BLM proposes new protected area

The Bureau of Land Management's new land use management plan could establish a new protected ar-ea in Crook County.

The Little Missouri Antelope Trap, in the northwest corner of the county, is not a location that will be immediately familiar to most residents.

In two of the proposed alternatives within the draft of the plan, however, it would become an "area of critical environmental concern" (ACEC).

"In the interior, there are a series of wooden juniper drive-line structures and there is a physical antelope trap where Native American Indian tribes came to hunt for significant periods of time across the land-scape," says Chad Krause, Field Manager for the BLM's Newcastle Field Office.

It's not a site that would be obvious to the unfamiliar eye, he says. It's old and weathered down and the remains are fairly limited.

"However, [our interpretation of] the information that we've received from tribes is that it's not just those physical trap features that are of importance. There are sites surrounding it," he says.

These include, for example, habitation and ceremonial sites of significance and the landscape itself.

ACECs can be controversial. On the one hand, they preserve a piece of culture or history for the benefit of current and future generations; on the other, they can block off access to recreationists, mineral de-velopers and agriculture.

Understandably, the county's eyes were quickly drawn to the proposal. Consultant Jeanne Whalen has been looking to find out more about the site and what exactly its protection would entail.

"No-one has ever heard of this antelope trap, so why is it important now?" she asks.

At a public meeting early on in the planning process, she says, "There were people who live up that way who said there's nothing there any more. Unless you know what you're looking for, you're not going to be able to find anything."

The county commissioners brought up concerns about the proposal in its first comment letter.

For example, says Whalen, "How are they going to manage this? Who is going to monitor this? Are they going to go up there each year and see if anyone has taken anything – what good would that do?"

And if it does receive an ACEC designation, how long would it last?

"How long do you preserve this stuff?" she asks. With so little there already, will the BLM be on the hook to continue preserving the site in a hundred years, when nothing at all remains?

What is an ACEC?

An ACEC, Krause says, is "An area of land on the map that has some sort of significant resource value that may require some special management for its protection."

Per the Federal Lands Management Act of 1976, land management plans are the process through which they are designated.

"I do think there is maybe a misunderstanding of them – a perspective that if something is designated as an area of critical environmental concern then it's shut off to the public and their use," he says.

"That's not necessarily the case. We have the area identified on the map and the management is intend-ed to protect the resources that may be out there."

There's only one existing ACEC in the management area overseen by the Newcastle Field Office. The cur-rent plan, which was approved in 1999, includes Whoopup Canyon east of Newcastle.

"It has petroglyphs that are around 11,000 years old," Krause says.

The plan update proposes to maintain the ACEC designation for the site. Two of the alternatives, says Krause, include an expansion to the site.

Not just any area can be proposed. A site must meet a specific set of criteria regarding the importance of the site and its relevance.

"During public scoping, we did get a proposal from the public for an additional area, which did not meet the...criteria so it was not carried forward," Krause says.

It's not as difficult as it might seem to remove an ACEC designation. In fact, Krause says, this can be done through the same process as it was created in the first place.

During this planning period, for instance, the Whoopup Canyon site was reevaluated.

"We essentially worked through the relevance and importance criteria and the relative importance that it had in the 1990s still exists today, so we carried it forward," he says.

What Would Change?

"We've proposed a number of draft alternatives for the management of [the site] and obviously now we're to the public input phase, where the public's input will weigh in on how it should be managed," Krause says. "We do have a preferred, balanced alternative, which is supposed to be sort of a middle-of-the-road of resource use and protection."

Alternative B, which has the most emphasis on conservation, has the most protections to the biggest area, with a boundary of 9500 acres.

"Through the process, in general we receive feedback through the public scoping process, in particular from Crook County itself, which was generally opposed to designations that would provide any sort of limitation on use of the land," Krause says.

"Additionally, the perspective was that our balanced alternative, which was supposed to be middle-of-the-road, had the same acreage size as the protective. We took that under consideration, went back and, based upon a University of Wyoming study, we refined that boundary down to the trap and direct-ly associated features around it."

This reduced the acreage to 5300 acres within the preferred alternative.

Under the resource-themed alternative, on the other hand, the ACEC is not proposed at all.

"So there's a whole suite of things for the public to comment on," Krause says.

Designating a zone as an ACEC can severely restrict how it's used but, in this case, Krause says it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference to the people who already use it. The proposed area has public access via the Little Missouri Road and is a popular hunting area for – unsurprisingly – antelope.

