BLM’s heated Rock Springs plan took 12 years to finish. Now the feds must redo it in one

ROCK SPRINGS — Two years ago, employees of the Bureau of Land Management’s Wyoming office encountered misinformation-fueled hysteria during public meetings about a conservation-heavy draft plan for managing a 3.6-million-acre swath of southwest Wyoming.

Then, just nine months after BLM’s especially controversial plan was finalized, the Trump administration ordered the agency to redo the process. On Wednesday, BLM’s staff reconvened with the public in Sweetwater County’s largest city to hear what locals make of the revision. This time, however, tempers were noticeably cool. There was no likening federal land management planning to the tragedies of historical American wars — comparisons argued publicly in 2023.

Instead, BLM-Wyoming Acting State Director Kris Kirby and her staff encountered