‘Bureaucratic maze’

Several federal laws require public land to be managed for the needs of the various industries and recreational enthusiasts. Public land also must be managed under the concept known as sustainable yield, which means continuing the supply of natural resources through regrowth or reproduction to ensure replacement of the part that has been harvested.

Two years ago, the BLM spent almost $100 million to operate in Wyoming, from permitting to fighting wildfires to construction, the report states. That year it generated about $2 billion in revenues in the state, from mining to timber to recreation fees.

In that same year, the Forest Service collected over $9 million in Wyoming from activities such as logging, mining and grazing. But its expenses were over $44 million.

“Ultimately, without significant changes to federal law, the greatest challenge would be that the state would be inheriting the same bureaucratic maze of overlapping, entwined, often conflicting federal mandates established in the labyrinth of laws and directives laid out by Congress,” the study states. “These mandates and directives are frequently underfunded, contradictory and may regularly and suddenly change according to the political whims of a particular year.”