BLM close to releasing draft land use plan that covers 250,000 acres in Washington County

The public will get the opportunity to comment on a BLM land use plan that covers 250,000 acres of public land in Washington County and has been years in the making.

 Brent Ralston, Four Rivers Field Office manager for the BLM, told county commissioners that management of local public lands by the BLM is currently directed by multiple plans. 

 The agency is working to consolidate those plans into one and release the document for a 90-day comment period in a few months, he said.

 Ralston said it's been a long process to craft a new management plan. The Four Rivers BLM office put the land use plan on hold in 2012 to discuss sagegrouse and habitat issues within the district. 

 Once that was completed, the measures in the sage grouse conservation plans were implemented starting in 2015, Ralston said. 

 The land use plan analyzes four alternatives in the Environmental Impact Statement covering the 780,000 acres in the Four Rivers BLM district. 

 In addition to Washington County, the land use plan covers public land in Elmore and seven other counties.

 The emphasis in the plan has been on public access, which is also the direction coming from Washington, D.C. That is easy to see on a map but not that easy to do on the ground, Ralston said. There are areas of scattered private and public land ownership that create access issues, especially in the Rock Creek area west of Weiser. 

 “How can we rearrange the pieces to create access and get out of scattered land ownership that doesn’t make sense for BLM to keep?” Ralston said.

 The land use plan looks at small direct sales of public land to resolve encroachment or trespass issues, Ralston said. 

 It also streamlines oil and gas leases on public land in Washington and Payette counties that have been around since 2015 but currently are not developable. 

 The new management plan will address lease stipulations and the leasing process will be streamlined in the future, he said.

 The draft land use plan identifies 8,000 acres mostly located in Adams County that meet the characteristics for wilderness. The land would be managed by the BLM as primitive recreation and not wilderness. The acreage touches Washington County on the south and about 100 acres are located in Washington County.

 There is an area of priority habitat for the sharp-tailed grouse, a relative of the sage grouse, in Washington County and the boundaries may be rearranged in the future, Ralston said. 

 The BLM bought 540 acres of private land in Washington County south of Sage Creek for habitat in 2017 and protected another 1,480 acres of grouse habitat in the area through a conservation easement with The Nature Conservancy.

 In all, there are additional 5,600 acres that is under the protection of TNC as well as 21,400 acres that are part of a BLM Area of Critical Environmental Concern. 

 According to the Audubon website on important bird areas, the rolling, broken terrain dissected by Mann, Sage and Keithly Creeks supports the largest population of sharp-tailed grouse left in west-central Idaho. 

 Commission chairman Kirk Chandler has been outspoken about federal land management agencies like the BLM and U.S. Forest Service and their lack of communication with the county.

 He said over the years the BLM has been reducing rather than expanding access to public lands. 

 He questioned how many people will use an area that is off limits to motorized vehicles like the proposed primitive use area Ralston mentioned in Adams County. 

 “If it is public land it should be managed for public use,” Chandler said.

 Chandler said the county disagreed with the BLM’s purchase of private land for the sharp-tailed grouse and taking the land off the county tax rolls. 

 BLM officials met with the commissioners on a courtesy visit to inform them of the habitat purchase north of Sage Creek prior to it taking place.

 The county’s input didn’t seem to make any difference and the land sale went through, Chandler said.

 “We haven’t had coordination. They just do it whether we like it or not,” he said.

 That area of sharp-tailed grouse habitat burned fast in the Keithly Creek fire in August. Areas that have been grazed by cattle don’t burn as intensely, Chandler said. 

 Commissioner Nate Marvin asked if the BLM could do anything about the “patchwork” of private and public land ownership that can make access to public lands difficult. 

 Ralston said the BLM doesn’t typically go out and look for instances of encroachment with private or public lands. If a landowner seeks to acquire public land or swap for public land to shore up boundaries, they can get in contact with the BLM. Land swaps in the district are a few years out and it is a lengthy process. 

 It’s time-consuming because of the laws that have to be followed for public land swaps or sales. Those laws were put in place because of past mistakes, such as surveys that were not accurate or fences put in the wrong place, Ralston said.

 Chandler said it can take four to five years to get something done with a BLM land swap or sale. He questioned why the process is so involved.