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1) The Year's Top Six Positive Steps for BLM
Lands
Little Snake Field Office (CO): Draft Resource
Management Plan Creates Backcountry Hunting Special Recreation
Management Areas
 (3 CAPES) Home to some of the
best elk and mule deer hunting in the state, the Little Snake
area of northwest Colorado faces huge management challenges as
oil and gas development and ORV use compete with undisturbed,
rolling sagebrush habitat and quiet recreation
opportunities. By proposing the creation of backcountry
hunting Special Recreation Management Areas (SRMAs) in its Draft
Resource Management Plan, BLM's Little Snake Field office is
taking a novel and exciting approach to managing for quiet
recreational experiences. By managing these areas for
non-motorized big game hunting and associated undeveloped
camping, BLM hopes to provide "reduced wildlife disturbance from
recreation users, greater self-reliance gained from hunting,
improved outdoor knowledge and self-confidence, and positive
contributions to local and regional economic stability."
Managing for non-motorized, backcountry experiences will
become more and more important as the number of ORV users and
their impact continue to increase. We hope that the Little
Snake Field Office will continue to prioritize such management
and adopt the proposed SRMAs in its final plan.
Craters of the Moon National Monument (ID):
Travel Management Plan Focuses on Protecting Monument
Objects
Formed by the same geologic forces that created
Yellowstone National Park, Craters of the Moon National Monument
is an otherworldly landscape of swirling lava flows, striking
cinder cones, and sagebrush seas. The BLM's scoping
documents and personal communications with the Monument
management team show that the agency has made it a priority to
protect the rich resources which inspired the creation of the
Monument in its travel planning process. These "Monument
Objects" - the area's lunar landscape, including the craters,
cones, lava flows, caves, and fissures of the 65-mile-long Great
Rift, as well as sage-grouse and rare plant species - will see
great benefits from the agency's extensive habitat fragmentation
analysis of existing routes, its decision to freeze the creation
of new motorized routes, and its plans to limit damaging effects
of ORV use by increasing education, monitoring and enforcement
of motorized travel in the Monument while preserving the ability
for people to experience and enjoy its rugged landscape.
In the coming year, we hope to see the Craters of the
Moon National Monument management team continue to incorporate
research which demonstrates habitat fragmentation
thresholds which should not be broken and work proactively to
ensure its travel plan will provide adequate protective
management as the challenges of exploding ORV use continue to
grow over the coming decade.
Buffalo
Field Office (WY): Fortification Creek Resource Management Plan
Amendment Recognizes the Wildlife and Wilderness Values of this
Special Place
Famous for its rugged terrain and
world-class elk hunting, the magnificent 123,000-acre
Fortification Creek Special Management Area boasts steep, rugged
slopes, juniper shrub lands, deeply carved arroyos, and
bottomland springs that are a haven for wildlife, especially the
isolated high desert elk herd that calls it home. BLM's
decision to prepare a proposed Amendment to its Resource
Management Plan recognizes the unique and valuable resources of
the area, including the 12,000-acre Wilderness Study Area and a
proposed Area of Critical Environmental Concern at its
core. By giving Fortification Creek its due, rather than
simply pushing forward with drilling, the agency is making an
important first step toward protecting one of the Powder River
Basin's last best places instead of allowing the habitat
fragmentation and degradation which a proposed 1,400-well coal
bed methane drilling project would create.
We hope that the Buffalo Field Office will take to heart
the many comments on the Amendment supporting protection of the
area's wild resources, including designating the proposed Area
of Critical Environmental Concern. BLM should finish the
work they've started here by drafting an Amendment with strong
protections for Fortification Creek's many wonderful
resources.
BLM Idaho State
Office: New Instruction Memorandum Re-Emphasizing Proactive
Management of Vehicle Use in Wilderness Study Areas to Ensure
Their Wilderness Character is Protected
Providing further support for BLM's requirements
to manage Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) to maintain their
wilderness character, this Instruction Memorandum (IM)
emphasizes the importance of monitoring the effects of vehicle
use, including determining whether past or existing use has
caused impairment to wilderness character and closing motorized
ways where it has.
The exploding numbers of ORVs make managing vehicle use
ever more challenging, and proactive management such as this IM
will be critical to ensure that WSAs maintain their suitability
for preservation as wilderness. We also hope the agency
will implement this IM quickly and begin its review of
impacts.
Las Cruces District (NM): Supporting Protection of
Area's Pre-Dinosaur Era Fossil Tracks
The 290-million-year-old paleozoic trackways
west of Las Cruces saw a greater chance for survival with
Senator Bingaman's introduction of a bill proposing protection
and proper management of the area by creating a National
Monument. BLM offered support for the Senator's Paleozoic
Trackways National Monument bill, taking decisive action to not
renew a mining permit for an adjacent rock quarry. The
agency showed a commitment to better protect this repository of
pre-dinosaur era fossil tracks. "Our sort of new focus is on
trackways protection and trying to reclaim this mine site so the
trackways are preserved," said Tim Sanders, assistant manager
for the BLM's Las Cruces District.
With these important first steps taken, we hope the Las
Cruces BLM builds on its momentum and formalizes protection for
the trackways in its Tri-County RMP revision through an expanded
Research Natural Area.
West-wide Energy
Corridors: Significantly Reducing Corridors Through
Special/Protected Places and Considering Changes to Reduce
Impacts
Proposing the designation of 6,000 miles of
energy transmission corridors with potential impacts to over 3
million acres of public lands, the West-wide Energy Corridors
Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), prepared
under the leadership of the Department of Energy and the BLM, is
intended to streamline and improve energy transmission across
the West; the massive footprint of this project also has the
potential to be devastating to wildlife habitat and special
places if it is not undertaken with extreme care. The
draft PEIS released last month made significant improvements
over a preliminary draft released last year. By
significantly reducing corridors through special and protected
places and considering how to customize the corridors to reduce
impacts in places where re-routing is not possible, the agencies
have shown a commitment to continue to improve their plan and
provide the responsible management our public lands deserve.
As the public comment period for the PEIS progresses and
additional impacts are identified, we hope that the agencies
will continue customizing and re-routing corridors to protect
special places and values such as wildlife habitat, wilderness
values, and cultural resources. We also hope that the
agencies will place a greater priority on making the entire
corridor designation process transparent to the public, consider
alternative strategies that maximize future use of renewable
energy sources, and implement technology and techniques to
decrease the number of corridors
necessary.
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