The Interior Department Gives a Second Chance to Magnificent Wilderness Quality Lands Throughout the West

In a great feat of foresight, Congress gave the Department of Interior the authority to manage some federal public lands “in their natural condition” when it passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. However, in 2003, former Interior Secretary Gale Norton struck a deal with then-Utah
Governor Mike Leavitt in which she tried to give away the Bureau of Land Management’s authority to protect scenic, natural landscapes throughout the West. In doing so, she ignored federal law and 27 years of BLM history.

On December 23, 2010, Secretary of Interior Salazar announced that he was einstating the Bureau of Land Management’s long-standing authority to identify and protect the last remaining scenic and undeveloped federal public lands in the West. Under the “Wild Lands” policy, issued as Secretarial Order 3310, BLM will inventory lands with wilderness character and then decide whether to protect them as a necessary part of the agency’s “multiple use” mission. If the BLM determines that specific wilderness-quality lands should be protected, it will identify them as “Wild Lands” and manage them accordingly.

It is now up to the BLM to ensure that its implementation lives up to the “high priority” that the secretarial order places on wilderness landscapes. Although the BLM manages more land than any other federal land management agency, including some of our nation’s most spectacular landscapes, it has less wilderness than any other agency. Importantly, BLM can remedy that imbalance without bringing energy development to a halt. Even if all wilderness-quality lands were protected, the vast majority of BLM would remain available for both renewable and conventional energy development.

A Little History . . .

The 2003 agreement with the State of Utah, which became known as the “No More Wilderness” policy,
broke with history by disavowing the Interior Department’s well-established authority to protect the
wilderness character of spectacular landscapes. Before 2003, every administration had used its authority under Section 202 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) to identify “wilderness  study areas,” or WSAs, and protect their wilderness character. However, as a result of the 2003 Utah agreement, well-known western icons were at risk from oil and gas drilling and rampant off-road vehicle abuse, including Utah’s redrock canyons, New Mexico’s Otero Mesa, Oregon’s Steens  Mountain, Colorado’s Roan Plateau, and Wyoming’s Adobe Town.

Under the No More Wilderness policy, wilderness became the only resource which the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) is specifically precluded from managing or protecting, and the impacts have been
profound. After 2003 the Interior Department auctioned off leases for millions of acres of public lands
to oil and gas companies. Additionally, BLM land use plans released late in 2008 included thousands
of miles of off-road vehicle trails in areas the BLM itself found to qualify for wilderness protection.

Preserving these last remaining unprotected wilderness-quality lands is particularly important given
BLM’s history of neglect of these national treasures. Only 3% of BLM lands are now protected by Congress as Wilderness. Secretary Salazar’s order will restore needed administrative protective tools to nearly 6 million acres of wilderness quality land in Utah, 650,000 acres in Colorado, more than 5.5 million acres in Arizona, and more than 2 million acres in New Mexico (out of the approximately 256 million acres of surface lands managed by the BLM).

Republican politicians in Congress have squawked loudly about the policy claiming – wrongly – that it will bring an end to economic development like oil and gas drilling. But even if all currently unprotected BLM lands that still qualify for Wilderness designation were protected now, the vast majority of BLM lands would still be available for energy development.

In New Mexico, of the 13.4 million acres managed by the BLM, less than 2 million are proposed for
wilderness protection outside existing WSAs, while nearly 5.5 million are under lease to oil and gas
companies. Similarly, in Colorado, as of the end of fiscal year 2009, the oil and gas industry held
4.9 million acres of public lands and some 85% of the BLM lands in Colorado are open to oil and
gas development. In contrast, only 205,000 acres (or 1.7%) of BLM lands are currently protected as
wilderness. Protection of the all of the lands proposed for wilderness in Colorado would increase
the amount of protected BLM lands to only 17%, still leaving the vast majority of BLM land open to extractive uses and off-road vehicle recreation.1

In Utah, an analysis of BLM’s 2008 resource management plans shows that if lands that the BLM itself identified as eligible for wilderness protection were protected, 86% of the proposed oil and gas wells could still be drilled.

Additionally, the oil and gas industry has millions of acres under lease and thousands of drilling permits that it has simply chosen not to put into production. Through FY 2009, 45,365,695 acres of BLM lands were under lease, yet only 12,842,209 were actually in production. In other words, oil and gas companies now hold leases on over 32.5 million acres of public lands throughout the West that they are not developing.

What now?

The Secretarial Order and the Wild Lands policy alone do not protect a single acre of wild BLM land.
In fact, the policy includes a loophole that would allow wilderness character lands to be developed
anyway if BLM decided that development was “appropriate” and consistent with governing laws and other resource demands, a provision that gives us all heartburn.

To breathe life into the policy, the Secretary required the BLM to produce two guidance documents that instruct the state and field office staff how to implement the policy. The first guidance documents came out on February 25, 2011 and are available at:

H6301: Wilderness Characteristics Inventory.

H6302: Consideration of Lands with Wilderness Characteristics in the Land Use Planning Process

H6303: Consideration of LWCs for Project-Level Decisions in Areas Not Analyzed in Accordance with BLM Manual 6302

While the guidance does include some positive steps forward, like requiring new wilderness inventories whenever a project is proposed or new land use plan developed, there are a few red flags. One is that the guidance creates a distinction between “impacts” and “impairment” of wilderness character. It’s unclear when an impact crosses the line into impairment, but BLM’s policy is to avoid only impairment. Bottom line: this may open the door to projects that “impact” wilderness character lands.

In addition to this guidance document, the BLM must provide the Secretary with a plan by the end of June describing how it will address flawed wilderness inventories and decisions in recently completed resource management plans. This is a critical step and unless it is done right, we will be living with Bush-era land use plans for the next twenty years.

In the end, the effectiveness of the new policy will depend on the knowledge, data, maps and advocacy work of countless wilderness supporters who will have to watch the BLM in their states to make sure they make wilderness a “high priority,” as the Secretarial Order mandates. As we know, too many at the BLM have a long history of finding that development trumps wilderness preservation. Our job is to marshal the support and the data that makes it very hard for the BLM to fall back on bad habits.

1 Special thanks to Nada Culver with The Wilderness Society for providing oil and gas data for CO & NM.