Over her career, Tracy Stone-Manning has clearly shown her ability to create a healthy balance between public land conservation and the desire of private entities to use the land's potential resources. I'm thrilled she was confirmed as director.

However, as Stone-Manning was working her way through the process, Sen. Daines had a lot to say in opposition to her confirmation.

This makes no sense at all if we wish to retain our Montana motto of "Last Best Place," rather than reminiscing on these lands in the past tense. I'm more than relieved that common sense prevailed and the BLM will have the director it deserves.

Pauline Tait,

Billings

320

https://www.ecowatch.com/oil-gas-leases-public-lands-2645367415.html

A federal judge threw out oil and gas leases on nearly one million acres of public lands that are important habitat for the greater sage grouse, arguing that a Trump administration policy that curtailed public input on the leases was "arbitrary and capricious."

At the start of 2018, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had issued a memo shortening the period for public comment and protest on oil and gas leases from 30 days to 10, Huffpost reported. But U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush ruled in Idaho Thursday that around $125 million worth of leases issued under the new policy be tossed out and the full 30-day comment period restored. In his decision, Bush argued that BLM could not only consider the economic needs of fossil fuel industries at the expense of all other concerns.

"If the words 'justice so requires' are to mean anything, they must satisfy the fundamental understanding of justice: that it requires an impartial look at the balance struck between the two sides of the scale, as the iconic statue of the blindfolded goddess of justice holding the scales aloft depicts," he wrote. "Merely to look at only one side of the scales, whether solely the costs or solely the benefits, flunks this basic requirement."

The lawsuit was brought by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Western Watersheds Project in a bid to protect greater sage grouse habitat, The Washington Post explained. The sage grouse, whose numbers have fallen from around 16 million to fewer than 500,000 because of disease and development, reflects the overall health of the Western sagebrush habitat that also houses hundreds of other species.

Bush's ruling tossed out five leases on more than 1,300 square miles — or more than 800,000 acres — of public lands in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, according to HuffPost and The Hill. However, it could have implications for around 67 million acres of sage grouse habitat in 11 Western states.

"This is an enormous victory for greater sage grouse and hundreds of other animals and plants that depend on this dwindling habitat," CBD senior campaigner Taylor McKinnon said in a press release. "The judge confirmed that it's illegal to silence the public to expand fossil-fuel extraction. It's a win for millions of acres of our beautiful public lands and a major blow to the Trump administration's corrupt efforts to serve corporate polluters."

The BLM said it was considering whether or not to appeal the ruling, according to The Washington Post. However, spokesperson Derrick Henry told The Washington Post that the agency remained committed to streamlining the leasing process.

"To do this, we have been working within our legal authorities to alleviate or eliminate unnecessary and burdensome regulations, while at the same time upholding public health and environmental protections, including sage-grouse conservation," Henry said.

However, environmental advocates have complained that, under the Trump administration, streamlining often comes at the expense of public participation. In one particularly ironic example last week, Democratic Congresspeople, activists and former government workers said that the White House's Council on Environmental Quality is making it harder to comment on its plans to restrict the National Environmental Policy Act, itself a law designed to give communities a say in projects that might impact their local ecosystems. However, Earthjustice attorney Drew Caputo told The Washington Post that the administration's attempts to work around public input also often ended up flouting the law, leading to court defeats like Thursday's.

"This administration has been relentless in its efforts to cut the public out of public lands decision-making, starting in 2018," Western Watersheds Project staff attorney Talasi Brooks said in a press release. "The court wasn't fooled by the agency's efforts to disguise its intention to provide greater influence to extractive energies, and the sage grouse and 350 other sagebrush-dependent species will benefit from today's win."

Correction. An earlier version of this article stated that a judge had banned oil and gas leases on nearly one million acres of public land. It has been updated to reflect the fact that he threw out existing leases rather than banning leasing generally.

public lands greater sage grouse animals trump administration oil and gas positive news conservation

Judge hands climate analysis back to BLM

By Heather Richards in Energywire 7:16 AM EST

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A federal judge this week halted oil and gas drilling approvals and suspended applications for new permits in Colorado's North Fork Valley until Trump administration officials conclude an analysis of how development there will affect climate change.

Pendley, the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), has released a 17-page recusal list highlighting a number of people, companies and advocacy groups he must avoid while working at the agency.

The disclosure shows Pendley’s ties to a number of industries that BLM regulates as it works to balance energy, grazing and recreational interests along with conservation. The recusal document was first reported by :{E&E News:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

Pendley, who has drawn controversy over his past advocacy for selling off the nation’s public lands, shared the recusal list with BLM leadership.

“I understand that preserving a culture of ethical compliance within the BLM begins with me, and I must set the example for the Bureau," Pendley wrote in an email sharing the recusal list.

"To do so, I am following the DEO’s guidance and sharing my recusal agreement with you,” Pendley wrote, referring to the Department of Interior's Departmental Ethics Office.

Pendley, who was appointed acting director over the summer, added he has “established a rigorous screening process to ensure that I will remain in full compliance” with ethics laws.

The 60 entities outlined by Pendley include at least seven energy companies he is recused from dealing with, including the National Mining Association and various oil companies. The list also outlines a number of other companies that stand to benefit from the use of public lands.

“This is a long list of recusals,” said Delaney Marsco, legal council for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. “If these matters relate to his job in some way, and they likely do if has to recuse himself from them, it’s troubling that there’s so much of a person's job that they can’t do.”

Aaron Weiss, deputy director of Western Priorities, a conservation watchdog group, also questioned whether the bureau chief's recusal list would interfere with his ability to lead the agency.

“A BLM director has to balance multiple uses and that means balancing conservation and recreation and energy development and ranching, and if in any given decisions the BLM director is conflicted in one way or another with any of those interests, there’s no way for them to make good decisions,” Weiss said.

“Looking at the breadth of Pendley's conflicts, it’s hard to see how he can do the job because he has worked for so many clients across the West.”

The list released Wednesday shows that Pendley has recused himself from dealing with a number of state-based farm bureaus as well as the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association. Those groups sometimes advocate for greater access to public lands for farmers and ranchers.

Pendley also recused himself from dealing with four different helicopter tour companies and the United States Air Tour Association. Websites for the companies advertise tours over the Grand Canyon.

The recusal list additionally bars Pendley from dealing with some of the entities for just one year, despite the Trump Ethics Pledge requiring a two-year recusal period.

“I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts,” the pledge reads, which includes similar language for former lobbying clients.

Pendley also vowed to consult ethics officials before taking speaking engagements tied to his books: “War on the West: Government Tyranny on America’s Frontier” and “Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America’s Frontier.”

promote primary 2/18

as of 717 rep fed public land, see also nat parks, dept interior, zinke

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102019/blm-move-western-states-federal-land-control-mining-sagebrush-rebel-interior

no lnx grx

no lnx

Inside Climate News

What the BLM Shake-Up Could Mean for Public Lands and Their Climate Impact

With a self-described Sagebrush Rebel in charge, moving nearly 300 Bureau of Land Management staff could give Western states more influence over federal land use.

BY JUDY FAHYS, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS

OCT 8, 2019

Coal mining in Wyoming. Credit: Bureau of Land Management

The Bureau of Land Management oversees coal leasing on about 570 million acres of land. Nearly 300 BLM employees are being moved from Washington, D.C., to Western states as the Trump administration puts a federal focus on "energy dominance." Credit: Bureau of Land Management

The changes underway at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management might not seem like much: A few hundred employees are being relocated from offices near the White House and dispersed throughout the West, while agency leaders move in next door to energy companies in newly leased headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado.

But along with the appointment of a self-described Sagebrush Rebel as acting director, the shuffling of staff could help position conservatives to accomplish substantial political goals: expanding fossil fuel development, easing national environmental protections, and shifting more power to state governments for managing federal forests and energy development.

Many environmental advocates are watching warily in light of what the changes could mean for environmental policy, including actions related to climate change.

"Their steps threaten to set back efforts to manage our public lands as part of a national climate solution," said Chase Huntley of the Wilderness Society's energy and climate program. The extraction and use of fossil fuels from public lands accounts for nearly a quarter of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions, and the BLM oversees more than 245 million acres of that land as well as 700 million acres of minerals underground.

Moving nearly 300 staff members from Washington to the West will give states' rights advocates something they have been clamoring for: more state influence over day-to-day federal land decisions, as well as potential increases in revenue tied to fossil-fuel development. That's already happening as the Trump administration grants western state and local leaders bigger roles in managing public lands.

The Trump administration and its supporters say reorganizing the BLM will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of natural resource programs, including grazing, logging and managing federal coal, oil and gas development.

The bureau is tasked under the Federal Land Planning and Management Act with balancing that resource extraction with recreational and environmental values, including wildlife conservation and cultural resource protection. The changes could tilt that balance further toward industry interests.

Map: BLM Manages Large Areas of the Western U.S.

