Editor,

I am a student at Central Wyoming College pursuing a degree in outdoor education and leadership. As part of my degree, I must complete an internship for a company or organization related to the outdoors. For my internship, I work with the Wyoming Wildlife Federation (the Federation), focusing mostly on a public land management campaign in southwest Wyoming.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) revises their regional public lands management plans every 15–20 years for the land that they oversee. Currently, the BLM office in Rock Springs is revising their resource management plan (RMP) for the area, which consists of 3.6 million acres.

During my internship at the Federation, I am learning about how to organize a campaign and what resources are valuable to sportsmen and sportswomen. Hunters and anglers in Wyoming have identified six priority habitats in the Rock Springs area, which include Big Sandy, Jack Morrow Hills, the Red Desert to Hoback mule deer migration corridor, the Greater Little Mountain Area, Adobe Town, and the Devils Playground-Cedar Mountain area.

The area that I am most familiar with is the Jack Morrow Hills. The Oregon Buttes was one of the first places that I got to experience in Wyoming. Within the first month of moving here I had the pleasure of day hiking the Oregon Buttes — the landscape in this area is absolutely beautiful, and I highly recommend the hike.

I am writing today to share with you that the process of revising the RMP is happening, and your voice matters. When the BLM releases the draft of the RMP in late 2017/early 2018, I would urge the public to comment on the plan by sharing thoughts on the landmarks we care about in southwest Wyoming, what they mean to us personally, and why they should be managed for recreation, energy development, ATV use, grazing and/or for wildlife.

Though my time at CWC and my internship at the Federation, I have learned that the public process only works when the public actually engages. Please be active and share your thoughts about these landscapes and how they should be managed. If we don’t speak up now, we may not have another chance to be heard until the next RMP revision, which won’t be until around 2040. Don’t waste this opportunity to share how we want to see the area managed.

Josh King

Lander, WY