Putting land into the public's hands
And other bits and pieces
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
If you’ve ever floated the Gunnison River in western Colorado through the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area between Delta and Grand Junction, you’ve probably noticed that the land on either side of the stream alternates between public parcels and private ranch land. If the Bureau of Land Management has its way, some 4,000 acres of that private land will soon be entering the public domain, according to reporting from the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. That’s right, the agency is putting more lovely land into the public’s hands.
The parcels were formerly operated as a ranch by Dick Miller. After he died, the Conservation Fund purchased the land from Miller’s son for an undisclosed amount in order to sell it to the BLM. The associated BLM grazing leases will reportedly be transferred back to the BLM, but it isn’t clear whether they’ll be made available for grazing again.
The BLM is also looking to put a lot of public land into oil and gas companies’ hands. The agency is seeking public input on proposals to lease 74 parcels covering 33,530 acres in New Mexico, and 271 oil and gas parcels totaling 357,358 acres in Wyoming.
The New Mexico parcels are mostly in the Permian Basin, but do include tracts in the San Juan Basin located north and northeast of Chaco Culture National Historical Park (but not within the ten-mile buffer zone, which remains in place — for now).
The Wyoming parcels are concentrated in the southern part of the state between Rawlins and Green River, the central part of the state, and the Powder River Basin.
🦫 Wildlife Watch 🦅
Wolves in the West have had a rough go of it ever since white settlers showed up in the 1800s and proceeded to slaughter them en masse. And while they’ve been able to recover somewhat in the Northern Rockies, thanks in part to endangered species protections and reintroduction efforts, the move to bring them back to Colorado and the Southwest has hit obstacles — and tragedy, including:
Another reintroduced wolf has died in Colorado, reports the Colorado Sun’s Tracy Ross, bringing the total number of wolf fatalities since the start of reintroduction to 11. The cause of death has not been determined.
Meanwhile, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has paused new wolf reintroductions because it hasn’t been able to find another state or tribal nation to provide the animals.
Utah Department of Agriculture officials killed three wolves in the northern part of the state on Jan. 9. While wolves are protected by the Endangered Species Act in most of the state, they were delisted in one small section along the Wyoming border when protections were lifted for the Northern Rockies population. Now, apparently, the state will kill any wolves that wander into that area, just because they can, and to prevent them from going into the protected zone. That’s despite the fact that the three animals had not killed or stalked any livestock. “I have not heard any of my neighbors, and we haven’t had the experience ourselves that we’ve had actual issues with our cattle and wolves,” area livestock owner Launie Evans told KSL.
And in more sad news: “Taylor,” the Mexican gray wolf that wandered out of southern New Mexico and into the Mt. Taylor region, was found dead on I-40 near Grants. Taylor first roamed onto Mt. Taylor early last year, apparently not realizing that the feds don’t allow wolves to cross I-40. Wildlife officials captured him and deported him back to the southland, but he was persistent, and simply turned around and headed north again. He was removed again in November, but couldn’t stay away from Mt. Taylor. This time, on his return journey, he was struck by a vehicle.
“Taylor’s death is a heartbreaking reminder that highways like I-40 are not just lines on a map, they are lethal barriers for wildlife,” said Claire Musser, executive director of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project, in a statement. “Abolishing I-40 as a management boundary is long overdue. If we are serious about recovery, we must allow wolves to move freely across suitable habitats and invest in wildlife crossings and landscape-scale connectivity so highways no longer function as death traps.”And, finally, CPW’s latest map of wolf activity is out (at the top of this section), and it shows that wolves have been wandering into new parts of the state. Folks in the Silverton area might just be seeing some soon. If you think you see one, but aren’t sure if it’s a wolf or coyote, this little guide from CPW might help:
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
Public Citizen just released an accounting of some of the ways the Trump administration is subsidizing global mining corporations and their operations on public lands — and the ways in which executives made off like bandits as a result. It’s worth reading the whole report, but here are just a small sampling of highlights:
$8.8 million: Amount 13 mining corporations, including Rio Tinto, Resolution Copper, South32, Lithium Americas, and Ambler Metals, spent on lobbying in 2025.
$3.5 million: Amount Lithium America paid Interior Department official Karen Budd-Falen’s husband for water rights for its Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. The federal government also took a 5% stake in the company and the mine as a condition of preserving a Biden-era loan.
$400 million: Amount the U.S. Defense Department paid for a stake in Las Vegas-based MP Materials, which owns the Mountain Pass rare earths mine in California. The Pentagon also loaned the company $150 million.
The Bureau of Land Management approved the Grassy Mountain gold and silver mine on 469 acres of public land in Malheur County, Oregon. The action allows Paramount Gold Nevada to develop an underground mine, an onsite mill, and “associated storage” (which I’m taking to mean they’ll be able to dispose of toxic mill tailings on public land mining claims).
📖 Reading (and watching) Room 🧐
Here’s a great piece by Leah Sottile, who has written authoritatively on right-wing movements and more, on the plague of hypocrisy going around right now.
The Border Chronicle is indispensable reading these days and, well, always. This piece, titled Border Patrol Nation, is an important look at the violent history of the Border Patrol.
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And you really should be reading Wayne Hare’s writing over at the Civil Conversations Project.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
Speaking of hypocrisy: I’m sure most of you have heard Trump administration officials saying that federal ICE and/or CPB agents shot Alex Pretti because he brought a gun to a protest. The photos below were all captured at the May 2014 Recapture rally in Blanding, Utah. Quite a few of the attendees — who were on hand to protest “federal overreach” — were armed. None of them were shot. Just sayin’.
As far as mining lobbying expenditures, who even knows how much is going into new/advanced/modular/whatever nuclear lobbying. And there are also expenditures from the companies to non-profits who do PR for them. I listen to the "Redefining Energy" podcasts by some EU investor types. They called out the US SMR biz as "lobbying and powerpoint companies." Also used the old penny stock market term, "pump and dump." These companies are raising tens of billions from venture capital and shaky IPOs and the always suspect SPACs and pumping a bunch of it back into massive PR. They called out one, Fermi Inc., for raising $700M from an IPO and turning around and donating $150M(not a typo) of some funky class of stock to a "donor-advised fund" that dishes it out as "dark money." And this is in addition to Bill Gates's various very well-funded efforts to resurrect nuclear.
The solar and wind biz is just in the minor leagues comparatively.
I would have thought it was all good "the public" is getting ranch land along the Gunnison. That's a lot of river frontage. Hopefully BLM behaves itself.
That’s a coincidence. The weekend before last I drove through that Dick Miller ranch land to the end of the road, there, walking on the bank of Escalante Creek unexpectedly seeing what I think was a wolf’s paw track, a kind of confirmation coming later in the week when I got the CPW Activity Map.
Personally I imagined a kind of (short-term at least) continuity if or when the ranch is transferred to BLM, the managers living there becoming govt. employees/contractors rather than working for Dick Miller’s son in Denver.