Jayson O'Neill, deputy director of the left-leaning public lands advocacy group the Western Values Project, described the BLM reorganization as "lands-transfer lite." Some Westerners have demanded that the federal government hand over title to public land to the states. The Trump administration rejected that idea early on, but "transfer-lite" amounts to a compromise that gives states more control over natural resources on federal lands, he said.

The states' mandate "is to generate revenue, which is a lot different than the mandate of the Bureau of Land Management ... to balance uses," O'Neill said. He sees the reorganization as an "attack on our public lands so that extractive resource industries and the oil and gas industry can control public lands without public input."

The BLM did not respond to requests for comment. But Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) articulated the thinking behind the move in a video posted on Twitter in July after the BLM announced its new Grand Junction headquarters.

"This means that people will be able to have greater say, greater impact on public lands decisions that affect their community," he said.

The BLM had considered climate change impacts in its decisions until the Trump administration shifted its focus toward "energy dominance."

"American energy production is soaring to new heights thanks to President Trump's policies," proclaimed a White House fact sheet touting a record $1.1 billion in revenue from onshore oil and gas lease sales last year.

A 'Sagebrush Rebel' In Charge

Shifting more BLM resources to western states is a boon for states' rights advocates.

So was the appointment of William Perry Pendley to lead the reorganization as acting director of BLM. Pendley, who calls himself @Sagebrush_Rebel on Twitter, has authored five books arguing for limiting federal control of public lands, including, most recently, Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups and Liberal Judges on America's Frontier.

In the Reagan Interior Department, Pendley was Secretary James Watt's deputy. He later followed Watt as head of the Mountain States Legal Foundation. Under his leadership, MSLF became a staunch advocate for private-property rights, federal-lands transfer and the New Sagebrush Rebellion—ideas that resurfaced in the public consciousness in recent years by extremists in the Cliven Bundy armed standoff with the BLM and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation.

Acting BLM Director William Perry Pendley, testifying before the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee in September, 2019. Credit: Congress

Acting BLM Director William Perry Pendley, testifying before the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, said reorganizing the BLM would bring decision-makers closer to the lands they manage. Conservatives cheered his appointment, while environmental groups fear that having a longtime anti-government lawyer is a step toward dismantling the nation's largest land agency. Credit: Congress

"I see the reorganization as an effort to get the land managers closer to the lands they're managing," said Jennifer Fielder, a GOP state senator in Montana and director of the conservative American Lands Council, a nonprofit that's led the "lands transfer" movement to have states assume ownership of most federal lands. "It's good to have somebody at the agency who's looking out for the citizens."

Jeff Ruch, western director for the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said having Pendley at the BLM "is all about an extractive agenda, an industry agenda."

The Effects of Isolating BLM Staff

Staff at BLM headquarters work closely with other federal agencies, and they are responsible for briefing Congress and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). They also convey the policy goals of agency leaders at the Interior Department, which oversees BLM.

Most of the relocated headquarters staff is being dispersed to 11 state offices in the West that 97 percent of BLM's approximately 10,000 employees already report to. Just over two dozen will relocate to the new Colorado headquarters, where co-tenants include Chevron USA, an oil and gas company, and the local branch of an energy-industry trade group. The site is midway between Denver and Salt Lake City and a four hour drive to the nearest major airport.

That isolation is a concern, said Elaine Zielinski, a member of the Public Lands Foundation, a nonpartisan association of former BLM managers.

She worries that locating the agency so far from Washington will undermine BLM's communications with national decision makers, including Congress, White House budget-makers and partner agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Many important conversations about policies, budget and congressional oversight are "on D.C. time," said Zielinski, who led BLM's Oregon and Arizona state offices and worked at Washington headquarters. Staffers were expected to brief national decision makers at a moment's notice, and if knowledgeable staffers didn't get there within an hour, she said, "Don't bother. They've moved on."

"With Congress, you have a short window to answer these questions, and also with OMB," she said. With the reorganization, "all the people who have the answers are scattered all over the country."

Shrinking Government by Getting Staff to Quit

Conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council have been advocating for shifting power out of Washington and for shrinking the federal government, and the BLM reorganization can be seen as another move toward those goals.

BLM headquarters employees began receiving relocation notices a few weeks ago, and some are likely to decline new postings rather than uproot their families.

When two Agriculture Department agencies were reassigned from Washington to Kansas City, two-thirds of the staff refused to relocate.

Mick Mulvaney, acting chief of staff to the president, described relocating staff like that as "a wonderful way to sort of streamline government" by getting federal employees to quit.

BLM Shuffles Staff

Shifting power to the states is also a longtime goal of some conservative groups. The Trump administration has moved in that direction with the Shared Stewardship forest program, for instance, and beefing up the presence of local government on the Bears Ears National Monument management council. Recent proposals in Congress would also put state and local government in charge of energy management and law enforcement on federal lands.

Martin Nie, director of the University of Montana's Bolle Center for People and Forests, said the BLM reorganization is the administration's latest nod to Sagebrush Rebels and states' rights conservatives.

"We have seen an unprecedented transfer of management authority from the federal government to the states," he said, counting the BLM reorganization as the latest example.

Could It Influence Western Voters?

Empowering states, reducing the role of the federal government, expanding public lands energy development—while those ideas resonate in western states, what might be even more important to conservatives is the role the BLM reorganization can play in shoring up the conservative vote in 2020.

Republicans stand to lose Senate seats in Colorado and Arizona if their voters don't turn out. In the U.S. House, the GOP sees winnable Democratic seats in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. Montana's sole House seat, held by a Republican now, is considered a tossup. Meanwhile, Nevada and Arizona are both considered swing states in 2020 presidential race.

With the reorganization shifting BLM headquarters and staff to their states, it could appear to conservative voters that the Trump administration is listening to their pleas to give states more influence over federal land.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/inside-the-trump-administrations-chaotic-dismantling-of-the-bureau-of-land-management/

Early this month, workers at the Washington headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management gathered to discuss a Trump administration plan that would force some 200 people to uproot their lives or find other jobs.

With a vague plan that keeps changing as officials describe it — and no guarantees that Congress would fully fund their relocations — the employees were being detailed to distant locations in the West like Grand Junction, Colorado, and Reno, Nevada. Many career staff saw the move as part of a wider Trump administration effort to drive federal employees out of their jobs. Acting White House chief of staff Mike Mulvaney has described that approach as a “wonderful way to streamline government.”

The hemorrhaging has already begun. After an hour of exasperated questions from employees, Steve Tryon, a deputy assistant director, told the room he had taken an assignment elsewhere in the Interior Department, the BLM’s parent agency. The post, he explained, had a chance of leading to a permanent placement in Washington.

“I hope you can forgive me,” he said to the crowd. “I have two kids in high school. One’s a senior and one’s a sophomore. If I don’t get another job, I’m moving to Grand Junction or Denver without them. And that’s that. That’s my Plan B. Move to Denver without my family.”

“It’s not fun to be without your family,” a colleague replied....

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The areas in Greater Chaco Landscape contain the threatened ruins of Chaco Canyon — what some have referred to "as close as the U.S. gets to Egypt’s pyramids and Peru’s Machu Picchu" — as well as "the remnants of great houses, kivas, ancient roads and sacred places built a millennium ago by an indigenous people who became proficient in architecture, agriculture, astronomy and the arts."1,2 Today, the Diné or Navajo people rely on the Chaco Landscape to sustain their livelihoods and traditional practices and modern New Mexican Pueblos, the descendants of Chaco culture, still consider these sites sacred.3

More than 91% of the area around Chaco Canyon has already been leased to the oil and gas industry, yet Sec. Bernhardt and his Big Oil cronies are eager to wipe out the last remaining protected sacred areas with dangerous drilling and fracking techniques. The democratically-led House or Representatives recently passed an amendment to a spending bill that included a one-year moratorium on drilling in the area, yet it's unclear whether the Republican-controlled Senate will include the provision in their version, and BLM continues to approve more fracking in the area.4 That's why pressure on the BLM is so important right now.

https://thinkprogress.org/agriculture-usda-blm-move-dc-climate-trump-protests-science-e8e534ec12fc/

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Employees and Democratic lawmakers are pushing back on the Trump administration’s plans to relocate hundreds of positions within two agencies outside of Washington, D.C. — a move some see as an effort to clamp down on science.

While the planned moves of both the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM)and parts of the Department of Agriculture (USDA) differ in their scope and rationale, resistance to both plans has shaped up similarly.

Critics are expressing concern over the motivations behind the efforts, which would lead to a mass-exodus of agency experts unwilling to relocate. This would spur a science brain drain in line with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on reports and research from within his own government.

“These decisions… are meant to displace seasoned scientists and regulators who have honorably served Republican and Democratic Administrations alike,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)in a statement to ThinkProgress responding to both the BLM and USDA relocation plans. Van Hollen sits on the Interior and Environment Appropriations subcommittee.

