BLM’s Newest Land Schemes Guaranteed to Harm Wyoming

Benjamin Barr

August 26, 2024

On August 22, the Bureau of Land Management ("BLM") officially released its Resource Management Plan for the Rock Springs Field Office. As noted by Representative Hageman, the plan will "substantially reduce economically productive and environmentally safe land uses such as grazing, energy production, mining, recreation, and other important activities on nearly a million acres in our state." Rest assured—government bureaucrats insist this is for Wyoming's best interests. As President Reagan might remind us, they're from the government and they're here to help.

Under the proposed plan, the government will prioritize a no use policy, including acts to block access to millions of acres of land. This plan follows the Biden Administration's Public Lands Rule, AKA the "Conservation Use Rule," which many describe as heavily favoring elimination of use of federal/public lands over productive uses of these lands. Indeed, some have cautioned that this policy change really means millions of acres of lands will be locked off from otherwise legal and productive uses. This is one of the first implementations of the revised Public Lands Rule and should sound a warning call to everyone concerned about this issue.

Both Wyoming and Utah filed a procedural lawsuit challenging the Public Lands Rule. They argue that the BLM failed to follow correct federal procedures for enacting rule changes. The lawsuit asks the federal government to follow the rules it is supposed to when making sweeping changes in policy.

Outside of Wyoming, other states are testing more aggressive approaches against federal incursions on public land. In 2011, I authored One Thousand Roads to Liberty: The Unexamined Case for RS 2477 and Sovereignty with the Wyoming Liberty Group. There, I laid out an important tool in Wyoming's ongoing struggle for sovereignty. Specifically, I discussed an antiquated law from the Mining Act of 1866 where local roads and trails were given special status against federal intervention. These are RS 2477 rights-of-way. At that time, Utah had already begun experimenting with RS 2477 claims as a means to protect against federal manipulation of its public lands. That battle continues today in a largely successful format. Wyoming could do the same but would need to amend its laws to do so.

In 2012, Utah filed lawsuits claiming 14,000 rights-of-way totaling over 35,000 miles of land. These claims crisscrossed areas like the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and Bears Ears National Monument. In doing so, these claims assert that the primary authority over these lands lies locally, not in distant Washington, DC. So, when the federal government announces a new lofty vision for how land should be used in Utah, the state has recognized legal property rights that can defeat those claims. Unlike some other litigation testing Tenth Amendment and sovereignty claims that quickly fizzle out, this legal strategy stuck and litigation remains active today.

More recently, the BLM announced a plan to close over 300 acres of roads accessible for motorized vehicles in Utah to promote conservation concerns. The State of Utah is fighting this push, noting that a considerable amount of those roads are protected under RS 2477, giving Utah, not the federal government, primary authority over them. These suits go on, with continued litigation this month in the United States District Court for the District of Utah. Other western states pursue a similar strategy, with Idaho currently being active in federal court over similar claims.

Since my writing and recommendations in 2011, the federal government's push to prioritize elimination of any use over the productive use of land has only grown more aggressive. With both the Public Lands Rule and the BLM's Resource Management Plan, Wyoming finds itself on the losing end of utopian environmentalist plans dreamt up by Washington, DC bureaucrats. Wyoming's pushback lawsuit asking the federal government to follow its own rules better is a decent start. But Wyoming should take heed and focus on how states like Utah are effectively blockading radical environmentalists from hijacking their land.

Like Utah, it is still not too late for Wyoming to recognize RS 2477 rights-of-way in the state. It must reform state law to do so, then systematically map and index these roads. Quit claim and quiet title suits must then be filed against the federal government to test the validity of these claims and to protect RS 2477 rights-of-way across the state. We can imagine going even further than Utah by testing more aggressive protection of local RS 2477 roads, too.

One Thousand Roads to Liberty is still achievable. Wyoming need not surrender its own prerogatives each time the BLM ushers in a new land management plan. In this way, implementing RS 2477 protections is a smart and proven successful step forward in Wyoming's fight for sovereignty.