On Wednesday the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a favorable ruling in Impact Energy v. Salazar.  We blogged a short “breaking news” blurb that day.  It is worth further reflection since it encapsulates some of the most important issues on the public lands front over the last few years.

Impact Energy v. Salazar was a lawsuit—brought by three oil and gas companies and three Utah counties—challenging Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s February 2009 decision to withdraw the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) offer to lease the infamous 77 oil and gas lease parcels on public lands.

However, Secretary Salazar was not acting in a vacuum.  SUWA’s members and others raised an intense outcry regarding these leases in December of 2008.  This produced significant media coverage and scrutiny of the lease sale.  The following month, in January 2009, SUWA won a temporary restraining order in federal court preventing the BLM from issuing the 77 leases in the first place. Within in a few weeks, the newly appointed Sec. Salazar realized the mistake the agency had made and scrapped the leases.

Upset at this outcome, the companies and counties filed a lawsuit challenging the Secretary’s decision.  Earthjustice intervened in this litigation on behalf of SUWA and other environmental organizations.  The Utah District Court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the companies and counties had filed too late in the day.  They then appealed to the Tenth Circuit but Wednesday’s ruling confirmed the original outcome and dismissed their claims based on their late filing.

This is good news in the short run for the lands threatened by the 77 leases.  The long-run outcome for these lands, however, remains uncertain.

These 77 leases included some of Utah’s most spectacular public lands (see photos and maps).  The BLM proposed leasing parcels at the doorstep of Arches and Canyonlands national parks, at the head of Desolation Canyon, in the depths of the White River’s amazing canyon, in Labyrinth Canyon, and even immediately adjacent to Dinosaur National Monument.  This fire sale in the waning days of the last president was made possible by one of the Bush Administration’s most lasting and pernicious legacies: six resource management plans (RMPs) completed in the fall of 2008.

Do not be fooled by the boring sounding title, resource management plans are critical documents that guide the BLM’s day-to-day management of public lands.  They act like city zoning plans, determining where and when certain activities can take place.  SUWA constantly is fighting poor choices made by the BLM to allow oil and gas development on sensitive lands, off-road vehicle travel in inappropriate places, and so on.  These mistakes often have their genesis in the fact that a given RMP may make 90% of an entire field office available to oil and gas development or the fact that the six plans combined designate over 20,000 miles of dirt routes for vehicle travel.

It is these RMPs that the BLM relied on to determine that it would offer the 77 leases in the first place.  Although the 77 leases may be dead, those RMPs are not.  Hence, these same remarkable public lands remain available for the chopping block.  The whims of the current administration and random bureaucrats are all that prevent them from being placed in the crosshairs again shortly.

SUWA is seeking to change those RMPs and is currently engaged in litigation to do just that.  We hope that our efforts will ultimately pay off in a more thoughtful approach to public lands management that remove us from this gerbil wheel of ill-advised leasing decisions.

Posted by David Garbett

The House Natural Resources Subcommittee hosted a hearing for eight bills today. Seven would designate or adjust wilderness in states from New Mexico to Michigan. One would legislate the forced sale of 3.3 million acres of federal land across 10 western states.

As Cookie Monster would observe, “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.”

The glaring discrepancy in what otherwise would have been the first true wilderness hearing of the 112th Congress was H.R. 1126, Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s brainchild for bridging the government’s deficit woes. Under the “Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2011” Congress would force the Bureau of Land Management to sell 3.3 million acres of federal lands and kick the money back to the treasury. The “excess lands” in the bill are those listed in an outdated 1997 report, that, even at the time, noted sell-off would come with inherent conflicts for the BLM, including the presence of cultural resources, endangered species habitats, wetlands, and adjacent landowners opposing the sale. (Unfortunately, the bill is not accompanied by a map of exactly which lands we’re talking about–one of its many red flags.)

Michael Pool, deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management testified that selling the land “would be costly, harmful to local economies and communities and undermine important resource values. It would also be unlikely to generate significant revenues to the U.S. treasury.” Instead, he suggested that Congress reauthorize the Federal Lands Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA), which provides a mechanism for the BLM and other agencies to sell appropriate lands, calling that program “invaluable.”

Mark Ward, a policy analyst for the Utah Association of Counties, countered that the “looming fiscal collapse” of the government necessitated the sale of the lands, but confessed he was “not familiar” with FLTFA, the program under which these lands have routinely been sold.

