BLM to amend Rock Springs management plan

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will revise its Rock Springs, WY, Resource Management Plan (RMP) after finalizing the plan nine months ago.

The agency published a Notice of Intent for its amendment just a day after the government shut down on Oct. 1. The purpose of the amendment, BLM said, is to align the Rock Springs RMP with President Donald Trump’s executive orders on Unleashing American Energy. The executive orders direct agencies to review policies that may restrict access to energy and mineral resources.

The amendment would change the existing RMP for actions related to special management designations and evaluate mineral development opportunities. BLM will prepare an updated environmental assessment as part of the amendment process.

“This amendment is about striking a better balance,” said BLM Wyoming Acting State Director Kris Kirby. “We are initiating a transparent public process to assess how we can support multiple-use management, meet current energy demands, and honor the unique ecological, cultural and recreational values of that make these lands unique.”

BLM opened a 30-day public comment period until Nov. 3. The agency requests feedback on the scope of the analysis, potential alternatives, identification of relevant information and studies, and areas of critical environmental concern (ACEC) nominations. However, BLM noted that the agency is unable to address comments until the government shutdown ends.

To submit comments, visit tinyurl.com/489xy23j, email blm_wy_rockspringsrmp@blm.gov or mail to Rock Springs Field Office 280 Highway 191 N, Rock Springs, WY 82901.

BLM plan

The Rock Springs Resource Management Plan (RMP) covers 3.6 million acres of public land in southwest Wyoming and encompasses Sweetwater, Sublette, Lincoln, Fremont and Uinta counties.

BLM released a draft RMP in 2023 that was more skewed toward wildlife and habitat conservation and limited energy development.

Following the draft’s release, and public outcry, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) organized a stakeholder task force that prepared a list of recommendations for a new RMP. The task force recommended 24 agreements in principle and more than 100 management prescriptions, and the final document was largely considered a compromise between industry and conservation.

BLM released its final Rock Springs RMP in December 2024.

The planning area includes 12 ACECs, five Special Recreation Management Areas, a National Historic Trails corridor and 13 Wilderness Study Areas. As part of the amendment process, BLM will evaluate whether special management is warranted and whether development is possible.

The U.S. Geological Survey published a new assessment earlier this year that found parts of southwestern Wyoming contained “substantial undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas resources.” In total, the assessment estimated 473 million barrels of oil and 27 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be recovered from the Mowry Composite Total Petroleum System in southwest Wyoming and northeast Colorado.

“Potential for fluid mineral development was previously determined to be low for much of the special management designated areas; however, new technologies and industry interest have changed over recent years and the reasonably foreseeable development needs to be reevaluated,” BLM said in its Notice of Intent.

Reactions

Gordon was complimentary of the BLM’s announcement. “The Notice of Intent published following the BLM’s announcement earlier this year is another important step in providing a true multiple-use plan for the Rock Springs area,” Gordon said.

He continued that he was confident the amendment process will address drastic flaws without restarting the “decade-long effort.”

The Wyoming Wildlife Federation said the BLM land managed under the Rock Springs Field Office has significant cultural, ecological and economic importance.

“We recognize the RMP isn’t perfect, but it was the product of well over a decade of hard work and ultimately strikes a good balance between conserving many cherished landscapes, including the Greater Little Mountain Area, and allowing responsible development that employs so many locals,” said Nat Paterson, Policy Director for the Wyoming Wildlife Federation.

The group plans to work with its partners, community members and others to “ensure balanced land management measures are carried forth in an amended plan.”

The Wyoming chapter of the Sierra Club condemned the amendment proposal. “Today’s announcement seeks to undo all of the hard work that went into striking that balance and overrule the will of the public,” the group said.

