Three local residents participated in a press briefing last week to discuss the anticipated release of the next iteration of the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed Rock Springs Resource Management Plan.
The RMP covers 3.6 million acres of land, including the Northern Red Desert in south central Wyoming – an area where retired Wyoming Game and Fish Department Non-Game Biologist Andrea Orabona of Lander spent “quite a bit of time” conducting bird surveys during her career.
“I feel so fortunate to have contributed to science by conducting these surveys while enjoying the personal experience of solitude, serenity, and peace that I find in the Red Desert,” Orabona said during last week’s press briefing. “I know the memories I’ve made and continue to make with colleagues, family and friends in the Red Desert will always be a treasure.”
Orabona spent 30 years with the WGFD managing “hundreds of non-hunted bird species across the state.”
Some of those non-game birds – as well as mammals and herptiles – are classified as “sage brush obligate” or “sage brush dependent” species, she explained, which means “they depend on sage brush habitat for all or part of their life cycle and would not exist without the presence of vast areas of undeveloped sage brush habitat in which to breed successfully and to continue to thrive.”
Those species are also identified as having the “greatest conservation need” in Wyoming’s State Wildlife Action Plan, she noted, including pronghorn, greater sage grouse, the sage sparrow, the sage thrasher, the brewer’s sparrow, the pygmy rabbit, the sage brush vole, and the sage brush lizard.
“The Northern Red Desert currently provides the necessary sage brush habitat for these important species,” Orabona said. “To ensure the breeding success and long-term viability of the populations of sage brush obligate and dependent species that call the Northern Red Desert home, we need to curtail human-caused habitat disturbances and human-caused light and noise pollution.”
When a habitat is “altered” by humans, Orabona said wildlife usually “loses in the end.”
“It’s up to us to ensure this doesn’t happen to the unique ecosystem that makes the Red Desert so special to humans and so necessary for wildlife,” she said.
Misinformation
Orabona is the president of the regional Red Desert Audubon Society, an organization that provides “field trips” and “hands-on activities where you can go out and actually observe birds and other wildlife” in the Red Desert.
The group plans to promote those field trips in order to help combat any misinformation that might spread about the next iteration of the Rock Springs RMP, she said.
Julia Stuble of Lander – who serves as the Wyoming State Director for The Wilderness Society and as a member of the Lander City Council – said the BLM should also “have a strong response planned” in case the next draft of the Rock Springs RMP is mischaracterized by members of the public.
“I expect they will have (a) simplified version and some really clear points out there to clear that up,” she said, adding, “We’re going to do our best to share factual information (too), and we’re excited to have folks in the community … who will be having those conversations with their neighbors as well.”
She also called on “our leaders in Wyoming, at the local and the state level, to ensure that they are not deliberately contributing to any of that degree of misinformation and hysteria but (instead) take a reasonable and calm approach to reading through what’s actually in the document before responding.”
There was “quite a bit of misinformation about the draft RMP” when it first came out last year, Wyoming Outdoor Council Program Director Alec Underwood of Lander recalled, with “a lot of folks … concerned about how the plan may affect public access.”
“We had members of the public who were confused about some of the terminology in the plan, thinking that it would prevent human presence on the landscape,” he explained. “We’ll continue to try and clear that up and make sure that people understand that none of the management prescriptions in this would prevent people from enjoying the landscape.”
He expressed confidence that the BLM has also been “clearing a lot of that (confusion) up” as the agency responds to the feedback it received during the “months-long comment period” last year.
“Within that time, the agency heard from thousands of people with great interest in how these public lands will be managed in the future,” he said. “We’ve estimated that the BLM received upwards of 35,000 comments from the public.”
The BLM also received a “detailed set of recommendations” from a “task force of local stakeholders” that Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon convened in December 2023, Underwood said.
Underwood was able to represent conservation interests on the task force, which “worked collaboratively … to form consensus-based recommendations that were submitted to the BLM.”
“We’re confident that the agency has taken all public comment into consideration … and has made adjustments to the management suggested in the draft plan,” he said. “We know the management prescriptions in this plan will have long-lasting effects – RMP’s typically do – and dictate management of these landscapes for several decades. So … hopefully (they’ll) ensure that conservation is a priority so that these lands are protected for future generations.”
The next iteration of the Rock Springs RMP is expected to come out this month, Stuble said, initiating a “30-day protest period and a 60-day review period for the governor’s office.”
“The BLM will then digest and reconcile those protests and take into account the governor’s feedback,” she said. “Then (they’ll) issue a final record of decision, which will be the final plan at that point.”