As the 100-day mark of President Donald Trump’s second administration nears, federal agencies are continuing to adapt to new directives and orders. 

The administration’s directives around public land management have led to a rise in uncertainty and concern from Colorado elected officials and community members — raising alarm over layoffs, threats of public land sales, and concerns that protections against development will be lifted from National Monuments and other managed land. 

Around 22 million acres of Colorado’s 66 million acres is public land owned and managed by the federal government. The Bureau of Land Management manages 8.3 million acres of public lands in Colorado and 27 million acres of federal mineral estate. The U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service also manage portions of this public land.  

On Wednesday, April 2, Doug Vilsack, the Bureau of Land Management director in Colorado, provided the agency’s three Colorado resource advisory councils insight into how it is adapting and complying with the direction and orders of the Trump administration. The bureau’s regional councils are each comprised of 15 citizens, who advise and provide recommendations on the agency’s initiatives and policies. 

“On the executive order side of things, there’s been a huge focus in this incoming administration on the work of the (Bureau of Land Management),” Vilsack said.  “I think that’s exciting for a lot of our folks on the ground to see that focus.”

Vilsack said Trump’s executive orders have honed in on three “buckets” of policy direction related to the Bureau of Land Management’s work: energy, timber, and oil and gas. Each was targeted in some way by executive and secretarial orders to increase domesticproduction. 

So far, the Colorado bureau has been reviewing and evaluating how it will implement executive orders to “unleash” American energy, declare a national energy emergency, immediately expand domestic timber production, address the threat of national security from timber imports, and increase domestic mineral production. 

 “We are spending a lot of time working at the headquarters level and also at the state office and field level right now considering our program, considering our staffing needs for increasing energy production,” Vilsack said. “And, as we always do here at BLM Colorado, considering how we find that balance between resource and mineral production and making sure that we’re doing those in the right places and at the right time.” 

While the bureau headquarters leads the effort to coordinate actions based on the executive orders, Vilsack reported that the Colorado division was making similar evaluations to understand the programmatic impacts and staffing needs of implementing the orders on timber and mineral production. 

According to Vilsack, the Colorado division of the Bureau of Land Management is well-positioned to adapt to these orders and other policy directives the agency is receiving. 

“We’ve also seen a direction to (Bureau of Land Management) states to continue focusing on a lot of the things that we’ve talked about in the past,” Vilsack added. He listed timber resources and wildfire risk reduction, wild horses, outdoor recreation and user experience, energy and mineral (extraction, and shared conservation stewardship as some of these focus areas.  

“This has been a swift transition, but I think we really set out good goals at the beginning of the year that are folding in well with some of these strategies that we’re seeing coming down,” Vilsack said. “We’re pointed in the right direction.”

The 10 priorities set by the Colorado bureau include “prioritize collaboration, tell our story here in Colorado, support agriculture and healthy lands, implement the Colorado model for wild horse management, advance responsible mineral and energy production, focus on our tribal relationships and land and reality work, our outdoor recreation program, wildlife habitat, and our organization and budget,” he added. 

Staffing concerns

The evaluation of staffing needs comes at a time when federal agencies are working to comply with Trump’s workforce optimization order and the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk. The order directs all federal agencies to eliminate “waste, bloat and insularity.”

Already, this order led to the firing of tens of thousands of “probationary” employees — which includes recent hires or those starting new roles. In March, these cuts were challenged and reversed by a federal judge in Maryland. The judge ordered the terminated  employees to be reinstated. 

According to a New York Times tracker of these workforce cuts, the Department of the Interior is confirmed to have cut 1,880 employees, or about 3% of its workforce. It reported that of these, 450 were back at work, and most have been reinstated and put on administrative leave.

Now, these federal agencies are directed to restructure to “better serve Americans” under the president’s order. 

During public comment, staff members of Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper addressed the BLM’s resource advisory committees and spoke to the concerns the senators had over the workforce cuts so far. John Whitney, the regional director of Bennet’s Durango office, reported the next phase of cuts could lead federal agencies to lay off anywhere between 15% to 60% of their workforce. 

“Every agency will be different,” Whitney said. “That would really cut deep, especially if you get to 40, 50 percent, we might not recognize some of these public land agencies that we are so dependent on and need for fighting fires and all the other important things they do. So we’ll monitor that process closely and fight back on anything that is inappropriate.” 

Vilsack said the Colorado Bureau of Land Management did not have “any clear direction yet” on what these cuts could mean for the bureau and the Department of the Interior, but that they were working to prove the value of its Colorado workforce.

“Every person we hired for a reason and every person that leaves — either for retirement or for some other reason — has an impact on the ground. We are a very lean organization,” Vilsack said. “The main work that we’re doing at our level is just making the case that we do need our people, that every person is critical.”

​​In Colorado, Vilsack said the loss of one person at a field office could be the difference “between any grazing permits being renewed, between critical mineral projects moving forward, oil and gas projects moving forward.”

“At this point in time, we’re waiting for guidance and making the case that our folks matter, particularly to all the priorities of the administration,” Vilsack said.