Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an organization dedicated to upholding environmental laws and duties, recommends the BLM be staffed at about 15,000 full-time employees; as of June 2022, the agency had less than 9,000. In 2010, the agency had 11,000 full-time employees.
“The BLM can’t play the hand they’ve been dealt,” Griggs said.
Now, he worries what the BLM’s proposed rule will do for the already bogged-down process of ranching in Nevada.
It’s a sentiment shared by at least some in the conservation field.
“They (BLM staff) don’t have the budget or people on the ground to do a whole lot of anything,” said Shaaron Netherton, a former BLM employee who now serves as executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness. She’s watched the BLM struggle to keep pace with the number of green energy permit applications rolling in. “I’m hopeful that the rule may help say ‘Whoa, we need to weigh the conservation pieces here with the constant pressure for development.’”
