More than 3 million acres of public lands in southeastern Oregon are poised for enhanced management by the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM is seeking public comment on a draft Environmental Impact Statement released last week to amend the 2003 Lakeview Resource Management Plan for Lake and Harney counties.

Renee Patrick, a small-business owner, hiker, and steward of the Oregon Desert Trail, said the area needs more TLC as a gateway to the local outback.

"Not only to recreation but to the sagebrush steppe habitat," Patrick urged. "So the ecosystem and the animals that live there and the plants -- and especially the dark night sky -- now that it's part of the dark night sky sanctuary."

The Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary is the largest dark sky reserve in the world. The proposed plan promises to deliver management balancing wildlife conservation, watersheds and wild lands with continued multiple use of public lands.

The BLM's amendment will consider a wide range of oversight options for lands with wilderness characteristics, grazing and outdoor recreation, including off-highway vehicle use.

Karl Findling, owner of Oregon Pack Works in Bend, said Lake County is one of the fastest-warming counties in the country and is taking the brunt of climate change.

"That landscape is in some dire need of being protected and having some alternate uses," Findling argued. "So much in the desert needs an extra hand, and the federal government plays a part in that."

Findling noted Oregon's southeastern landscapes are vast and dramatic.

"They are havens for pronghorn and sage-grouse," Findling pointed out. "As we know, sage-grouse are in decline -- about 80% since I was born -- so there's some real diversity out there that also is home to bighorn sheep."

During the 90-day comment period, the BLM plans to host an in-person public meeting in Lakeview and two virtual public meetings to answer questions about the plan.

As the Environmental Protection Agency scales back enforcement because of staff shortages and new federal rollbacks, concerns are growing in Michigan and across the country about who will hold polluters accountable.

Michigan, with more than 11,000 inland lakes and access to four Great Lakes holding 90% of the nation's freshwater, faces challenges as EPA budget cuts reduce enforcement by nearly 20% and eliminate more than 200 staff.

Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, said in a recent webinar that his organization commissions polling and focus groups every two years on clean-water issues in the Great Lakes.

"And it's an 85% issue. It's almost as if, when you push people and you say, 'How much should we do to protect the Great Lakes and restore them?' he asked, "It's like, whatever it costs, you do it."

Supporters of EPA cuts, especially in energy, manufacturing and agriculture, contend strict environmental rules are too costly for businesses. In late 2024, more than 100 industry groups urged then-President-elect Donald Trump to roll back regulations they said were "strangling" the economy.

Partisanship continues to shape the debate over environmental laws, with lawmakers often split along party lines when it comes to regulations.

David Uhlmann, a former EPA official and environmental law attorney, stressed in the webinar the need to take politics out of environmental protection.

"The environmental laws require EPA working with the state to promote clean air, healthy rivers and streams, to make sure that we're living in communities free of toxic waste," he said. "Those laws apply regardless of who the president is."

In Fiscal Year 2024, the EPA's enacted budget was more than $9 billion, with a workforce of more than 15,000 employees.


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Washington lawmakers have created a new Prescribed Burn Liability Fund to help make controlled burns less risky on public, private and tribal lands across the state.

Advocates said low-intensity fires, which clear dead vegetation and small trees, are among the best tools to reduce wildfire severity but fears of runaway fires have limited their use.

Cody Desautel, executive director of the Colville Tribes, helped write the bill to create the fund. He said although there is risk, data from the Forest Service and other agencies show controlled burns are very safe.

"They pull off 99.84% of their burns within prescription within the planned footprint," Desautel pointed out. "The risk of it is really low but for the rare occurrences you see it, the cost can be fairly high."

Desautel noted a century of fire suppression has increased burnable materials in forests, causing more intense wildfires.

Indigenous people have practiced controlled burns for millennia, Desautel added, to both prevent fires and promote plant growth. To reduce wildfire damage, he argued the state needs a new approach.

"We're going to have to shift our perspective, how we deal with fire, how we create fire resilience," Desautel urged. "It has to be suppression in combination with fuels and forest health treatments that makes fires easier to manage."

Rep. Adam Bernbaum, D-Port Angeles, sponsored the bill to create the liability fund. He said when fires are bigger and harder to control, along with loss of life and property, it can also make things more expensive for communities living close to forest land.

"The rising property insurance rates there make it challenging for low-income, middle-income people across the state," Bernbaum observed.

Bernbaum hopes the new policy will help bring down insurance rates for homeowners and encourage more people to get certified to implement prescribed burns. He added the fund should be up and running by the beginning of 2026.


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The sale of public lands along with a rollback of protections for national monuments is back on the table now that Republicans control both houses of Congress.

During his first term, President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to reduce the size of national monuments in Utah and Nevada. The Washington Post set off alarm bells last month after it reported that New Mexico's Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks is among the six national monuments the Trump administration is considering for energy development.

Mark Allison, executive director of New Mexico Wild, said it is a complicated issue.

"We see attempts through the courts, the House rules process, through budget reconciliation and even federal legislation where they're trying to either turn what are public lands over to states or actually directly privatize them and sell them off to the highest bidder," he explained.

That came to pass last week when the House Natural Resources Committee passed legislation to sell or transfer 460,000 acres of federal lands in Nevada and Utah to local governments or private entities.

In the 2025 State of the Rockies survey, 72% of residents polled in eight Western states said they would prefer their member of Congress emphasize protecting clean air, water and wildlife habitat while boosting outdoor recreation over maximizing the amount of public land used for oil and gas drilling.

That was a 2% increase from the year before. But Allison fears public sentiment consistently expressed in the annual Colorado College poll could be ignored.

"If this comes, we want to be ready to have just an overwhelming and immediate response to tell the administration that we stand by our monuments in New Mexico and don't want to see them harmed," he added.

In the final days of his administration, President Joe Biden designated more than 600,000 acres of desert east of California's Coachella Valley as the Chuckwalla National Monument. But a Texas-based group has filed a lawsuit to stop the designation, arguing the president overstepped his authority.


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