Free Republic

Nearly every lease and permit issued in Wyoming since 2021 has faced litigation from various anti-fossil fuel groups. As a result, 2 million acres are languishing in a holding pattern awaiting court decisions that will take years. ... The Bureau of Land Management is withholding oil and gas drilling permits on leased acres on public land, if the leased acres are in litigation. Pete Obermueller, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, said the agency is doing this by its own choice. Nearly every lease and permit issued in Wyoming since 2021 has faced litigation from various anti-fossil fuel groups,...

The new BLM rule introducing so-called conservation leasing will likely become the administration’s vehicle for locking up federal property. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is preparing to fundamentally reshape how public lands are managed without congressional approval. In March, the agency unveiled a sweeping proposal to establish a framework for “conservation leases” that places a newfound priority on preservation. The new Public Lands Rule presents a radical departure from the “multiple use mandate” Congress outlined for the agency in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA). New Rules Are a ‘Game Changer’.. FLPMA requires federal lands...

Decades-long mantras about “vanishing habitat” and ever-growing threats to wildlife have long been used to justify locking up more land through federal ownership or other restrictive measures. The perfect example is the Biden administration’s proposal to conserve 30% of the nation by 2030—aka “30 by 30.” Exactly what the administration envisions is ambiguous, as it hasn’t defined words like “conserve” and “protect,” although insiders at the Department of the Interior say the 30% language is being incorporated into many Interior Department documents.

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report claims the 2019 relocation of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) headquarters out West undermined the agency. “BLM lacks reasonable assurance the agency will have the workforce necessary to achieve its goals in managing millions of acres of public lands,” their report concluded. Predictably, media outlets like the Washington Post suggested the Trump-era policy was rooted in racism. In September, Biden’s Interior Department announced it would transfer most operations back to the nation’s capital—despite opposition from Western governors and local stakeholders. Why was BLM HQ originally moved out West, and was the decision rooted...

President Joe Biden declared the Caldor Fire threatening communities at Lake Tahoe, California an emergency Wednesday night to dispatch federal resources to the relief effort.That blaze, only 25 percent contained as of this writing, has already burned more than 200,000 acres with roughly 32,300 structures in the path of destruction, according to a local California news outlet.Meanwhile, the Dixie Fire 120 miles north of the area scorched half of Lassen Volcanic National Park and remains only 52 percent contained. Billed as one of the largest in modern California history, the inferno has already engulfed 1,300 structures and continues to spread,...

Office opening follows most career staff refusing to relocate out of Washington, D.C. he Trump administration has officially completed moving a headquarters office of a component of the Interior Department to Colorado, following more than a year of controversy and an exodus of career employees. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed a memorandum on Monday formally establishing the Bureau of Land Management headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado, a move the administration has advocated by highlighting that the agency primarily manages public lands in western states. Critics of the decision, including BLM staff, Democrats on Capitol Hill and conservationists, derided the move...

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — The Bureau of Land Management is moving its headquarters to an office building in Colorado that also houses oil and gas organizations, drawing criticism from environmental groups. The building’s other tenants include two oil and gas companies as well as a state oil and gas association. The BLM regulates oil and gas leases and development on the land it oversees. The Denver Post reports representatives of environmental groups are concerned about the close association between oil and gas interests and the agency.

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday revoked a rule that aimed to give the public more input into federal land management decisions, the latest move by the Republican-led Congress to undo Obama administration environmental regulations it sees as a burden. The Senate voted 51-48 to approve a resolution to repeal the Bureau of Land Management’s Resource Management Planning rule, known as BLM 2.0, finalized in December by the Obama administration.

House Passes Repeal of BLM Planning 2.0 Rule Today, the House passed H.J. Res. 44 (Rep. Liz Cheney, WY-at large), a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act to overturn the BLM Planning 2.0 Rule. Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) gave the following remarks during floor debate: “Planning 2.0 dilutes local and state voices and centralizes power here in Washington DC. […] This puts special interest groups above local elected officials, which is not the way it was ever intended,” Chairman Bishop said. “Counties all across the West expect their BLM officials to be responsive to their needs and...

