Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities
** Interior to dismantle Wyoming management plan that took years to craft
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Friday, June 6, 2025
The Killpecker Sand Dunes Play Area, managed by the BLM Rock Springs Field Office. BLM Wyoming ([link removed])
The Trump administration announced it's going to reopen the land management plan around Rock Springs, Wyoming ([link removed]) — a plan that took years to craft and was just finalized in December 2024. Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon said that the Bureau of Land Management will give “the public another opportunity to weigh in on the plan."
As the Biden administration wrote and revised the plan in 2023 and 2024, an analysis by the Center for Western Priorities found that 92 percent of public comments ([link removed]) supported the conservation measures in the Rock Springs plan ([link removed]) . Governor Gordon convened a task force to provide additional feedback to BLM; an analysis by the Wyoming Outdoor Council and the Wilderness Society found 85 percent of the task force's recommendations ([link removed]) made it into the final management plan.
The final plan allowed for a mix of fossil fuels, renewable energy, and conservation across 3.6 million acres of national public lands in southwest Wyoming.
Julia Stuble, the Wyoming state director for the Wilderness Society, called on the Trump administration ([link removed]) to “show equal commitments to the public by not short-cutting comment periods, skirting planning rules, or disregarding statutes,” adding that “attempts to speed through the process or ignore input from hunters, anglers, and recreationists will lead to an unbalanced plan that is a disservice to Wyoming and the nation."
It's unclear if the Bureau of Land Management has the capacity to undertake a similar review process. The agency's Wyoming state director ([link removed]) and national deputy director ([link removed]) are both on leave and under investigation; Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has not appointed a principal deputy director ([link removed]) ; and President Donald Trump's nominee to run BLM was forced to withdraw ([link removed]) when the White House learned she acknowledged President Joe Biden's victory in 2020.
** Quick hits
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Wyoming wildlife crossing project on hold thanks to Trump funding freeze
Wyoming Public Radio ([link removed])
Analysis: Land sell-off would devastate Montana ranchers
Flathead Beacon ([link removed])
Trump threat looms as Ironwood Forest National Monument marks 25 years
Arizona Daily Star ([link removed])
Public lands advocates to rally for national monuments at Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks
Las Cruces Sun-News ([link removed])
Budget bill hands public lands near Boundary Waters to foreign mining company
Public Domain ([link removed])
Forest Service chief calls for ignoring science, putting out fires ASAP
Mountain West News Bureau ([link removed])
Coal power keeps getting more expensive as Trump tries to prop up the fuel
Fast Company ([link removed]) | Bloomberg ([link removed])
Lake Mead is at its third-lowest level in a decade
SF Gate ([link removed])
** Quote of the day
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” While TR believed in a healthy balance between protection and development, he would have been adamantly opposed to copper mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters — particularly when it’s a South American company that aims to mine the ore and then ship it abroad, likely to China, to process.”
—Theodore Roosevelt IV, Inforum ([link removed])
** Picture This
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@usfws ([link removed])
With a wingspan as commanding as its presence, the Great Gray Owl can measure up to 33 inches in length! Despite its size, it's lighter and less muscular than the Great Horned or Snowy Owls. What it lacks in heft, it makes up for in mystique: dusky gray plumage, streaked underparts, and a massive, rounded head ringed with hypnotic concentric circles.
These silent hunters are masters of the boreal forest. Equipped with extraordinary hearing, Great Gray Owls can locate voles tunneling beneath a foot of snow—then dive headfirst to catch them! Their main prey includes yellow-cheeked voles, meadow voles, and red-backed voles, usually hunted at dusk, dawn, or under cover of night.
You’ll find these owls haunting the edges of forest clearings, old river sloughs, and open tamarack stands, nesting in the broken birch, spruce, or poplar trees.
Listen closely: a soft, deep hoot might signal their presence. Their calls start as early as January but are most frequent from March through May.
A ghostly figure of the North, the Great Gray Owl is a rare and breathtaking sight—an emblem of wilderness and quiet strength.
Photo: A closeup of a Great Gray Owl in the boreal forest of southcentral Alaska. Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Alaska Region.
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