Unlike Chaffetz’s proposal, FLTFA uses revenues from land sales for BLM conservation programs that acquire inholdings in existing BLM lands, streamlining and simplifying management for the agency. FLTFA also provides a mechanism to fund the personnel who oversee the program. Under Chaffetz’s bill, personnel would have to be taken away from their other BLM responsibilities to work on the land sale. Pool testified that since the 1997 report, 1.7 million acres of BLM land has been sold under the program, but unfortunately, it not been reauthorized in this Congress.

Meanwhile, in an economy in which real estate values are low and the market is saturated, it behooves neither the treasury, which would get a bad value for its land equity, nor local landowners, who would find real estate values further depressed by a flood of additional land and lose open space taken for granted for generations, to enter into this fool’s bargain.

Finally, there is the overreaching scope of the bill—3.3 million acres sold in 10 states. Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings praised the fact that the wilderness bills before the committee were all sponsored by representatives of the districts in which they would be enacted.

“There is a near zero percent chance that the Committee will act on or advance bills that seek to designate wilderness in a district or state that a Member isn’t elected to represent. I have often said that I respect the knowledge and prerogative of a Member on proposals that affect their district, as they were elected to represent that district and know it best,” Hastings said.

One would hope on a bill that seeks to sell lands in nine states and plenty of districts Rep. Chaffetz was not elected to represent, Rep. Hastings would hold the committee to the same standard. Or maybe one of these things really isn’t like the others.

Posted by Jen Beasley Ujifusa

Greater Canyonlands is a stunning landscape encompassing 1.4 million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) managed land surrounding Canyonlands National Park.  In March of this year, SUWA formally petitioned the Secretary of the Interior to ban off-road vehicle (ORV) use on 1,050 miles of ORV trails in sensitive habitats, including riparian areas and archaeological sites, in Greater Canyonlands.  SUWA’s petition requests that BLM prohibit ORV use on these 1,050 miles of identified routes pending further environmental analysis, while still allowing ORV use on 1,400 miles of routes within the area.

SUWA’s field staff have been keeping busy the last few months photo-documenting the controversial ORV trails that were designated by the BLM within Greater Canyonlands.  These routes – located in iconic areas such as Labyrinth Canyon, Indian Creek, White Canyon and Robber’s Roost – illustrate precisely why SUWA’s Greater Canyonlands petition is crucial to protecting the wilderness qualities of these awe-inspiring landscapes.  As the following photos illustrate, BLM clearly failed to do the on-the-ground assessments necessary to determine the necessity and associated environmental impacts of its vast network of ORV trails.

Designated route with no apparent purpose that leads to nowhere.

Designated route showing signs that it is slowly reclaiming itself.

Designated route with a sign installed by the BLM. Can you even find the correct path?

Please help us in urging the Obama administration to take action on the Greater Canyonlands petition by visiting www.greatercanyonlands.org.

Posted by Neal Clark

Red Mountain Wilderness photo by Ray Bloxham

On March 30, 2009, President Obama signed the Omnibus Public Lands Act of 2009, which included 138,000 acres of wilderness designation on BLM lands in the southwestern corner of Utah – a highly diverse landscape where the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin and Mojave Desert regions converge.   The legislation designated Canaan Mountain, Black Ridge, Doc’s Pass, Cottonwood Canyon and Red Mountain as official wilderness areas.  BLM is currently accepting public comment on the Cottonwood Canyon and Red Mountain Wilderness Management Plan.  You can help shape the future management of these pristine wilderness areas.

The Cottonwood Canyon and Red Mountain Wilderness areas, located adjacent to St. George, Utah, provide for exceptional wilderness experiences within close proximity to a bustling urban environment.  The Cottonwood Canyon Wilderness, consisting of 11,667 acres located within the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, contains stunning sandstone domes and intimate winding canyons.  The 18,689 acre Red Mountain Wilderness, bounded in part by the Santa Clara River, Snow Canyon State Park and lands of the Shivwits Band of Paiute Indians, contains vast expanses of red sand and slickrock and affords scenic vistas of the Beaver Dam Mountains and island mountain ranges in Nevada.

Even with wilderness protection, the wilderness character of Cottonwood Canyon and Red Mountain could be degraded through a hastily developed management plan.  Poorly regulated commercial use, scientifically unsound restoration projects and misguided wildfire management pose the same threats to wilderness as they do to public lands lacking the elevated protection that wilderness designation affords.

This is your chance to let BLM know that protecting the solitude, naturalness and primitive nature of these wilderness areas is paramount for the wilderness plan.  The deadline for submitting comments is Friday, May 20, 2011.  Please make your voice heard by sending the attached letter or by sending personalized comments to utsgmail@blm.gov with the subject line: “Wilderness Planning”.

Posted by Neal Clark