Wyoming Public Lands Initiative launched

WORLAND — The Wyoming County Commissioners Association (WCCA) launched a major initiative on Dec. 2 to resolve issues with federal land designations that have existed across the state for more than 40 years. The Wyoming Public Lands Initiative (WPLI) will empower county commissioners to develop county-by-county agreements on the final designation or release of Wyoming’s 45 Wilderness Study Areas (WSA).

The final recommendations of the WPLI will be sent to a federal delegation for introduction in the U.S. House and Senate.

According to the WCCA, Wyoming is currently home to 15 designated wilderness areas, covering more than 4 million acres. The Bureau of Land Management also manages 42 WSAs for a total of 577,000 acres of public land. The Forest Service manages three WSAs, adding another 130,000 acres.

Under the WPLI, all 23 counties have been invited to participate in the initiative, and each Board of County Commissioners will decide if their county will join the effort. Each county will create a County Advisory Team, made up of members from agriculture, conservation, energy, recreation districts and county commissioners to review and designate the lands in their area, according to a WCCA press release.

For Washakie County Commissioner and former WCCA Public Lands Committee Co-Chairman Aaron Anderson, the initiative is welcome and something Washakie County needs to look at seriously. “This concept has been out there for a long time,” said Anderson. “The gist is to take a look at wilderness areas that have been in limbo since the 1960s. There’s a huge desire at a local level to expand (multiple use in) the wilderness areas. Utah went through the same process and released a lot of land that was in limbo for multiuse.”

Locally, Anderson admits that Washakie County has fewer sites to consider, although the process is an important one. “The local concern over this is pretty great,” said Anderson. “Take a place like the Honeycombs for example, here in Washakie County. Once it’s designated as a Wilderness Study Area, then that entire area is vulnerable to becoming federally managed.”

Anderson explained that under the guidelines provided by the WCCA, the Washakie County Commission has until spring of 2016 to evaluate the process, determine parameters for advisors, and develop an advisory team. “At this point, I would like to move pretty fast on this,” said Anderson. “We need to have an open discussion about the initiative, so I’d like to see us get something started in January at the earliest.”

Washakie County will have a head start on the initiative research, as the County Commission has files on most of the sites to be reviewed. “We’ve got a ton of information already, from grass area studies, mining areas and maps and locations of historic trails,” noted Anderson.

Once the WPLI teams have been developed and county-specific WSAs have been evaluated, the WCCA will craft legislation for submission to the federal delegation for introduction to Congress in 2018.