July 12, 2021 |
The controversial 30 by 30 public lands policy pushed by the Biden Administration has politicians in the West, from U.S. Senators to county commissioners, concerned.
The plan would function as a kind of “endangered species” list for U.S. lands and waters. It’s part of the new orthodoxy of environmentalism as a government religion. During a recent Wyoming legislative committee hearing, one state senator wondered whether regulations handed down from the from Biden Administration as part of the new policy would bar traditional multiple use practices and treat large swaths of federal land as sacred ground.
That’s Senator Brian Boner, who represents portions Platte and Converse County in Senate District 2, where agriculture and energy co-exist and drive the economy. Boner co-chairs the Select Federal Natural Resource Management Committee along with Representative Donald Burkardt of Rawlins. Boner’s comment came during a discussion with the BLM’s Acting State Director Kimber Liebhauser.
During the May 26th meeting, Liebhauser fielded questions about federal land policies under the Biden Administration. The topics included coal, oil and gas leasing programs, expected changes to federal energy royalty rates and President Biden’s Executive Order 14008. The first topic discussed, though, was the 30-30 energy policy.
The 30-30 plan is contained within Biden’s executive order on climate change. It would transition nearly 440-million acres—or 30 percent of U.S. lands and water–into federal protection by the year 2030.
With a former member of an eco-terrorist group, Tracy Stone Manning, nominated for director of the Bureau of Land Management, the suggestion that Wyoming could be transformed into sacred ground off limits to agriculture, logging or energy production is not as far-fetched as it might first sound. The blunt questions posed by lawmakers on the committee carried a sense of urgency and skepticism, like this one from Senator Bo Biteman, from District 21 in the coal country of northern Wyoming.
The answer from interim BLM State Director Liebhauser did little to enlighten the panel.
Senator Biteman, who had the definition handy before he asked the question, characterized the interim director’s answer as a dodge.
As she did through much of the hearing in response to questions regarding specifics, Liebhauser said her office is waiting for guidance from her bosses in Washington, D.C.
In response to a question from Rep. Burkhardt, Liebhauser said she has not heard of any discussion about creating new wilderness areas in the state. Burkhardt also asked whether Wyoming’s track record of protecting and conserving lands will be included in the Biden Administration’s accounting of areas already set aside for preservation.
Rep. Burkhardt did not get a definitive answer. Liebhauser said while Wyoming’s work to protect lands is important, Washington has not provided long range goals to match its 30 by 30 rhetoric.
Committee co-chairman, Senator Boner, expressed frustration with the vagueness of the BLM responses. If Wyoming’s work to create core sage grouse areas and migration corridors as protective buffers does not count toward the nation’s ideological goals of a 30-percent set aside, pursuing those state policies is pointless.
Boner added that multi-generational ranchers wouldn’t exist today in Wyoming if they didn’t know and practice conservation efforts. Those practices, he said co-exist with energy development that is important for local economies and for the welfare of the nation.
The BLM manages 247 million acres of federal public land, including 155 million acres for livestock grazing. In Wyoming, according to the agency’s testimony in May, 4.8 billion-tons of minable coal remain on leased lands here.
