White House reverses Trump move of land agency

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is moving the national headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 245 million acres in Western states, back to the nation’s capital after two years in Colorado.

The land management agency lost nearly 300 employees to retirement or resignation after

President Donald Trump’s administration moved its headquarters to Grand Junction, Colo., in 2019.

The bureau has broad influence over energy development and agriculture in the West, managing public lands for uses ranging from fossil fuel extraction, renewable power development and grazing to recreation and wilderness. Its staffing has remained in turmoil after four years without a confirmed director.

The agency’s space in Grand Junction will become its western headquarters, Haaland said. The Grand Junction office will reinforce Western perspectives in decision-making and “have an important role to play in the bureau’s clean energy, outdoor recreation, conservation, and scientific missions,” the Interior Department said in a statement.

“There’s no doubt that the BLM should have a leadership presence in Washington, D.C. — like all the other land management agencies — to ensure that it has access to the policy, budget and decision-making levers to best carry out its mission,” Haaland said.

“The past several years have been incredibly disruptive to the organization, to our public servants and to their families,” Haaland said, referring to actions by her predecessors, Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, to move the BLM to rural Colorado, sparking criticism that the Trump administration intended to gut the agency that oversees vast tracts of public lands in the West.