Utah's four House Republicans introduced a bill Wednesday that would strip the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service of their power to police federal lands, and give that power over to local cops. Rep. Jason Chaffetz and his three GOP colleagues from Utah introduced the Local Enforcement for Local Lands Act. The lawmakers say the growth of police authorities in both agencies has distracted them from their main mission of managing federal land, and has created conflicts with local authorities. They also say federal agents are not as trusted as local police, and should be removed. "Federal agencies...

Last Man Standing: Nevada Ranch Family in Fedgov Face-off Tensions are rising and the potential for violence is escalating in Nevada’s Mohave Desert. Last week more than 200 armed federal agents from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other agencies, many decked out in camouflage uniforms, descended on the area around Bunkerville, a small town 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas, near Nevada’s borders with Arizona and Utah. According to coverage one is likely to see from the Establishment media, the show of force is necessary to remove Cliven Bundy’s cattle from “public lands” where they are, allegedly,...

Controversy is heating up over an administration plan to drastically reduce the amount of federal lands available for oil shale development in the American West. The Bush administration had set aside 1.3 million acres for oil shale and tar sands development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The new Bureau of Land Management plan cuts that amount by two-thirds, down to 700,000 acres, a decision that has prompted industry outrage. "What they basically did was make it so that nobody is going to want to spend money going after oil shale on federal government lands," said Dan Kish, Senior Vice President...

From high atop a horse named Cruiser, it’s easy to see what ails so much of America’s West. Above and below an equestrian path in the Gallatin National Forest, pine trees and Douglas firs crowd together like rush-hour subway commuters. Many are shorter and thinner than normal, due to intense competition for water, nutrients, and sunlight. Among these upright evergreens, dead trunks, limbs, and branches litter the arid ground. They are parched white, like the bones of a carcass bleached beneath the searing sunshine. “This hasn’t burned since the 1940s,” says Ryan Neel, a wrangler from the nearby Lone Mountain...

With budgets getting tighter every year, the U.S. Forest Service plans to raise up to $800 million in much-needed cash by selling off 200,000 acres of land across the country... The proposed land sale would be authorized under a Congressional amendment to the 2,000 Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. The law is intended to help rural communities that have seen National Forest logging-based revenue drop as timber cutting dwindled across the country. The list is based in part on land ownership adjustment analyses that designate lands suitable for disposal. Most of the lands to be sold are parcels...

In the old days of the Wild West, there was always a gunslinger around to spring cowboys from jail cells. Like the rangy sheriff from High Noon, Luther Wallace "Wally" Klump was on his own with the odds stacked cornstalk high against him. Klump, sent to the slammer April 21, 2003 celebrated his 70th birthday there. There was no sweet chorus of Happy Birthday sung by his grandchildren but only the convicts, some of whom took refuge in the Good Book when Klump found himself in their midst. The injustice of it was never lost on the convicts who presented...

President George W. Bush axed any hope that his administration was becoming more conservation- minded with another sly dismantling of a wilderness protection area. Christmas week, the administration quietly moved to deny Alaska's magnificent Tongass National Forest protection from timber industry road-building. This was typical. The administration has announced other environmental offenses during holidays or over weekends. Bush's decision will allow widespread destruction in the nation's largest old-growth forest, which contains trees dating back to the Middle Ages. The administration claims the decision will affect only 300,000 acres. That's not true. The industrial facilities needed for the road construction -...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. While waiting for a helicopter to make another sweep at driving wild horses into a trap, Gary McFadden pondered the circumstances Friday for rounding up the herd that roams near Cold Creek, 50 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "It's kind of a pre-emptive strike," he said after the first 30 of the herd of some 200 crammed into a corral. "They're in pretty good shape, but their country's not. There's too many animals on it, so they'd just dwindle away," said McFadden, a Bureau of Land Management wild horse specialist. A...