Blue Ribbon RELEASE: BlueRibbon Coalition Applauds Interior Department’s Review of Wilderness Study Area Policies

[Blue Ribbon Coalition]

BOISE, Idaho — The Blue Ribbon Coalition (BRC) today welcomed the Department of the Interior's June 10 announcement of a nationwide review and 60-day public comment period on wilderness study area (WSA) and lands with wilderness characteristics (LWC) policies across the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service.

"We have been calling for this kind of top-to-bottom review for years," said Ben Burr, Executive Director of the Blue Ribbon Coalition. "Wilderness study areas were created by Congress as a temporary designation — a placeholder while Congress deliberated on permanent protection. In too many places, agencies have allowed that 'temporary' status to calcify into a de facto permanent wilderness regime, with motorized recreation and other lawful uses systematically squeezed out. Secretary Burgum's announcement is an opportunity to reset that trajectory. Lands with Wilderness Characteristics are an administrative creature with a weak basis in law that have been used to launder accessible, multiple-use lands into restrictive designations. We welcome a thorough review of both of these designations."

**The WSA Problem**​

The Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service currently manage approximately 25 million acres of wilderness study areas — lands that, in many cases, have been in limbo for four decades or more. Congress's original intent under FLPMA was that WSAs would be studied and ultimately either designated as wilderness or released for multiple-use management. Instead, agency policy has treated nonimpairment standards as a permanent ceiling on permissible activity, often restricting motorized recreation, trail maintenance, and other uses far beyond what the law requires.

The same dynamic plays out with BLM's Manual 6320 and its treatment of lands with wilderness characteristics: These include millions of additional acres that have never been designated as wilderness, and never received a congressional direction to be managed as such. LWCs are routinely subject to wilderness-like constraints based on internal agency policy rather than statute. For example, many of the off-road trails closed in the Labyrinth Rims/Gemini Bridges area near Moab were justified by their location within Lands with Wilderness Characteristics designations.

BRC will be encouraging its nationwide network of recreation advocates to join BRC in filing detailed comments urging Interior to clarify that:

• WSA nonimpairment standards apply to the *character* of the land as it existed at the time of designation and do not require the suspension of all motorized recreation;
• Lands with wilderness characteristics that are not WSAs should be managed according to applicable and explicit multiple-use mandates, not informal wilderness equivalents;
• Agency policies that have effectively created de facto wilderness through administrative action — without congressional authorization — should be revised to reflect the agencies' actual statutory authority under FLPMA and other governing law.

**A Note on Rock Climbing changes**​

BRC has long fought for all forms of recreation experiences on public lands, and has led efforts to prevent the closure of hundreds of rock climbing route in Massacre Rocks in southeastern Idaho. The announcement from the Department of Interior also indicated that they would be creating guidance for managing rock climbing on BLM lands. BRC will be advocating for policies that will allow BLM to revisit past closures that were excessive.

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