“The plan was a compromise between many different Wyoming communities who have weighed in over the years and, now, before the agency even has time to implement it, we’re being asked to weigh in again,” said Sierra Club Wyoming Chapter Director Rob Joyce. — Anna Miller Fortozo, WLJ managing editor

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1 Comment

James (Jim) Sherrard
October 10, 2025
My comment letter to the BLM,BLM Director Frank Keller, Rocksprings BLM District,Director Keller and Manager Foster,My apology for not reviewing and making comments on the Rock Springs RMP before it went final in December 2024. Now since the plan will be amended I want to make several comments on the planning process and a stepping back on the use of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. First and historically, my family is connected to that part of Wyoming from the late 18th century and up until the mid-1980. My great grandmother traveled the Oregon Trail when she was a young girl; they crossed the North Platt River Bridge in Casper, her name Maud Howard and her name is carved on Independence Rock. She lived well over 100 years old and our lives overlapped by five years. She used to talk about the wagon train, endless walking, and in the morning helping her mother make sour dough biscuits; they camped along the Sweetwater River. In the 50s and 60s I grew up in Casper, Wyoming and my father worked in the oilfields. Many times, I would travel with him to Baroid and then on to the Red Desert where he was bringing parts to the drilling rigs and production locations. In 1979 I went to work as an environmental manager for Texas Oil and Gas and they had mineral leases in the Red Desert. My first job was working with the Rock Springs BLM on getting an APD to drill a well that was within a wilderness study area (WSA) near Boars Tusk. The well was drilled and became a producer. I have memories stopping at the Red Desert Café on I-80 for many meals over thirty years. Having a MS in Environmental Sciences and working for an energy company may or does sound like an oxymoron. But, oil at that time needed all the help they could get because the Federal laws were changing rapidly. Now 45 years later that area of high desert in southcentral Wyoming is very special to me, and it has conflicted me for years. Now in my mid 70s I guest teach biology, and environmental science at a large high school in North Texas; I am able to teach about the oil industry, the impacts, the story about nesting golden eagles in the Red Desert, the Conestoga wagon wheels etched deeply into sandstone, endangered species that I have worked with and then the environmental metric side on carbon footprints, water use, and fracking. The students are oh so smart and impatient for changes in society.Public Law 94-579 signed into law by President Gerald Ford, “Federal Land Policy and Management Act” (FLPMA) was a comprehensive framework for the management of public lands managed by the BLM, balancing the various uses including recreation, grazing, timber, mineral extraction while also protecting the environment and cultural resources. James Watt from Lusk, Wyoming later became the United States Secretary of the Interior and FLPMA was the bedrock on how DOI managed lands. I met him several times thought the years and his mantra was stakeholder involvement and multiuse land management for all purposes to the exclusion of none. My uncle Richard Collins was the only dentist in Lusk after World War II. He was in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge when it was surrounded by German soldiers, he was with the 101st airborne. I am sure he remembered working on James Watt’s teeth in Lusk when he was a child.As you ramp up the amending of the Rock Spring RMP I would like to see the BLM involve a more diverse stakeholders from industry, residents, recreation and conservation; it is not all or nothing. When your resource managers put pen to paper, they will need to be mindful of the Executive Order 14154 and Secretarial order 3418 both titled “Unleashing America Energy.” I think the commonality would be minizine the use of “Areas of Critical Environmental Concerns” (ACECS), and use lease stipulations that would protect the endangered species and artifacts, drilling could become seasonal to not disrupt nesting or migration. I think the resource data is there to be precise on stipulations that will protect those crucial habitats.Wyoming was a great place to have grown up in the 50s and 60s, endless hiking to Casper Mountain and the foothills, all high desert with sage brush and grassland biome. In the morning black bears would come off the mountain down Garden Creek into Casper, and antelope would be grazing in the front yards. In the summer my mother would let me out the front door with a packed lunch for me and one for Ruff my pet 80-pound male Boxer, we were gone all day and back for dinner; and ready to go out the next day, he was my constant companion for many years. Ruff lived to be an old dog, all white on the head and shoulders. He died in 1964 and is buried on top of a V shaped foot hill at the foot of Casper Mountain. He is facing the mountains that he loved so much.My best wishes on the RMP hearing and drafting I hope the final document has something in it for all, and people get to see Wyoming the way I got to see it.
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