Responsible for administering public lands, BLM has become a battleground under the Trump administration as the White House has rolled back the boundaries of national monuments and advocated for fossil fuel drilling on U.S. acreage.

Now, the bureau is sparking controversy again. Administration officials confirmed this week that the overwhelming majority of BLM positions in D.C. are set for relocation. Around 84% of BLM staffers will be asked to relocate by the end of next year to areas outside of the nation’s capital, mostly to western states.

That announcement comes a month after Secretary Sonny Perdue mandated that over 500 USDA employees move en masse to Kansas City — located in both Missouri and Kansas — by Sept. 30, and gave them a deadline of July 15 to respond.

[Lack of demand hasn’t stopped Trump from opening tons of land

to oil and gas drilling

In the case of BLM, the Interior Department (DOI) plans to concentrate many of the positions in Grand Junction, Colorado, in addition to a range of western states stretching from Arizona to Alaska.Joe Balash, DOI assistant secretary for land and minerals, called the decision “demonstrably cost-effective” in a July 16 letter to Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Interior and Environment.

The Trump administration argues that the move would both cut expenses and shift workers closer to the public lands they focus on, an argument supported by many Republicans including Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), who sits on the Natural Resources Committee.

But Democrats immediately raised objections. Udall said he had “serious reservations” about the move, as did his subcommittee counterpart in the House, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN). Democrats in both chambers of Congress indicated this week that they feel the plan is largely an effort to push out the D.C.-based senior staff who do not want to relocate.

Many of those employees are experts in their field, including scientists. “It’s a way for them to get rid of a lot of professional staff here in Washington,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) in a statement.

Former Interior scientist calls out ‘culture of fear, censorship, and suppression’ under Trump

Many BLM employees are already located in other parts of the country and support for moving the bureau has been somewhat bipartisan over the years. But the latest push for relocation by the Trump administration coincides with a heated clash between USDA and its employees.

Given until this past Monday to make their decision, scores of USDA workers have opted out of moving. Of the employees with the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), more than half declined to relocate, according to Politico.

ERS workers in particular argued that the move would disrupt their work and efforts to publish important scientific reports. NIFA, meanwhile, is responsible for grant funding that touches climate, economic, and agricultural work that uses D.C. as a home base.

Many USDA employees have also argued that the move is politically motivated. ERS has recently released reports critical of Trump’s escalating trade war with China and its impact on farmers.

Experts also worry the move is a warning shot with implications for climate science. An investigation by Politico last month found that USDA has repeatedly sought to burystudies showing the danger of climate change. That report noted that some scientists see the ERS move as a foreshadowing of wider repercussions for research that doesn’t align with the administration’s broader “energy dominance” agenda.

USDA workers have fought through their union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), to dispute the move, but the department has rejected those efforts. Moreover, there is concern that other departments could face similar moves, like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, both of which are under DOI’s jurisdiction.

But Democrats asserted that they are looking into measures to combat the relocations, emphasizing that the move could be costly to taxpayers in addition to dramatically shifting the wealth of knowledge offered by current government staffers.

Lawmakers indicated they might seek to halt the relocation by blocking its funding in the upcoming appropriations bill that covers both the DOI and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A group of senators, including Van Hollen, have meanwhile introduced legislation to keep ERS and NIFA in the D.C. metro area, a move that was made before the BLM move was announced.

“This Administration is acting to undermine the subject-matter experts at many of our federal agencies,” said Van Hollen, who added that his office would “continue to use every tool available to push back against these actions.”

This article has been updated to note that only USDA would be impacted by the Senate legislation due to timing.

, despite being affected by the government shutdown, the Bureau of Land Management is holding public meetings in Alaska to push forward plans for new oil and gas leases in the Arctic. citizens get cut?

our hizzy 2x one day

Trump Moves to Open 1.6 Million Acres of California Public Lands to Fracking

The Trump administration took the first steps on Wednesday towards opening up 1.6 million acres of public land in California to fracking and oil drilling, The Sacramento Bee reported.

In a notice of intent published on the Federal Register Wednesday, theBureau of Land Management (BLM) said it would prepare an environmental impact statement on the use of fracking on 400,000 acres of public land and 1.2 million acres of mineral estate overseen by BLM in California counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara,The Hill reported.

Concerned citizens have 30 days from Wednesday to comment on the proposal.

The move would lift a five-year moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies, The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a statement.

It also comes less than a week after the Trump administration proposed revoking California's waiver to set its own vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act and just days after Trump blamed the state's environmental policies for the record-breaking wildfires it is currently battling.

"It's a coordinated attack on California by the Trump administration," CBD senior attorney Clare Lakewood told The Hill.

No federal lands in the state have been leased to oil companies since 2013, when a federal judge found that the BLM had leased land in Monterey County without fully considering the environmental impact of fracking.

Environmentalists are concerned that fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes and contaminate groundwater, The Sacramento Bee reported.

The later risk is increased in California, a 2015 report from the California Council on Science and Technology found, because fracking in the state happens in areas with shallow depths close to groundwater and uses an especially high amount of toxic chemicals, The CBD reported.

Residents of San Luis Obispo are even considering a ballot measure this November that would ban new fracking operations and oil wells in parts of the county that are unincorporated, though it would have no impact on what happens on federal land,The Sacramento Bee reported.

One of the key movers behind that initiative, Charles Varni of the Coalition to Protect San Luis Obispo County, told The Sacramento Bee that he was angered by the BLM's decision.

"We don't want to see any expansion of oil and gas extraction in San Luis Obispo County," he said. "We want to protect our groundwater resources for higher uses."

Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie said that, while he was glad that the BLM was investigating the impacts of fracking, he thought such an investigation was a little beside the point.

"[A]nalyzing the impacts of fracking is like analyzing the impacts of smoking cigarettes: there's really no question that more fracking would be terrible for California," he said in the CBD statement.

Court Orders Trump Administration to Enforce Obama-Era Methane Rule

A federal judge reinstated a widely supported methane waste rule that President Trump's administration has repeatedly tried to stop.

Judge William Orrick of the U.S. District Court for Northern California ruled Thursday that Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) decision to suspend core provisions of the 2016 Methane and Waste Prevention Rule was "untethered to evidence."

https://www.ecowatch.com/earthjustice-sues-federal-agencies-2505939690.html

Fate of National Monuments Remains Shrouded in Secrecy: Earthjustice Sues Federal Agencies for Withholding Information From Public

For months, the Interior Department, Bureau of Land Management and the White House Council on Environmental Quality have repeatedly failed to answer the public's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information related to the Trump administration's ongoing review of national monuments—protected federal lands and waters that belong to the American people.

The review of the country's national monuments has been marked by a lack of transparency—Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke has yet to disclose how he incorporated input from Native American tribes and the 2.8 million Americans who urged protections for national monuments in the public comment period into his leaked draft recommendations to shrink monuments and gut their protections. On Thursday, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of six organizations whose requests for information on national monuments have been met with radio silence.

"The Trump administration continues its onslaught against America's national monuments, hoping to cover up its misdeeds by blocking public access to information crucial to the protection of these iconic places," said Yvonne Yuting Chi, an attorney in Earthjustice's Rocky Mountains office. "National monuments preserve America's historical heritage, stunning wilderness, geologic wonders, and priceless cultural sites—and they're meant to be protected for future generations under the Antiquities Act. But the Trump administration wants to pretend that the laws of the land have changed. The American people have the right to know the fate of these magnificent places that belong to all of us, and we are taking these agencies to court to get answers."

"It's important that the public knows who had the White House and Interior Department's ear to push the president to dismantle Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments," said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Salt Lake City-based Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "We also expect this lawsuit will shed light on the information and factors the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Interior Department considered as part of Secretary Zinke's 'monuments review' and that led him to recommend eviscerating Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, a decision that would place irreplaceable cultural and public natural resources at risk of damage and destruction."

Earthjustice is representing the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Wilderness Society, Grand Canyon Trust, Sierra Club,and Great Old Broads for Wilderness in this lawsuit to compel the agencies to respond to seven FOIA requests, most of which have been overdue for months. The complaint alleges that the agencies have failed to meet their response deadlines under the FOIA and have repeatedly rejected or ignored these organizations' inquiries on their requests' status.

"If Interior Secretary Zinke's 'first step' before telling the president to ravage the Bears Ears National Monument was, as he claims, to 'gather the facts,'" said Aaron Paul, a staff attorney with the Grand Canyon Trust, "why are our months-old requests for those already-gathered facts still unanswered when federal law gives the secretary 20 days to respond? It's a shame that we have to turn to the courts to force the secretary to deliver the transparency that the Freedom of Information Act secures for the American public."

"The public deserves to know what Secretary Zinke is recommending for the future of our public lands," said Dan Ritzman, lands, water and wildlife director for Sierra Club's Our Wild America campaign. "The Trump administration's secrecy suggests Zinke is aware that stripping protections from our public lands and monuments is as unpopular as raising fees for the public to enjoy them."

