Comments are pouring in to the Sweetwater County Commissioners regarding what should be done with the Bureau of Land Management’s Wilderness Study Areas within the county.
According to Mark Kot, the county’s public lands specialist, the county has received numerous comments from throughout the state. While the county has received some comments from county residents, a vast majority come from outside the area. Residents can send comments to the commissioners through the county’s web site, http://www.sweet.wy.us.
The commissioners discussed the issue with WSAs last week and plan to host a public hearing about the subject at their March 6 meeting. According to Commissioner Reid West, Rep. Liz Cheney plans to introduce a bill dealing with Wyoming’s WSAs. In total, Wyoming has 45 WSAs, 42 created by the Bureau of Land Management and three by the U.S. Forest Service. In Sweetwater County, there are 13 WSAs, two of which are shared with bordering counties.
The WSAs were created because lands were found to have unique wilderness characteristics. In 1964, the Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System and directed the BLM to inventory federally-owned land for areas which could be recognized as wilderness areas and designate wilderness study areas to determine if certain lands should be included.
The goal was to create a group of lands people could enjoy in a way that would leave them unharmed for future generations.
The WSA designation allows lands to be studied for potential protections, but those protections require an act of Congress to adopt or deny. The WSAs in Wyoming were identified by the BLM in 1980, with recommendations forwarded to congress in 1991. Since then, inaction from Congress has resulted in the study areas remaining in place longer than anticipated. The study areas contain approximately 247,000 acres of land, about 3.7 percent of the total land in Sweetwater County.
The Wyoming County Commissioners Association launched the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative in 2016 to address WSAs throughout the state, but Sweetwater County’s commissioners opted not to join, choosing to wait for the BLM’s draft resource management plan for the Rock Springs area to see how the BLM plans to address the study areas.
The WSA issue has economic implications for the county, with Commissioner Wally Johnson looking at the issue in terms of the potential mineral wealth within some of the WSAs. Johnson for a multiple use solution that would allow mineral surveys to be conducted, along with possible extraction.
“How much of Sweetwater County can we afford to tie up,” Johnson asked during the meeting last week.
Commissioner Don Van Matre agrees with Johnson’s position, saying he’s committed to multiple use because 70 percent of the revenues coming to the county are generated through the mineral industries and the industry supports high-paying jobs for the county’s residents.
Other commissioners have not made up their minds however, with Commissioner Randy Wendling saying he isn’t ready to support a full release of the WSAs within the county and Commissioner John Kolb desiring pubic comment before making a decision on what to support.
However, the commissioners aren’t the only people getting feedback on the study areas. Five Sweetwater County Democrats in the Wyoming Legislature authored a letter to Cheney Monday afternoon. The letter was signed by Sen. John Hastert, Rep. Stan Blake and Rep. John Freeman, all of Green River, and Sen. Liisa Anselmi-Dalton and Rep. JoAnn Dayton of Rock Springs.
The letter urges Cheney not to release or recommend management to the study areas without a public process.
“Our citizens deserve to be involved with management determinations for these important and special places,” the letter states.
The letter further states the five understand why the county chose not to join the WPLI, but states a collaborative process involving local stakeholders and residents can occur outside the WPLI.
“Our constituents would like to be involved in a collaborative process—if not this year, then sometime in the future. As other counties determine final management for WSAs through consensus-driven local processes, citizens in Sweetwater County will likely grow even more interested in having a say about our WSAs,” the letter states.
It closes by urging Cheney not to push legislation releasing the WSAs without local involvement.
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