Court ruling leads to BLM policy change on corner crossings

A federal judge’s May ruling that hunters in Wyoming who crossed from one corner of public land to another did not trespass on adjacent private lands sent a distinct message to the Bureau of Land Management’s national legal team.

“Our solicitors think it’s pretty clear,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, director of the BLM and a Montana resident. “We’re taking that ruling quite seriously and making sure that our state directors are implementing it.”

Stone-Manning has been touring parts of north-central Montana this past week and paused to answer questions on a variety of BLM-related topics during a stop in Havre.

As director, she leads an agency of more than 10,000 employees, about 600 of which work full time under the aegis of the Montana-Dakotas Office.

Her response to a question about the corner-crossing case is relevant because the BLM oversees management of 70% of the 8.3 million acres onXmaps has identified as public lands “corner-locked,” or only accessible by stepping from one corner of public land to the other.

The other largest chunk of corner-locked public lands belong to states, which onXmaps calculated at 26%.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl in Wyoming dismissed ranch owner Fredric Eshelman’s lawsuit that sought $7 million in damages from four Missouri hunters who climbed over fences at a corner in Wyoming in 2020 and 2021 to hunt on public land. Eshelman has filed notice that he will appeal the ruling.

“By insisting that corner crossing was trespassing, Eshelman essentially had exclusive access to some 6,000 acres of public land for his own hunting and other excursions,” WyoFile.com reported.

Following the judge’s ruling, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks issued a news release saying that corner crossing is “unlawful” in Montana and that anyone attempting to corner cross should ask permission from adjoining landowners. A University of Montana law professor questioned the basis for FWP’s claim referring to established case law.

Bison grazing

Stone-Manning’s visit to the region comes as Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte’s administration still awaits a ruling from the Interior Board of Land Appeals.

Late last year, the state asked the board for a stay of BLM’s decision to allow a switch from cattle to bison grazing on 63,500 acres of federal land in Phillips County – part of a grazing lease awarded to the nonprofit group American Prairie when it bought adjacent ranches.

A decision from the board could come by this fall.

“That process will be that process,” Stone-Manning said. “We stand by the decision. When our permittees come to us and ask us to work with them for outcomes on the landscape, we do it. It doesn’t matter who the permittee is.”

Stone-Manning said she has no knowledge regarding the ruling but said the sometimes heated rhetoric surrounding the issue is “unfortunate” and a view held by a minority.

“I think that the work – the show-me-don’t-tell-me rule, right? – the work we’re going to do on this restoration landscape to create better value for wildlife habitat, better value for our permittees, will speak for itself,” she said.

Agency goals

As director, Stone-Manning has had to deal with the decisions made by the previous director, David Bernhardt, who relocated the agency’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, under the Trump administration.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland moved the national headquarters back to Washington, D.C., but the Bernhardt decision to relocate resulted in the loss of almost 300 veteran BLM employees.

“It’s been hard,” Stone-Manning said. “One of my priorities is rebuilding the agency, and building it into the bureau that the bureau itself deserves, the American people deserve and most importantly the public lands deserve.”

The move to Colorado – endorsed by current Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., when he was Interior Secretary – was reportedly based on relocating the agency’s headquarters closer to the customers it serves out west.

Yet Stone-Manning said 97% of BLM’s staff already lives and works in the West.

When those 300 positions had to be filled, BLM staff in the West were called up to fill the vacancies, creating a “domino effect,” Stone-Manning said.

“Now we’re solving for vacancies in places that were in fact closer to the field, and all that happened as the pandemic descended on us,” she added. “Tell your readers we’re hiring.”

Some of the more recent staff hired in the Montana-Dakotas office include former Forest Service employees who touted the BLM as a place more conducive to advancement.

Last August the new BLM state director, Sonya Germann, moved over from the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation where she had worked as the state forester. Germann is a Montana native.

Vacancies were evident at the BLM’s Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. The agency has had a hard time staffing its visitor center in Fort Benton and this summer hired only one of 10 river rangers who patrol the monument.

“It’s this really interesting conflagration of events: the move, the pandemic and the pandemic spiking housing prices across the West. It’s a lot to sort through,” Stone-Manning said.

“But we’re trending in the right direction on our vacancy rate,” which has settled at 23% over the last four months.

Female leads

Stone-Manning and Germann aren’t the only Montana representatives in the Department of the Interior. Martha Williams – former director of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks – is serving as the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“It’s a remarkable privilege,” Stone-Manning said. “Or as I say to my colleague Martha, ‘It is an outrageous privilege’ to be able to do this work on behalf of the American people.

“And I think that what we have learned in Montana and can bring to bear to the national work is really important and really serves us well.”

Stone-Manning calledHaaland, a 35th-generation New Mexican of the Pueblo of Laguna, a remarkable person to work for.

Haaland is the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary for a U.S. president.

“She has a remarkable clarity and vision about her, and she is fearless,” Stone-Manning said. “She carries gratitude into every meeting I’ve been in with her, which has been a lesson for me. We all work really hard and really fast, and it’s really rare for people to remember to say ‘thank you,’ and she does in every single meeting.”

Looking forward, Stone-Manning said she sees two challenges as the largest looming for BLM.

“A changing landscape, that’s changing quickly, and the capacity to keep up to that changing landscape,” she said. “My focus, and what I’m asking of my colleagues, is to manage for landscape health in everything we do.

“It is the narrative thread of all our work, even our partnership work. It is our obligation to the future to manage for landscape health today to leave as many options on the table as possible.”

The BLM has often faced criticism from environmental groups for its management of public lands, including oversight of cattle grazing and oil and gas leasing.

Last week, several groups released a statement critical of the agency’s move to allow conservation leasing, or leasing of public lands for conservation purposes.

In April BLM released a rule to manage public lands “in a manner that will protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resources, and archeological values.”

While the environmental groups in general like the idea, they question if BLM is capable of implementing the action.

Josh Osher, public policy director for Western Watersheds Project, said in a statement, “If the BLM doesn’t address the terrible ecological impacts from millions of cows and sheep and a livestock industry that is given free rein on BLM ‘managed’ lands, this rule and all the promises of conservation won’t amount to anything.

“Grazing on public lands is not restoration, nor is it complementary or compatible with conservation at anywhere near the present livestock densities.”