WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senators John Barrasso and Senator Cynthia Lummis along with U.S. Representative Harriet Hageman, all R-Wyo., reintroduced legislation today that would resolve the management status of thousands of acres of federal public lands in seven counties in Wyoming.

The bill, which passed the U.S. Senate in December 2024, is the direct result of a collaborative process started under the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative (WPLI). The WPLI was created by the Wyoming County Commissioners Association in 2015 to seek locally driven solutions on the future of federal public lands that have been in management limbo for more than 30 years.

“For decades, hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in Wyoming has been locked up as Wilderness Study Areas. Locally driven processes like the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative (WPLI) give people in Wyoming the best chance to decide how to treat these lands,” said Barrasso. “Wyoming’s county commissioners, conservation leaders, and outdoor enthusiasts who participated in the WPLI process spent years carefully crafting this legislation. It strikes a balance between protecting the wild places that people in Wyoming love while expanding multiple-use areas that our state and our local economies depend on.”

“Wyoming’s Wilderness Study Areas have kept federal lands in limbo status for decades, dramatically limiting access for maintenance and other purposes,” said Lummis. “Our legislation is the result of input from local communities and stakeholders on how we can best manage these lands according to Wyoming’s values.”

“Our county commissioners have worked for years to require our federal agencies to properly classify the thousands of acres that have been stuck in administrative limbo, and this legislation is the product of a locally driven process to resolve decades of uncertainty on lands in Wyoming,” said Hageman.

Background

Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) are a special designation for lands that are managed to protect wilderness characteristics until Congress specifically designated them as Wilderness or directs the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to manage the area for multiple uses.

WSAs were intended to be temporary designations. These particular temporary designations have persisted for more than 30 years.

In 2015, the Wyoming County Commissioners Association (WCCA) initiated the WPLI to provide a framework for counties to discuss and resolve various public lands issues around the state. The process was intended to focus on resolving the status of the 45 Wilderness Study Areas around Wyoming. It allowed all 23 counties to “opt in/out” of the process based on suitability for their county and to determine the composition and rules of their committees.

As a result of the WPLI process, the following seven counties in Wyoming have submitted their recommendations that are included in the legislation: Campbell, Carbon, Fremont, Hot Springs, Johnson, Natrona and Washakie counties.

The legislation includes:

– 5 wilderness designations totaling 20,381 acres
– 3 designations of a “Special Management Area” totaling 27,711 acres
– 10 release and manage as multiple-use totaling 99,750 acres
– 2 policy directives

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