Since 1967, the FOIA has provided the public the right to request access to records from any federal agency. It is a law that keeps the American people in the know about their government. When a member of the public lodges a request with a federal agency under the FOIA, the agency must promptly disclose any information requested unless the information falls under one of the nine exemptions protecting interests such as personal privacy, national security and law enforcement.

"We are dismayed that it takes litigating FOIA requests to learn the fate of public lands that belong to all Americans," said Caroline Munger, Board Chair for Great Old Broads for Wilderness. "This cloak and dagger approach by the current administration on revealing the fate of these national monuments shows a disdain for the law and the legacy of our protected wild lands. Monument proponents like Broads, tribal nations, and others have committed to a long legal battle, if necessary, to protect the Antiquities Act and monuments created under it."

https://www.ecowatch.com/national-forests-logging-bill-2505370570.html

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National Forests, Endangered Species Under Attack as House Republicans Pass Reckless Logging Bill

In a partisan vote, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation Wednesday that would devastate national forests by gutting endangered species protections and rubber-stamping huge logging projects. The final vote was 232 to 188.

HR 2936, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), also limits public comment and environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Under the guise of reducing forest fires, the bill would increase unfettered logging across national forests and public lands, increase fire risk and harm forest health, while doing nothing to protect communities.

"This bill is a dangerous bait-and-switch that rewards the timber industry. It puts the health of our forests and wildlife in grave danger and ignores real solutions," said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "It would green-light the worst forest management practices from decades ago, when reckless logging devastated wildlife, degraded rivers and ruined recreation opportunities for countless Americans."

Westerman's bill is a timber-industry wish list. Among other harmful provisions, it would allow rushed logging projects up to 30,000 acres—46 square miles—without public notice or scientific assessment of potential harm to the environment as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

The bill would render forest plans meaningless, roll back measures designed to protect old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, waive protections for waterways and water quality across the national forest system, promote harmful logging in otherwise protected roadless areas and force the Forest Service to ignore potential harm to thousands of imperiled species.

It would also give private landowners with easements on public land full ownership of that land and allow herbicides to be sprayed without reviewing the harm to water, fish and wildlife.

"The knee-jerk response from Republicans is always to gut our environmental laws, no matter what the issue is," said Spivak. "They're willing to sacrifice our wildlife, healthy streams and rivers, and vibrant public lands for private profit."

In the first four months of the 115th Congress, Republicans have introduced more than 80 bills that attack public lands, weaken environmental safeguards on those lands or turn over control to states and local governments. These attacks go against the wishes of most Americans, since the vast majority of voters across political parties support protecting and maintaining forests, national parks, monuments and other public lands and waters.

https://www.ecowatch.com/zinkes-monument-review-2492439576.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/zinke-interior-department-2461928957.html

Public Lands and Waters 'For Sale' at U.S. Dept. of Interior

Greenpeace placed a giant sign reading "For Sale: By the US Department of Interior, Public Lands and Waters, Inquiries From Oil and Gas Companies Encouraged" outside of the Interior Department Tuesday as Sec. Zinkeheld an event outside the building.

Sec. Zinke and the Interior Department are currently reviewing the status of national monuments, marine sanctuaries, and protections from offshore oil and gas drilling, potentially opening up new drilling activity in the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Public records highlight that Zinke's personal schedule includes several meetings with oil and gas companies and lobbying firms including BP America, Chevron and ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Western Energy Alliance and Continental Resources.

"The Trump administration and Secretary Zinke want to sell our public lands and waters away to desperate fossil fuel companies," said Greenpeace USA Climate Campaigner Mary Sweeters.

"Secretary Zinke is meeting almost exclusively with fossil fuel lobbyists, ignoring the voices of people in this country who want to see our public lands, national monuments, and waters protected, not exploited. It's clear that unless you are an executive at Exxon or the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, Zinke's Interior Department will most likely not listen to you."

The Senate will vote on David Bernhardt, the pick for deputy secretary of the Interior, this week. As head of law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck's natural resource department, David Bernhardt has most likely led most of the the firm's energy and mining and work and a significant chunk of his clients are oil and gas companies.

May 24, 2017

Oil Change International

EcoWatch

The federal government is providing extensive support for fossil fuel production on public lands and waters offshore, through a combination of direct subsidies, enforcement loopholes, lax royalty collection, stagnant lease rates and other advantages to the industry, a report released Wednesday found.

The government is contributing at least $7 billion per year in subsidies to support fossil fuel production on federally held lands and offshore waters alone, and is holding some $35 billion in public liabilities for drilling in public waters of the Gulf of Mexico. These subsidies support increased fossil fuel production on U.S. lands and waters out of step with efforts to meet international climate objectives.

The report, released by Oil Change International in partnership with 350.org, WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity, Clean Water Action, Food & Water Watch and Public Citizen, for the first time outlines in detail the subsidies and other public support being provided in the U.S. to the fossil fuel industry for its activities on public lands.

The report, Unequal Exchange: How Taxpayers Shoulder the Burden of Fossil Fuel Development on Federal Lands, presents an accounting of the minimum amounts of direct taxpayer dollars going to support fossil fuels on public lands, not including externalities such as climate and health impacts, which would bring the totals even higher. If those factors are taken into account, for example, mining coal in the Powder River Basin alone would have a net cost to the U.S. public of some $17.8 billion per year as of 2015.

"Rex Tillerson and other members of the Trump administration deny that these subsidies even exist just like they deny climate change. The reason is clear—in both cases, if you admit the truth, the only answer is a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry," said Stephen Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International.

"The first step towards that is to stop supporting the industry with our public dollars. These subsidies are a raw deal for American taxpayers, and a disaster for our climate."

Particularly notable is a finding that some royalty and lease rates for fossil fuel development on public lands have remained unchanged since the 1920s.

"As if simply allowing the toxic, climate-killing extraction of fossil fuels on our sensitive public lands isn't shameful enough, that the federal government actually subsidizes this foolish activity with taxpayer money is downright absurd," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director at Food & Water Watch.

"For the sake of climate stability, the transition to a clean energy future must begin immediately. An ideal place to kick-start the transition is with a ban on fossil fuel extraction on our precious public lands, and most certainly, a halt to the underhanded propping-up of this antiquated industry with our precious public dollars."

The report makes a number of key recommendations, starting with a basic determination that the fossil fuel leasing program on public lands should be phased out in line with climate science. Until that become reality, the report finds immediate action to reduce large, unfunded liabilities for U.S. taxpayer money associated with fossil fuel production on public lands should be reduced and royalty and lease rates should be increased to better reflect the full costs to the public of these activities.

"This report makes it clear as day that the Trump agenda is the fossil fuel billionaire agenda," said Jason Kowalski, policy director at 350.org.

"The industry finances corrupt politicians, who in turn help them keep fossil fuels economically viable at a time when the science suggests most oil, gas and coal needs to be kept in the ground. They set out to rig the system and they succeeded. History will judge them harshly."

Topic(s):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/10/senates-poised-to-repeal-a-final-obama-era-rule-as-soon-as-wednesday/

no link many

Senate unexpectedly rejects bid to repeal a key Obama-era environmental regulation

By Chelsea Harvey and Juliet Eilperin May 10 at 12:10 PM

Oil pumps and natural gas burn off in Watford City, N.D. Methane emissions will likely be the next big environmental issue to face North Dakota’s booming oil industry according to a top official at the state’s Department of Health. (AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

This story has been updated.

The U.S. Senate narrowly voted down a resolution on Wednesday to repeal an Obama-era rule restricting methane emissions from drilling on public lands — with three Republicans joining every Democrat to preserve the rule.

The 51 to 49 vote marked the first time since Trump’s election that Republicans have failed in their attempt to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn Obama-era rules.

Thirteen earlier resolutions, based on the 1996 law that allows Congress to overturn rules within 60 days of their adoption, all succeeded. But the deadline for repealing such regulations through the Congressional Review Act is on Thursday.

The methane emissions rule, issued by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management in November, addresses a potent greenhouse gas that is accelerating climate change.

[Earth could break through a major climate threshold in the next 15 years, scientists warn]

The rule would force oil and gas companies to capture methane that had been previously burned off or “flared” at drilling sites.

The previous administration estimated the rule would prevent roughly 180,000 tons a year of methane from escaping into the atmosphere and would boost federal revenue because firms pay only royalties on the federal resources they capture and contain.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) unexpectedly voted no against a motion to proceed with consideration of the resolution, along with GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). Two Democrats who had considered backing the rule’s elimination — Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — voted against the motion as well.

In a floor speech after the vote, Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), said “the very first victory” lawmakers have had in beating back a Congressional Review Act bill this year came from a combination of Democratic unity and a few Republicans’ willingness to buck their leadership. “Thank you so much for coming forward and seeing the common sense nature of this issue,” Udall said, referring to Collins, Graham and McCain.

Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, praised the lawmakers who supported the rule. “In recent months, thousands of Americans asked the Senate to stand up for clean air and against the oil lobby, and their efforts were successful today,” he said.

Republicans and industry officials said they would now switch their focus to getting the Interior Department to rewrite the rule.

Barry Russell, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said his group “looks forward to working with the Interior Department on a targeted, meaningful solution that will achieve the common goal of ensuring the American taxpayers receive a fair and equitable return in the form of royalties while developing a workable regulation, instead of this one-size-fits-all approach.”

[EPA dismisses half of key board’s scientific advisers; Interior suspends more than 200 advisory panels]

And Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in a statement that Interior should withdraw the regulation outright. “If left in place, this regulation will only discourage energy production, job creation, and economic opportunity across the West.”

Before this year, Congress had only nullified one rule, a regulation on ergonomics Bill Clinton enacted during his final year in office. In less than four months Republicans have wiped away rules covering everything from limits on the dumping of waste from surface mining operations to enlarging states’ power to offer retirement accounts to private-sector workers.

But the move to strike a rule requiring companies to limit the practice of flaring, or leaking, methane from oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land had given some Republicans–who control 52 seats in the Senate–pause.

Senate Press Gallery ? @SenatePress

#senate vote on HJ Res 36, the CRA on the methane rule was NOT agreed to 49-51. Collins, Graham and McCain joined all Dems/IND against.

7:27 AM - 10 May 2017

236 236 Retweets 516 516 likes

Many Republicans and fossil fuel producers criticized the regulation after it was finalized last year, and a resolution to repeal it passed quickly in the House of Representatives at the end of January. But despite Trump’s support, the repeal measure had been sitting in the Senate for months. It had to pass by Thursday to be eligibleto be signed into law.

Democrats, as well as environmental and public health groups, ran a months-long campaign to persuade Heitkamp and Manchin not to disclose their position publicly while arguing to centrist Republicans that abolishing the rule would cost taxpayers money as well as harm the environment.

[Trump undertakes the most ambitious regulatory rollback since Reagan]

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also remained on the fence until Monday, when he announced in a statement that he would vote to overturn the BLM regulation. Two other wavering Republicans, Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Dean Heller (Nev.), ultimately joined Portman in voting to proceed with the bill’s consideration.

“Unfortunately, the previous administration’s methane rule was not a balanced approach,” Portman said. “As written, it would have hurt our economy and cost jobs in Ohio by forcing small independent operators to close existing wells and slowing responsible energy production on federal lands. There’s a better way.”

He added that he believes the Interior Department should still work to reduce venting and flaring on public lands. Last week, Portman wrote to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, calling for a commitment that the department would continue to work to reduce methane waste if the Obama rule were reversed. On May 4, Zinke responded, affirming that “the Department is committed to reducing methane waste, and under my leadership, we will take important steps to accomplish this goal.”

Environmentalists urged Portman to reconsider. In a statement on Tuesday, Environmental Defense Action Fund Executive Director Fred Krupp said Zinke’s assurances were “unfounded” and argued that the strategies for reducing methane waste outlined in his letter would have little impact.

A coalition of industry groups have argued they are taking steps to reduce fugitive methane emissions, because they recognize capturing them can yield additional profits. The American Petroleum Institute noted that the Environmental Protection Agency data, released in March, shows about an 8 percent drop in methane emissions from petroleum production since 2014, largely because of improved gas venting and flaring techniques.

The legislative window for Congressional Review Act resolutions to be considered ends on Thursday, though a handful of conservative analysts believe that agencies’ failure to submit a 2-page report on previous rules to Congress could open the door to reconsideration of dozens of much older rules.

Curtis Copeland, a regulatory expert who specialized in American government at the Congressional Research Service, said in an email that regardless of how many rules this Congress ultimately overturns, “The CRA can no longer be described as ‘obscure’ or ‘little known.’ It now has to be viewed as a substantive tool of congressional oversight regarding an outgoing President’s rules, and it is likely be used again in the future.”

http://www.ecowatch.com/blm-website-coal-2349325685.html

BLM Changes Website Banner From Green Mountains to Big Hunk of Coal

This week, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which operates more than 200 million acres of public land, made a statement by changing the banner image on their website from a vast mountain range to a massive coal seam in Wyoming—staking an obvious claim in the Trump administration's campaign to bring coal and other industry jobs back to the U.S.

The change comes just days after the president granted his entire salary since being in office, about $78,000, to the National Park Service, which is under the same umbrella as the BLM, both managed by the Department of the Interior. The Sierra Club was quick to point out that this sum was minuscule compared to the budget cuts Trump has proposed on the Interior, which will amount to a 12 percent slash in funding, or about $2 billion overall.

"If Donald Trump is actually interested in helping our parks, he should stop trying to slash their budgets to historically low levels," said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. "This publicity stunt is a sad consolation prize as Trump tries to stifle America's best idea."

The BLM manages streams and rivers, hiking trails, oil and gas fields, and coal mines. The shift from green mountains to dingy coal on their website might signify, therefore, that the little funding they have left will go to the latter. BLM spokesperson Jeff Krauss said, however, that the new image is simply part of an IT redesign, which allows for rotating photos of the many public lands BLM manages.

The hype surrounding the switch comes as no surprise, as the BLM has been a political target for decades. Under President George W. Bush, the organization received backlash from environmental groups for approving the expansion of oil drilling on public lands. More recently, the organization has been slammed by Standing Rock activists for similar moves on the Dakota Access Pipeline.

In February, the Trump administration completed the largest lease sale of oil drilling rights in years—128 parcels, mostly in Wyoming, for $129.3 million. So it seems, whether it's coal or mountains, that the BLM is just following government orders.

The Trump administration intends to scrap and rewrite an Obama-era rule designed to make fracking on federal lands safer.

Drilling has taken place on federal lands for years, with more than 100,000 wells in existence. In 2015, the Interior Dept. issued new standards aimed at making the process safer, including stricter and higher design standards for wells and waste fluid storage facilities to mitigate risks to air, water and wildlife. Companies would also be required to publicly disclose chemicals used in fracking.

However, U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl blocked the Obama rule in June after accepting the argument from energy companies and several states that federal regulators lack congressional authority to set rules for fracking.

The Obama administration appealed the decision to the 10th Circuit, but the rule could be killed for good. The Trump administration said in court filings Wednesday it is withdrawing from the lawsuit.

Justice Dept. lawyers representing Interior and the Bureau of Land Management asked the court to "continue the oral argument and hold these appeals in abeyance pending a new rulemaking" on the issue.

"As part of this process, the Department has begun reviewing the 2015 Final Rule (and all guidance issued pursuant thereto) for consistency with the policies and priorities of the new Administration," the motion reads. "This initial review has revealed that the 2015 Final Rule does not reflect those policies and priorities."

A spokeswoman for Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke confirmed with the Associated Press that the administration intends to submit a new rule.

Neal Kirby of the Independent Petroleum Association of America praised the withdrawal of the rule, calling it "unnecessary, duplicative and would further drive away independent producers from federal lands."

"Every energy-producing area has different needs and requirements, which is why the states are far more effective at regulating hydraulic fracturing than the federal government," he said.

Many environmental advocates felt that the 2015 rule was already too lenient, but the Trump administration's latest action could be even more worrisome to fracking opponents.

"This disturbing decision highlights Trump's desire to leave our beautiful public lands utterly unprotected from oil industry exploitation," said Michael Saul, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Backing away from these modest rules is doubly dangerous given the administration's reckless plans to ramp up fracking and drilling on public lands across America."

Other environmental organizations spoke out against the announcement.

"Today's news demonstrates the degree to which Secretary Zinke and the Trump administration are in the pocket of the oil and gas industry," said Earthjustice attorney Mike Freeman.

Earthworks policy director Lauren Page said: "By moving to overturn these common-sense protections, the Trump administration is positioning itself against the disclosure of toxic chemicals, protecting clean water and preserving our public land."

Groundwater contamination is one of the biggest concerns about unconventional oil and natural gas production. While the industry maintains the safety of the process, in December the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its highly anticipated final report identifying cases of impacts on drinking water at each stage in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle.

The disposal of fracking wastewater into underground wells has also been linked to the alarming increase in seismic activity in states such as Oklahoma and Kansas.

"With [Wednesday's] decision, Trump is making it clear that he thinks we need more fracking operations contaminating our drinking water, causing earthquakes and polluting our environment, not less," Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign director Lena Moffitt said. "The Sierra Club will continue to defend this rule, ensuring that our publicly-owned lands remain protected from fracking and Donald Trump."

President Trump has plans to open up federal lands for more energy development. As a candidate, Trump campaigned on a promise to "unleash America's $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves."

