Last week we mentioned the Administration’s “Investing in America Agenda,” and how the Interior Department is spending $44 million of its windfall share of the recent massive spending bills. It is ironic, to say the most, to call government spending “investment,” when all it really amounts to is more employees, more offices, more reports, rules, and documents.
Much of that spending, as chronicled last week, was on National Park Service staff projects. In Western Colorado, though, far more of the land surrounding our cities and towns is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Several readers asked whether that agency received a similar windfall of new funding, and how BLM might now be “investing in America.”
Fortunately, BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning just penned an op-ed piece, printed in several western papers, providing insight into her plans and priorities. In brief, it’s about acting today to ensure the health of our public lands tomorrow “amid climate change.” A worthy mission, no doubt. And what specific action should BLM be taking today to meet that objective? Not much, in fact. It is more about stopping actions than taking actions.
Stone-Manning oversees an agency with a $1.6 billion budget, 245 million acres of land and 700 million acres of minerals. She is responsible for managing 221 wilderness areas, 27 National Monuments, 636 National Conservation System parcels, 2,400 miles of wild and scenic rivers, 6,000 miles of national scenic and historic trails, 55 million acres of forests, 63,000 oil and gas wells, 18,000 grazing permits, 3.8 million mining claims, 309 coal mines, 46,000 abandoned mines, 5,000 miles of pipelines and transmission lines, 200,000 miles of fishing streams, 2.2 million acres of lakes and reservoirs, 69 National Back Country Byways, thousands of miles of trails, and 62 million recreational visitors a year.
No human can manage that, so Stone-Manning’s job is to set priorities for 12 regional offices and 10,000 employees. Thus, her priorities matter a great deal in the West. To her credit, she begins her op-ed with an understanding of the “abiding love of public lands” shared by westerners, who “camp, play, hike, hunt, fish, and create memories” on these lands, as well as relying on them for food, timber, minerals, and energy. She even says BLM lands “provide” clean air and water, though BLM doesn’t actually provide the environment. But she is right in suggesting that to a large degree these lands “drive our economy.”
So, what should BLM do to make sure its lands continue to drive the economy? Well, stop doing that, of course. As she puts it, “there is one way to ensure our public lands will provide the countless resources they always have: prioritizing landscape health.” In a nutshell, that translates to not providing the countless resources they always have.
She writes about “putting people to work,” meaning hiring more employees (as in the case of Park Service “investments”), to “restore our public lands and waters.” In case you didn’t realize BLM lands have been destroyed and need restored. This work includes plugging oil wells, and “restoring” forests and rangelands, which has long been a buzz-word for halting active management and letting it burn. She specifically touts watershed projects to restore biodiversity and habitat. Does that require stopping the other uses of land, to which generations and communities are accustomed?
Above all, her priorities advocate “science-driven decisions,” defined by the new proposed rule that would allow BLM lands to be leased for no use at all – in complete violation of the laws governing BLM, as we have seen. The “focus on land health” must be the main factor in all BLM’s decisions, she writes, “from recreation to energy development.” She explains that powering the nation “with reliable and affordable energy for over a century” will continue, “but the kind of energy we’re developing is shifting.” That means no more oil and gas if it’s up to Stone-Manning, but “clamping down on antiquated practices,” replacing them with “clean energy development to achieve a carbon-pollution free power sector by 2035 and a net zero emissions economy by 2050.”
The priorities also mention locking up more public land with national monument designations, and changing recreational rules to ensure people tread lightly, if at all. She claims this shift is necessary because we see “the public lands that unite and define us change before our eyes.” Funny, I’ve been watching the BLM land that surrounds us all my life, and the only major change I see is in Washington, D.C.
Comments on this entry are closed.