This spring, along with our partners at Western Watersheds Project and the Center for Biological Diversity, SUWA challenged the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) approval of a sweeping West Desert vegetation project authorizing various mechanical vegetation removal treatments across roughly 560,000 acres of important wildlife habitat near the Indian Peak Range, the Wah Wah Mountains, Hamlin Valley, Pine Valley, and Blue Mountain. The project includes heavy-handed methods like mastication and chaining while rushing the public with only a 15-day comment period.

After SUWA filed an appeal of the BLM’s decision in May, the agency moved to vacate its own approval and reconsider the project. This underscores what should have been obvious from the start: blanket “trust us” planning is not lawful environmental review.

Once again, the BLM tried to push through a massive project without meaningful site-specific review. The agency ignored public recommendations, failed to map where treatments would occur, and offered no real analysis of impacts to wilderness-quality lands, wildlife, and native ecosystems—despite the fact that a nearly identical Hamlin Valley project had already been vacated after our previous appeal and the agency had committed to more thorough analysis on similar projects in the future.

This fight is not over. The BLM says it expects to publish a revised environmental assessment, which means it may try to merely paper over deficiencies in order to advance this large-scale cutting and burning proposal. We’ll let you know if and when that happens.

—Kya Marienfeld

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.