He accused President Obama of "denying millions of Americans access to the energy wealth sitting under our feet" by restricting leasing and banning new coal extraction.

Incidentally, the actions of the current administration go against the sentiments of the majority of Americans, who are opposed to fracking and drilling of public lands, according to a new Gallup poll.

The poll, released on Tuesday, determined that 53 percent of Americans oppose fracking as a means of increasing the production of natural gas and oil in the U.S. Only 46 percent support for opening up federal lands for oil exploration, compared to 65 percent who favored it in 2014.

2/17

4. The**Planning 2.0**rule:Issued by the BLM and aimed at protecting the voice of local communities in public lands management decisions.

Benefits and Costs:No definitive costs or benefits: “[T]he final rule affects the procedures used to develop resource management plans, but would not directly affect the land management decisions themselves. As a result, none of the changes will result in direct monetary impacts on any individual or group.”
Following the money: According to MapLight.org, mining, livestock, and oil and gas industry opponents of the rule have donated $802,507 to members of Congress sponsoring the resolution to repeal the rule. Among the most vocal opponents of the rule is the Western Energy Alliance, a trade association representing oil and gas companies in the West, which opposed nearly every land management and energy reform initiative of the Obama administration.

The striking commonality among these rules is the scale of the campaign contributions and the political connections of the affected industries to the sponsors of the legislation. Thus far, industries that have succeeded in having Congress overturn an environmental rule have donated an average of $2.3 million to the sponsors of the CRA resolutions in both chambers.

http://www.ecowatch.com/big-oil-drill-national-parks-2188885054.html

under threat: http://www.ecowatch.com/anniversary-national-park-service-1986247990.html

The president-elect plans to open up federal lands for more energy development and, according to Reuters, energy companies and industry lobbyists are already expecting a flurry of new federal drilling and mining leases with the incoming administration.

"This opportunity is unique, maybe once in a lifetime,"Jack Gerard, president of the Washington DC-based American Petroleum Institute lobby group, told the news service in regards to increased access to federal leases.

Vast quantities of oil, natural gas, coal and uranium are tucked away in government-owned national parks and forests, wildlife refuges and tribal territories from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico.

As Reuters noted, under the Obama administration, oil output on federal land made up about a fifth of the national total in 2015, down from more than a third in 2010. Onshore drilling leases also fell about 15 percent.

However, Trump campaigned on a promise to "unleash America's $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves." He has accused Obama of "denying millions of Americans access to the energy wealth sitting under our feet" by restricting leasing and banning new coal extraction.

The U.S. government owns roughly 640 million acres of land, and the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) manages most of it. In December, Trump nominated U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, a climate change skeptic and coal mining advocate as head of the department.

As it happens, The Wilderness Society calculated that 90 percent of the lands held by the Bureau of Land Management, a bureau of the DOI, is already open to oil and gas development. Most of these lands are in the West and Alaska....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/opinion/keeping-my-fossil-fuel-in-the-ground.html?_r=0

http://www.sltrib.com/home/3845389-155/terry-tempest-williams-leaving-us-lauded

Tempest Williams is leaving her University of Utah teaching post and walking away from the Environmental Humanities program she founded rather than agree to administrators' demands she move her teaching from the state's desert landscapes onto campus.

"For reasons I will never know or understand, the University of Utah wanted me gone — and in the end, what was most threatening was my teaching. Why? Because each of you and our current students are challenging the status quo, each in your own way with the gifts that are yours," the acclaimed author wrote in an email last week to about 80 current and past students of the U.'s Environmental Humanities graduate program.

Known as Utah's most eloquent homegrown voice for conservation, Williams helped launch what has become one of the U.'s premier educational experiences, connecting highly motivated students with the nation's most adventurous writers and artists. Now some are accusing university administrators of being more concerned with procedural bureaucracy than with ensuring Williams continued her leadership.

Williams' departure came as a shock to students, colleagues, program supporters, and at least one foundation, whose executive director said it would not renew a $50,000 grant awarded last year for Williams' "Reading the Book Cliffs" project.

"We saw this course as a national model on how to engage people in new ways for critical issues, such as climate change," said Ellen Friedman of the Compton Foundation, which had premised its support on Williams' field teaching. "We are extremely disappointed."

Williams' supporters are heaping criticism on U. administration for failing to find a way to keep her on faculty, and some suspect her environmental activism may have prompted the move to shackle her coursework to campus.

Former student Alisha Anderson — who loved Williams' field course Art, Advocacy and Landscapes so much she took it twice, serving as a teaching assistant both times — said she was troubled by Williams' exit and what it portends for the program's future direction.

"She has been a huge blessing in my life," said Anderson, who now works for Torrey House Press on community outreach. "Terry and the way she teaches was transformative. At universities there is inertia to change, and Terry was pushing the boundaries. How can we not integrate the land in how we learn?"

Utah Film Center founder Geralyn Dreyfous and Karen Shepherd, a former congresswoman who represented Salt Lake City, resigned their seats on the College of Humanities advisory board in protest this week.

—

Williams said she decided to leave after six weeks of "humiliating" contract negotiations in which new Humanities Dean Dianne Harris and Amy Wildermuth, associate vice president for faculty, pressured her to accept a phased retirement and pay concessions. Administrators made it clear her contributions were no longer valued, telling her she "was paid too much for too little," she said.

Her compensation package, including health benefits, is worth $95,700, according to public salary database Utah's Right to Know.

After a deal was reached and Williams agreed to sign a new contract, administrators added one more demand April 16. Her practice of taking students into the deserts of southern Utah and the Wyoming's Tetons did not comply with university guidelines, exposing the school to liability and "engendering resentment" from students who might not want to travel.

"It was at that point, I realized what the university fears most is empowered students, students tutored by the land itself, especially in Utah's erosional landscape of red rocks and rivers, and a bitten horizon that redefines time," Williams said in an email to the Tribune.

"I can no longer work in an institution or program that privileges compliance over creativity, that values the language of bureaucracy over relationships and respect, and that is more concerned over issues of insurance than the assurance of emancipatory curriculum that benefits our students," she wrote in an April 25 letter to Wildermuth. "My fear is that universities, now under increased pressure to raise money, are being led by corporate managers rather than innovative educators."

Wildermuth denied the university insisted on early retirement for Williams, who is 60.

"We really tried hard to come up with terms that were within university requirements and have Terry remain part of our program. We still want her to be part of it. We haven't closed any of our offers," said Wildermuth. "It is truly unfortunate. We are so grateful for what she has done. We will miss her. She is a tremendous asset to our university."

—

A naturalist and author of a dozen books about western landscapes and their impact on the human spirit, Williams is Utah's most decorated writer since Wallace Stegner. Her latest book is "The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks."

Williams' association with the U. dates back to her undergraduate days in the 1970s and later as education curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History from 1986 to 1996. The U. awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2003 and she delivered the commencement address on her signature concept, "the open spaces of democracy."

That was also the year she co-founded Environmental Humanities with then-Humanities Dean Robert Newman.

Williams has been serving in the department as the Annie Clark Tanner Fellow under an endowment provided by philanthropist Carolyn Tanner Irish, the retired bishop for Utah's Episcopal diocese. The two-year Environmental Humanities program, which accepts eight students a year and graduates eight with master's degrees, explores the use of art and words to document the Earth's changing landscapes from numerous perspectives.

Recent guest lecturers included scientist-turned-artist Subhankar Banerjee, anthropologist Wade Davis and Wyoming author Alexandra Fuller.

The program is enjoying a record number of applicants, according to director Jeff McCarthy. "We have a more competitive group than it has ever been. The program is absolutely thriving," he said. "[Williams'] vision was key to success of the program. She is beloved mentor for scores of students."...

A California judge struck down a bid Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to expropriate more than 1 million acres in central California for oil drilling.

Judge Michael Fitzgerald found that the BLM failed to consider the dangers of fracking, which is part of the formal application process. Two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Los Padres ForestWatch, brought the lawsuit against the BLM.

Kathleen Burton Clarke was the national director of the United States Bureau of Land Management from 2001–2006.

Kathleen Clarke (Bureau of Land Management).jpg

Clarke received her bachelor's degree from Utah State University.[1] She was a law student at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.[citation needed]

Clarke is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was raised in Bountiful, Utah. She was the daughter of Hubert C. Burton, a physician, and his wife the former Elaine Nelson.[2]

Prior to becoming director of the BLM, Clarke served as the executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources.[3] She had worked as a staffer for James V. Hansen and Senator Wallace F. Bennett before that.[4]

During her directing of the BLM it was often criticized by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups for allowing oil drilling at low cost.[5] This action increased domestic oil production and decreased oil production costs, thus keeping the rise in fuel costs below what it otherwise might have been.[citation needed]

Clarke sought to increase energy resource development on public lands. She was criticized for policies that ended up slaughtering many wild horses.[6]

Clarke later served as deputy commissioner of the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.[7]

Sources[edit]

Brenner, Noah. "Gas fields win praise". Jackson Hole Daily. Retrieved 2009-05-21.

