Senate Western Caucus Chair Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Congressional Western Caucus Chair Dan Newhouse (R-WA) wrote a letter to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Tracy Stone-Manning expressing their concerns with its final Greater Sage-Grouse Resource Management Plan Amendment (RMPA).
“While the Biden-Harris administration spends its final days catering to its radical climate change base, farmers, ranchers and landowners across the west will bear the consequences of its catastrophic failures for years to come,” said Lummis. “Instead of trusting Wyoming’s experts who have a proven track record on sage-grouse management, this administration continues grasping for control of the west by awarding decision-making power to unelected D.C. bureaucrats who do not know the first thing about western land management. Rep. Newhouse and I are calling on the BLM to immediately cease any work on the RMPA in this lame duck period to spare the west from a few more weeks of this administration’s Green New Deal policies.”
“BLM’s sage-grouse proposal implements an unworkable one-size-fits-all approach to population management that will fail landowners across the west,” said Newhouse. “I’m proud to join Senator Lummis in requesting the agency return control to state and local officials who best know how to manage populations. This is clearly a last-ditch effort by a lame duck administration to inflict further harm on the American West, and I look forward to supporting the repeal of this regulation in the new Congress.”
This plan will affect sage-grouse habitats in Wyoming, California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.
In March, Lummis and Newhouse urged the BLM to extend the comment period on this sage-grouse plan in order for those who live and work on the lands affected by the proposal to have ample time to provide public comment.
In October 2023, Senate Western Caucus member Jim Risch (R-ID) led a letter to Senate leadership to keep the greater sage-grouse off the endangered species list and for states to continue species management.
In July 2023, Lummis led a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies urging the committee to continue prohibiting the listing of the greater sage-grouse.
A full copy of the letter can be found here.