Yesterday, Congressional Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse (WA-04) and Senate Western Caucus Chair Cynthia Lummis (WY) sent a letter to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Tracy Stone-Manning, calling on her to cease work on the agency’s Greater Sage-Grouse Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendment (RMPA) and Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
“BLM’s sage-grouse proposal implements an unworkable one-size-fits-all approach to population management that will fail landowners across the west,” said Chairman Newhouse. “I’m proud to join Senator Lummis in requesting the agency return control to state and local officials who best know how to manage populations. This is clearly a last-ditch effort by a lame duck administration to inflict further harm on the American West, and I look forward to supporting the repeal of this regulation in the new Congress.”
“While the Biden-Harris administration spends its final days catering to its radical climate change base, farmers, ranchers and landowners across the west will bear the consequences of its catastrophic failures for years to come,” said Chair Lummis. “Instead of trusting Wyoming’s experts who have a proven track record on sage-grouse management, this administration continues grasping for control of the west by awarding decision-making power to unelected D.C. bureaucrats who do not know the first thing about western land management. Rep. Newhouse and I are calling on the BLM to immediately cease any work on the RMPA in this lame duck period to spare the west from a few more weeks of this administration’s Green New Deal policies.”
The Greater Sage-Grouse Proposed RMPAs and Final EIS were published in the Federal Register on November 15, 2024. The RMPA will impact 77 different resource management plans across 69 million acres in ten Western states.
On November 22, 2021, the BLM announced a notice of intent to amend land use plans for Greater Sage-Grouse habitat. The draft EIS was released on March 15, 2024.
In March 2024, Newhouse and Lummis urged the BLM to extend the comment period on this sage-grouse plan in order for those who live and work on the lands impacted by the proposal to have ample time to provide public comment.
Upon publication in the Federal Register, a 30-day protest period began and the RODs are expected to be signed in January 2025.