Larsen, Kent (September 1, 2001). "Mormon Woman to be First to Head BLM". Mormon News. Retrieved 2009-05-21.

References[edit]

Jump up ^ President Bush to Nominate Clarke to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management at the Department of the Interior. News & Policies (The White House). August 27, 2001. Archived from the original on 2008-03-06.

Jump up ^ "Obituary: Hubert C. Burton, M.D.". Deseret News. April 16, 2000. Retrieved 2009-05-21.

Jump up ^ Deseret News

Jump up ^ Spangler, Donna Kemp (December 22, 2001). "Utahn OK'd to lead BLM". Deseret News. Retrieved 2009-05-21.

Jump up ^ Sierra Club article on oil drilling

Jump up ^ Struglinski, Suzanne (December 29, 2006). "Utahn resigns from BLM". Deseret News. Retrieved 2009-05-21.

Jump up ^ Perkins, Nancy (February 3, 2008). "Land policies, climate are hot topics at farm meeting". Deseret Morning News. Retrieved 2009-05-21

industry jrnl rigzone

resident Bush's selection to head the Bureau of Land Management is already facing a procedural hold due to a fight on natural gas drilling in Colorado. This week, he gets to explain his thoughts on energy production at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on several pending nominations.

The committee will also hear from two Energy Department nominees: Clarence Albright to be undersecretary of Energy and Lisa Epifani to be an assistant secretary of Energy for congressional and intergovernmental affairs.

Bush nominated Jim Caswell, currently the director of Idaho's Office of Species Conservation, to head the BLM at the end of May. Caswell and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne have close ties, as Kempthorne created the species conservation office as Idaho governor in 2000.

If confirmed, Caswell would succeed Kathleen Clarke, who left BLM in February. Jim Hughes is serving as acting director.

Last month, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) said he would place a "hold" on Caswell to protest the Interior Department's plan to allow natural gas drilling atop Colorado's Roan Plateau.

Salazar and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) had asked Interior for a 120-day extension to review the draft management plan for the Roan Plateau, which would allow up to 1,570 new natural gas wells as early as next year. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association claims the plateau could hold 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- enough to power 4 million homes for the next 20 years.

In Idaho, Caswell has worked on a series of high-profile land management and endangered species issues, including the potential state-specific rule governing 9.3 million acres of roadless national forest land and management plans for the gray wolf and Yellowstone grizzly bear under the Endangered Species Act.

Caswell has focused on bringing different interests together to promote conservation and recovery for species such as the northern Idaho ground squirrel, especially on private lands. Caswell has also been a key figure in Idaho's push to develop what would be the first state-specific rule for roadless areas on national forests, potentially allowing some logging and mineral development (Greenwire, May 31).

Committee to vet DOE nominees

The committee will also consider White House nominations for two high-level Energy Department positions.

President Bush nominated Clarence Albright, who goes by Bud, to be the undersecretary of Energy. Albright is heading to DOE from his role as GOP staff director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Prior positions include vice president of federal affairs at Reliant Energy and deputy associate attorney general at the Department of Justice, according to the White House.

The committee will also consider a familiar face to be assistant secretary of energy for congressional and intergovernmental affairs. The White House nominated Lisa Epifani, who is currently the special assistant to the president for Economic Policy at the National Economic Council. Until early 2006, she served as GOP counsel to the Senate Energy Committee and has also served as senior legislative counsel in DOE's Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs.

See more at: http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/47411/Under_Fire_BLM_Director_Nominee_to_Appear_in_Senate#sthash.9oNXwszJ.dpuf

http://www.opb.org/news/article/environmentalists-critical-new-blm-director/

2007

Environmental groups are unhappy at the choice of a new head for the federal Bureau of Land Management. New BLM director Jim Caswell is familiar to groups in the Northwest as a longtime forester and land manager in Idaho.

Jon Marvel is with the Idaho-based conservation group, Western Watersheds Project. He says Caswell has been more of a friend to mining companies than to endangered species.

Jon Marvel: “I think Jim Caswell was put in as the caretaker-manager of the BLM for the remainder of the Bush Administration in order to facilitate resource extraction, primarily by oil and gas interests throughout the west.”

Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar had blocked Caswell's nomination. But Senator Salazar lifted the block after Interior officials agreed to slow down potential oil and gas development in Colorado.

The southeast quarter of Oregon is almost entirely federal land managed by the BLM.

Both Oregon senators joined the unanimous consent resolution approving Caswell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Land_Management

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior that administers more than 247.3 million acres (1,001,000 km²) of public lands in the United States which constitutes one-eighth of the landmass of the country.^[2] President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies: the General Land Office and the Grazing Service.^[3] The agency manages the federal government's nearly 700 million acres (2,800,000 km²) of subsurface mineral estate located beneath federal, state and private lands severed from their surface rights by the Homestead Act of 1862.^[3] Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington andWyoming.^[4]

This map shows land owned by different federal government agencies. The yellow represents the Bureau of Land Management's holdings.

The mission of the BLM is "to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations."[5] Originally BLM holdings were described as "land nobody wanted" because homesteaders had passed them by.^[4] All the same, ranchers hold nearly 18,000 permits and leases for livestock grazing on 155 million acres (630,000 km²) of BLM public lands.^[6] The agency manages 221 wilderness areas, 23 national monuments and some 636 other protected areas as part of the National Landscape Conservation System totaling about 30 million acres (120,000 km^2).[7]^ There are more than 63,000 oil and gas wells on BLM public lands. Total energy leases generated approximately $5.4 billion in 2013, an amount divided among the Treasury, the states, and Native Americangroups.^[2][8][9]

[hide]

History

The BLM's roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.^[10] These laws provided for the survey and settlement of the lands that the original 13 colonies ceded to the federal government after the American Revolution.^[10] As additional lands were acquired by the United States from Spain, France and other countries, the United States Congress directed that they be explored, surveyed, and made available for settlement.^[10] During the Revolutionary War, military bounty land was promised to soldiers who fought for the colonies.^[11] After the war, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, signed by the United States, England, France, and Spain, ceded territory to the United States.^[12][13] In the 1780s, other states relinquished their own claims to land in modern-day Ohio.^[14] By this time, the United States needed revenue to function.^[15] Land was sold so that the government would have money to survive.^[15] In order to sell the land, surveys needed to be conducted. The Land Ordinance of 1785 instructed a geographer to oversee this work as undertaken by a group of surveyors.^[15] The first years of surveying were completed by trial and error; once the territory of Ohio had been surveyed, a modern public land survey system had been developed.^[16] In 1812, Congress established the General Land Officeas part of the Department of the Treasury to oversee the disposition of these federal lands.^[14] By the early 1800s, promised bounty land claims were finally fulfilled.^[17]

Over the years, other bounty land and homestead laws were enacted to dispose of federal land.^[10][17] Several different types of patents existed.^[18] These include cash entry, credit, homestead, Indian, military warrants, mineral certificates, private land claims, railroads, state selections, swamps, town sites, and town lots.^[18] A system of local land offices spread throughout the territories, patenting land that was surveyed via the corresponding Office of the Surveyor General of a particular territory.^[18] This pattern gradually spread across the entire United States.^[16] The laws that spurred this system with the exception of the General Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 have since been repealed or superseded.^[19]

In the early 20th century, Congress took additional steps toward recognizing the value of the assets on public lands and directed the Executive Branch to manage activities on the remaining public lands.^[19] The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 allowed leasing, exploration, and production of selected commodities, such as coal, oil, gas, and sodium to take place on public lands.^[20] The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established the United States Grazing Service to manage the public rangelands by establishment of advisory boards that set grazing fees.^[21][22] The Oregon and California Revested Lands Sustained Yield Management Act of 1937, commonly referred as the O&C Act, required sustained yield management of the timberlands in western Oregon.^[23]

In 1946, the Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Office to form the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior.^[19] It took several years for this new agency to integrate and reorganize.^[24] In the end, the Bureau of Land Management became less focused on land disposal and more focused on the long term management and preservation of the land.^[19] The agency achieved its current form by combining offices in the western states and creating a corresponding office for lands both east of and alongside the Mississippi River.^[25] As a matter of course, the BLM's emphasis fell on activities in the western states as most of the mining, land sales, and federally owned areas are located west of the Mississippi.^[26]

BLM personnel on the ground have typically been oriented toward local interests, while bureau management in Washington are led by presidential guidance.^[27] By means of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, Congress created a more unified bureau mission and recognized the value of the remaining public lands by declaring that these lands would remain in public ownership.^[10] The law directed that these lands be managed with a view toward "multiple use" defined as "management of the public lands and their various resource values so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the present and future needs of the American people."^[28]

