Director Tracy Stone-Manning ticked off all the pies the Bureau of Land Management has its fingers in. With one out of every 10 acres of land in the United States under its purview, the BLM has interests in mining and grazing and delivering wood and fuel and food while also conserving the land for future use and enjoyment.
“We,” Stone-Manning told reporters for The Salt Lake Tribune in an exclusive interview last week, “do all the things.”
Yet one use stood out to Stone-Manning and Greg Sheehan, the BLM’s outgoing Utah state director, as the future of the agency: recreation.
“Thirty and 40 years from now, the disagreements about public lands are going to be about how people visit them, not about cattle, not about energy,” Stone-Manning said. “It’s going to be about people visiting the landscape.”
The data points in that direction. Some 11 million people visited BLM land in Utah in 2023, the agency reported. That’s 13% of total visitors in the country (83 million) and more than visited all of Utah’s Mighty 5 National Parks (10.6 million) last year, when visitation was just shy of the record. In addition, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that as an economic driver, recreation in Utah grew 32.79% between 2021 and 2022, the most for any state in the nation. That led to an estimated $8.1 billion in economic output in 2022.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning listens during an interview at The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024.
Experience points that way as well. Finding a hiking trail, mountain biking route or OHV road in Utah without another user on it has almost become an art form.
At the same time, President Joe Biden set a goal of reaching carbon-free electricity generation by 2035 and scientists are experimenting with how to grow beef in a laboratory (lab-grown chicken is already being sold in some U.S. markets).
Yet not everyone can see the camping spot in the forest for the trees, Stone-Manning said. In that group she included national lawmakers who, she indicated, may still think of the BLM as what conservationist Edward Abbey once dubbed it — the Bureau of Livestock and Mining.
“People didn’t consider us a recreation agency 30 years ago, 20 years ago,” she said. “The American public sure considers us a recreation agency now, but Congress doesn’t.”
That oversight has led to a shortfall in much-needed funding for the BLM, Stone-Manning said. To manage its 245 million acres, the BLM receives roughly $1.5 billion from the federal government. About $113M of that flows to Utah for use on its 22.8 million acres of BLM land, Sheehan said. In comparison, the National Forest Service manages 193 million acres nationwide on a budget of about $3.76 billion.
The shortfall in funding has, in turn, led to what some perceive as a shortfall in management.
(Brian Maffly | The Salt Lake Tribune) This oil well located on BLM land 40 miles south of Vernal, has not produced in several years, yet the site, photographed Aug. 4, 2022, remains unplugged and unclaimed while the wellhead audibly emits gasses into the atmosphere. The operator, Texas-based Weststar Exploration, has walked away from about 100 wells on state and federal land in Utah. The company has declared bankruptcy and no longer exists as a functioning business, leaving a massive reclamation liability on the Bureau of Land Management and the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration.
Utah carries an approximately $50M maintenance backlog on BLM land, according to state office spokesperson Christina Judd. The Great American Outdoors Act has helped chip away at that deficit, but at a tortoise-like pace. Last year, the agency received $1.6 million in relief. Additionally, the agency employs about 900 people in the state, which makes for fewer rangers and employees than Sheehan said are optimal to protect both the land and those who use it.
Sheehan isn’t suggesting the BLM should turn its back on its rugged reputation and try to curate the outdoor experience as a national park might, he said. Yet having a few more eyes and ears on the land would be useful.
“[People] say, ‘Well, it’s the same acres, same people, you must be fine.’ I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” Sheehan said. “Because if you invite more people to the party, [what happens]? How we use our public lands, we need to make sure that we can responsibly address those individuals that are there.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and other state officials say the BLM has failed to manage its land responsibly. In August, the state sued the federal government, claiming it has no constitutional right to hold onto state land indefinitely. The federal government owns nearly two-thirds of the land in Utah, but the lawsuit singled out the BLM-controlled acreage, which it dubbed “unappropriated.”
The state is asking the Supreme Court to consider the case.
“It is obvious to all of us that the federal government has increasingly failed to keep our lands accessible and properly managed,” Cox said. He added, “Utah deserves priority when it comes to managing this land.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Bureau of Land Management Utah State Director Greg Sheehan speaks during an interview at The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024.
Maintenance of Utah’s BLM land, Judd said, is budgeted to cost $21 million a year over the next five years. The state has suggested it could pay for upkeep and development of the land with some of the $225 million it currently sends to the federal government annually in BLM royalty fees.
Stone-Manning said she couldn’t comment on active litigation. However, she said the agency’s mission is to manage the lands in accordance with what the public wants, and polls consistently show people want to protect their public lands.
For example, Colorado College’s annual Conservation in the West poll showed, according to a news release, that public lands issues “like threats to wildlife habitats, water pollution, and the loss of natural areas are highly important to voters in the West and play a key role in how they will vote in 2024.” That same survey found that in Utah 70% of respondents preferred that “leaders place more emphasis on protecting water, air, wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities over maximizing the amount of land available for drilling and mining.”
That support has become the BLM’s bedrock in an era in which the agency seems to be coming under fire from all directions. In addition to waging a battle to wrest away control of the BLM’s land in the state, Utah has three other lawsuits pending against the agency.
That’s the nature of the BLM, Sheehan said. It can have drastically different directives every four years depending on who is elected President of the United States. Sheehan, who took his position in 2020, accepted a position with the Mule Deer Foundation and will leave his BLM post by late October. Stone-Manning, a Biden appointee, may also be out of a job after three years if Donald Trump wins the White House or if Kamala Harris wins and wants to appoint her own BLM manager.
“Politics will ebb and flow over time, and some of these uses will be higher prioritized or lesser prioritized than others,” Sheehan said. “But still, down the road, we’re trying to manage these lands the best we can for the American people and those from around the world who come to enjoy these lands.
“And so there’s lots to do there. I hope we get it right in the future.”
