With hundreds of millions of acres
of federal land sprawled across a sparsely populated West, Bureau
of Land Management rangers often legally fill in for state and
county law officers. But last fall, when the BLM published “plain
English” regulations that detailed the agency’s existing authority
over gun use, drunken driving and other matters, some Westerners
got nervous.
“I am extremely concerned about the
separation of powers between the state and federal government,”
said Nevada Sen. Harry Reid. “These rules cross that line.”
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt got the
message: In early March he withdrew the
regulations.
BLM officials insist the revised
rules only restated authority the agency already has. “Our
intentions were good,” asserts JoLynn Worley, public affairs
officer for the Nevada BLM. “In this whole state there’s about 20
law enforcement rangers. This is not a grab for power here.”
Worley said people with “a general distrust of
government” simply misinterpreted many of the regulations. A
prohibition against shooting a firearm across a body of water
adjacent to a public road, for example, was mistakenly thought to
ban duck hunting, she says.
“People still can
take guns out to public lands,” Worley says. The BLM just wanted
something on the books so that “if someone is being dumb with a
gun, we can ask that person to stop.”
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Danielle Desruisseaux
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline BLM ditches law-enforcement rules.
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