The near-final Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plan for managing 3.6 million acres of public land in southwest Wyoming could face an unprecedented challenge in 2025, Oil City News reports.
Critics speculate that the Republican-led Congress may use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan (RMP), a move that would mark the first use of the CRA to revoke a federal land-use plan.
The Rock Springs RMP, more than a decade in the making, aims to balance conservation and development. However, environmental advocates and former BLM officials warn that the incoming Congress could nullify the plan, negating years of work. The CRA allows Congress to overturn federal agency rules finalized within the last 60 legislative days, and with both chambers poised for Republican control, the RMP may be vulnerable.
While Wyoming’s congressional delegation—Senators John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, along with Representative Harriet Hageman—have not confirmed plans to invoke the CRA, public statements hint at opposition to the RMP. Hageman expressed optimism about overturning the plan under a potential Trump administration, while Lummis called the RMP a “catastrophic blow” to Wyoming’s economy. Barrasso indicated that federal land-use policies, including the Rock Springs plan, need rewriting to prioritize energy and mineral production.
Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz, have reportedly been reviewing rules that could be subject to CRA action. The act, established in 1996, has been used 20 times, mostly during the Trump administration, but never to reverse a federal land-use plan.
The possibility of applying the CRA to the Rock Springs RMP has raised concerns about long-term unpredictability in federal land management. Ronni Flannery, an attorney with The Wilderness Society, warned that using the CRA in this context could create “significant uncertainty and instability” in public land planning. Additionally, the CRA’s prohibition on judicial review could complicate efforts to challenge such a revocation.
Former BLM-Wyoming State Director Mary Jo Rugwell expressed frustration at the prospect of the plan being undone, noting that federal employees have already restarted the RMP process multiple times. Rugwell, who led the office from 2016 to 2019, criticized the potential CRA action as an unprecedented intrusion into land-use planning that disregards years of collaborative effort.
The BLM is expected to finalize the Rock Springs RMP by late 2024. However, if overturned, the CRA’s stipulation that no “substantially similar” rule can be reissued could prevent future administrations from revisiting the plan. Conservation groups such as the Wyoming Wildlife Federation and Trout Unlimited have urged the BLM to complete the RMP, emphasizing that continued reliance on the outdated 1997 plan is unacceptable.