Since the Reagan years of the 1980s, Republicans have often given priority to local control and to grazing, mining and petroleum production, while Democrats have more often emphasized environmental concerns even when granting mining and drilling leases.^[29] In September 1996, then President Bill Clinton used his authority under the Antiquities Act to establish the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, the first of now 20 national monuments established on BLM lands and managed by the agency.^[7] The establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante foreshadowed later creation of the BLM's National Landscape Conservation System in 2000. Use of the Antiquities Act authority, to the extent it effectively scuttled a coal mine to have been operated by Andalex Resources, delighted recreation and conservation enthusiasts but set up larger confrontations with state and local authorities.^[30][31] The changing demographics in the western states have led some to suggest that the BLM, long derided as the "Bureau of Livestock and Mines," is in the midst of becoming the "Bureau of Landscapes and Monuments."^[3]

BLM programs

Most of the public lands held by the Bureau of Land Management are located in the western states.[32]

Grazing. The BLM manages livestock grazing on nearly 155 million acres (630,000 km²) million acres under the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.^[33] The agency has granted more than 18,000 permits and leases to ranchers who graze their livestock, mostly cattle and sheep, at least part of the year on BLM public lands.^[33] Permits and leases generally cover a 10-year period and are renewable if the BLM determines that the terms and conditions of the expiring permit or lease are being met.^[33] The federal grazing fee is adjusted annually and is calculated using a formula originally set by Congress in the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978.^[33] Under this formula, the grazing fee cannot fall below $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM), nor can any fee increase or decrease exceed 25 percent of the previous year’s level.^[33][34] The grazing fee for 2014 was set at $1.35 per AUM, the same level as for 2013.^[33] Over time there has been a gradual decrease in the amount of grazing that takes place on BLM-managed land.^[33] Grazing on public lands has declined from 18.2 million AUMs in 1954 to 7.9 million AUMs in 2013.^[33]

Mining. Domestic production from over 63,000 Federal "onshore" oil and gas wells on BLM lands accounts for 11 percent of the natural gas supply and five percent of the oil supply in the United States.^[35] BLM has on record a total of 290,000 mining claims under the General Mining Law of 1872.^[36]

Coal leases. The BLM holds the coal mineral estate to more than 570 million acres (2,300,000 km²) where the owner of the surface is the federal government, a state or local government, or a private entity.^[37] As of 2013, the BLM had competitively granted 309 leases for coal mining to 474,252 acres (191,923 ha), an increase of 13,487 acres (5,458 ha) or nearly 3% increase in land subject to coal production over ten years' time.^[37]

Recreation. The BLM administers 205,498 miles (330,717 km) of fishable streams, 2.2 million acres (8,900 km²) of lakes and reservoirs, 6,600 miles (10,600 km) of floatable rivers, over 500 boating access points, 69 National Back Country Byways, and 300 Watchable Wildlife sites.^[38] The agency also manages 4,500 miles (7,200 km) of National Scenic, National Historic and National Recreation Trails, as well as thousands of miles of multiple use trails used by motorcyclists, hikers, equestrians, and mountain bikers.^[38] In 2013, BLM lands received an estimated 61.7 million recreational visitors.^[2]

California Desert Conservation Area. The California Desert Conservation Area covers 25 million acres (100,000 km²) of land in southern California designated by Congress in 1976 by means of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.^[39] BLM is charged with administering about 10 million acres (40,000 km²) of this fragile area with its potential for multiple uses in mind.^[39]

Timberlands. The Bureau manages 55 million acres (220,000 km²) of forests and woodlands, including 11 million acres (45,000 km²) of commercial forest and 44 million acres (180,000 km²) of woodlands in 11 western states and Alaska.^[40] 53 million acres (210,000 km²) are productive forests and woodlands on public domain lands and 2.4 million acres (9,700 km²) are on O&C lands in western Oregon.^[40]
firefighting....

...

In 2009, BLM opened Renewable Energy Coordination Offices in order to approve and oversee wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal projects on BLM-managed lands.^[46] The offices were located in the four states where energy companies had shown the greatest interest in renewable energy development: Arizona, California, Nevada, andWyoming.^[46]

Solar energy. In 2010, BLM approved the first utility-scale solar energy projects on public land.^[65] As of 2014, 70 solar energy projects covering 560,000 acres (2,300 km²) had been proposed on public lands managed by BLM primarily located in Arizona, California, and Nevada.^[66] To date, it has approved 29 projects that have the potential to generate 8,786 megawatts of renewable energy or enough energy to power roughly 2.6 million homes.^[66] The projects range in size from a 45-megawatt photovoltaic system on 422 acres (171 ha) to a 1,000-megawatt parabolic trough system on 7,025 acres (2,843 ha).^[66]

Wind energy. BLM manages 20.6 million acres (83,000 km²) of public lands with wind potential.^[67] It has authorized 39 wind energy development projects with a total approved capacity of 5,557 megawatts or enough to supply the power needs of over 1.5 million homes.^[68] In addition, BLM has authorized over 100 wind energy testing sites.^[69]

Geothermal energy. BLM manages 59 geothermal leases in producing status, with a total capacity of 1,500 megawatts.^[70] This amounts to over 40 percent of the geothermal energy capacity in the United States.^[70]

Biomass and bioenergy. Its large portfolio of productive timberlands leaves BLM with woody biomass among its line of forest products.^[71] The biomass is composed of "smaller diameter materials" and other debris that result from timber production and forest management.^[71] Though the use of these materials as a renewable resource is nascent, the agency is engaged in pilot projects to increase the use of its biomass supplies in bioenergy programs.^[71]

Directors

http://www.newsweek.com/tattered-legacy-203592

A Tattered Legacy

BY NEWSWEEK STAFF 9/29/91 AT 8:00 PM

Caught in the cross-fire of the war for the West, the Bureau of Land Management never seems to please anyone. The agency, tucked in a corner of the Interior Department, controls more than 270 million acres of public land-nearly one eighth of the country. BLM land includes cattle ranges in Nevada and gold mines in California. Because the bureau traditionally favored those interests, critics branded it the "Bureau of Livestock and Mining." But the BLM's purview also encompasses bike trails in Utah and white-water rivers in Colorado. Now the agency intends to address recreation and wildlife interests--causing ranchers and miners to seethe. "I told the cowboys, the oil guys and the miners, 'You're going to have to realize I'm moving the BLM in this direction'," says BLM Director Cy Jamison, a former House staffer appointed by George Bush in 1989. "Because if we don't, you're not going to be around and neither am I."

BLM's industry-friendly ways go back to its roots. Founded in 1946 when the U.S. Grazing Service and the General Land Office combined, the BLM quietly dispensed mining patents and grazing allocations in the spirit of the finders-keepers West. Its allegiance to traditional users intensified during the Reagan years under Interior Secretary James Watt and BLM Director Robert Burford. The duo slashed budgets, compounding the BLM's status as the ugly stepchild of federal land management. Other federal agencies filed scathing reports that depicted BLM lands deteriorating from overgrazing and neglect.

The agency's mandate--to treat the land both as a commodity and a recreational resource-puts Jamison between a rock and another, harder rock. Much of the land's "highest best use," as he puts it, remains livestock and mineral production. But miners and ranchers are edgy after Jamison agreed that public land-use reforms are inevitable. He alienated off-road-vehicle buffs by stopping the Barstow-to-Las Vegas motorcycle race that has been run sporadically since 1967. When the BLM recommended timber-harvest limits in Oregon, loggers balked at the restrictive limits while environmentalists said they were far too high.

Dozens of clashes between business and environmental interests will soon test the BLM's new resolve. Recently Jamison asked for a rare meeting of the so-called God Squad, an expert panel created under the Endangered Species Act to weigh the potential extinction of wildlife against economic interests. Jamison wants the panel to supersede the recommendation of the Fish and Wildlife Service and permit logging in spotted-owl habitats in Oregon. The move heightens the fears of environmentalists that Jamison is more adept at rhetoric than reform.

Jamison acknowledges it will take years to repair the damage done during the BLM's years of excess and abuse. He tells his staff, "My goal here is to get you all up to the early '70s. Then we're going to leap to the 2 1st century." With dug-in opponents battling every step, he'll need a running start. The gulf between the agency's legacy and its vision for the future is still plenty wid

Bur Land Mgmt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Land_Management

When the federal government introduced stronger standards for fracking on public lands earlier this month, the oil and gas industry was quick to file lawsuits. On Thursday, the state of Wyoming joined the fray.

Claiming that the new Bureau of Land Management (BLM) set of rules released last week “unlawfully interferes” with the state’s existing fracking regulations, Wyoming filed a suit Thursday against the U.S. Department of the Interior, Sec. Sally Jewell, and BLM, requesting judicial review of the rules.

In the lawsuit, Wyoming claims that BLM cannot put these restrictions on fracking because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has “exclusive authority” to regulate any underground injections under the Safe Water Drinking Act of 1974.