In May, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its final environmental assessment and proposed resource management plan (RMP) amendment for the 117,000-acre San Rafael Swell Recreation Area and surrounding region. The recreation area was established as part of the 2019 John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, which also designated 663,000 acres of BLM-managed wilderness in Emery County, Utah (among other things).

The Dingell Act specifically directed the BLM to develop a “comprehensive management plan” for the recreation area within five years of the bill being signed into law. In a glaring misinterpretation of the assignment, the agency has spent the past four years working on a plan amendment that (a) is not comprehensive (even by its own account) and (b) rolls back existing conservation protections for lands well beyond those designated under the Dingell Act.

The BLM’s proposed conservation rollbacks include:

• Removing wilderness management for nearly 13,000 acres of “natural areas” located outside of designated wilderness. Natural areas are BLM-identified wilderness-quality lands managed to protect their wilderness characteristics.
  
• Eliminating 157,000 acres of existing “areas of critical environmental concern” (ACECs), while retaining only 4,900 acres. ACECs are areas where special management attention is required to protect important historical, cultural, or scenic values.
  
• Eliminating the entire 937,000-acre San Rafael Swell Special Recreation Management Area (SRMA), roughly a third of which falls outside of wilderness or the recreation area. The BLM replaces the SRMA with four lesser-protected areas where recreation is integrated into other land uses such as grazing and mineral development. In doing so, the agency removed common-sense resource protections, including requirements that visitors provide their own fuelwood, use fire pans to contain fire and ash, and bring portable toilets where facilities are not available.
  
• Rolling back protective visual resource management and right-of-way “avoidance” and “exclusion” areas, both of which were in place to limit new disturbances and protect scenic values, wildlife, and other natural resources.

While we believed the BLM’s approach was misguided and inconsistent with the Dingell Act from the start, we did not expect the agency to use the implementation of a public lands conservation bill as justification to remove existing protections from hundreds of thousands of acres of land not directly impacted by the bill. In June, SUWA filed a formal protest of the agency’s decision with the BLM director. Pending the outcome of our protest, we will consider additional legal action if necessary.

­—Neal Clark

The above article first appeared in the Summer 2026 issue of our Redrock Wilderness newsletter. Become a member to receive our print newsletter in your mailbox 3 times a year.