"In terms of travel management, the preferred alternative would be limited to the existing roads and trails out there," he says.

This would be the same as the current management of the acreage.

"It doesn't have any changes or impacts to livestock grazing operations, those would continue as is," he says. "It is proposed as a right-of-way avoidance area. What that means is we would try to route pro-posals for transmission lines, power lines and pipelines around that area."

Perhaps the biggest change would be to mineral development possibilities in the future.

"One notable change between our current and draft management is that we have proposed it would be open for fluid mineral lease, which is oil and gas development, but under a category called 'no surface occupancy', which means that you would have to develop from off of the lease, such as horizontal drill-ing," Krause says.

One of the county's concerns about the designation, says Whalen, was its impact on fire management. Some ACEC designations restrict air space or do not allow firefighting within their borders.

In this case, says Krause, firefighting access shouldn't be a problem.

"There's nothing in the plan here that would limit fire management under any of the alternatives. Our intention would be to suppress fire in that landscape, there's no limitations on flight or retardant use," he says.

Obviously, there would be preferences, he adds. It would be better for the site if dozer lines are dug on existing roads, for example, but that's already indicated in the current management plan.

Why Now?

When the Newcastle Field Office last updated its plan in 1999, the antelope trap was not really on its radar. Since then, says Krause, there have been more than 20 years of consultation with local tribes.

"The area surrounding the Black Hills is rich in cultural resources. Many of those cultural resources are on BLM-managed lands and we would be managing those in the same way as we are managing this [ante-lope trap] right now," he says.

"We do have responsibilities under the National Historic Preservation Act to attempt to avoid adverse effects to those. Existing management is that we recognize the importance of cultural resources and attempt to avoid adverse effects to them."

What made this site stand out, he says, was partly the information gathered from the tribes and partly the manageability of the location.

"It's a good-sized piece of BLM public land that is accessible. If similar features existed on [a BLM plot of limited size], it would not be as manageable," he explains.

What Will Happen to the Site?

Will the BLM leave the trap exactly as it is or develop it to some degree?

There are pros and cons to each approach, agree Whalen and Krause.

"These special areas on public lands, do you tell people about them or do you just chart them and keep them to yourself so people don't go in there and vandalize them?" Whalen says.

"There's been no protection there but, talking to the landowners out there, everybody knows about it and they leave it alone."

Krause notes that members of the public who are aware of the site have pointed out that developing it could have unintended consequences.

"It sort of draws attention," he says. "I don't know whether there's a consensus opinion on whether you develop and try to interpret or just let be."

If there's nothing much to see, says Whalen, perhaps there are other alternatives. A display at the mu-seum, for example.

"Why not have an interpretive sign to tell people what happened on the site? It could have BLM explain what tribes used it over what time period – make it a learning experience," she says.

"I believe the commissioners added that to their first letter of content."

Whether the site will be developed in any way is a question that delves deeper into the details than the planning process allows for.

The plan itself is, "Really broad scale, it just allocates lands, so things like interpretation and signs are a little more detailed than we're getting to in this effort," Krause says.

Public Involvement

A series of public meetings that saw BLM staff visit Sundance for an afternoon last week were an oppor-tunity to help get the public to the information they need to become involved in the comment process.

One final meeting will be taking place virtually on January 23 from 5 to 7 p.m .; a link will be available on the project website at https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2013064/510.

It's a big plan, says Krause, but he encourages the public to take a look and recommends narrowing things down according to your areas of interest.

"Certainly it's a lot of information to sift through, but I think if there's a particular focus area, whether it be recreation, livestock grazing, maybe fluid mineral development, you can get to those sections and weigh the management alternatives relatively simply," he says.

This won't be the public's last chance to help directly, Krause says. Following this comment period, ad-justments will be made to the plan, cooperating agencies and the new presidential administration will be consulted.

Another opportunity to weigh in will take place following this part of the process. However, Krause says, the BLM would love to see as much public involvement as possible at this stage, to help shape the direc-tion in which the draft moves.

What is an antelope trap?

Similar in concept to a buffalo jump, Native Americans used antelope traps to corral and trap large num-bers of the animals. One of the more famous examples is the Bridger Antelope Trap in Sweetwater Coun-ty, which is believed to have been constructed in the late prehistoric and early historic period. Historians believe that the goal of the traps was to drive the herd into the entrance, then toward the trap enclosure made of stacked wood, taking advantage of the fact that pronghorn generally do not attempt to jump barriers. The antelope were then driven until exhaustion and killed by hunters.