The bill redesignates specific Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in Wyoming as five wilderness areas and creates a new Dubois Badlands National Conservation Area, a Dubois Motorized Recreation Area, and several Special Management Areas (SMAs). It removes remaining wilderness-study-area protections for dozens of named WSAs and prescribes how the released lands and new designations will be managed.
Practically, the statute mixes permanent conservation with tightly scoped exceptions: it withdraws many parcels from public-land disposals and mining laws but allows oil and gas leasing under a strict ‘directional drilling/no surface occupancy’ rule, and it expressly prohibits new wind or solar leases and certain transmission in specific areas. The bill also requires multiple travel-management plans, a 180-day fire-management plan for the new wilderness units, and county-level studies and consultation mechanisms — all of which will reallocate management workload at the BLM and shape future recreation, grazing, and energy projects in Wyoming.
At a Glance
What It Does
Designates approximately five new wilderness areas and several Special Management Areas, establishes the Dubois Badlands National Conservation Area and a Dubois Motorized Recreation Area, and releases numerous wilderness study areas from section 603(c) of FLPMA. It sets withdrawals from public-land disposal and mining laws while authorizing conditional oil-and-gas leases accessed only by directional drilling and forbids new wind/solar leasing in targeted areas.
Who It Affects
The Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service for administration; energy developers (particularly renewables and oil/gas operators seeking surface access); grazing permit holders; motorized-recreation users and outfitter businesses; and county governments tasked with collaboration and studies.
Why It Matters
The bill redraws legal constraints on development and recreation in dozens of Wyoming parcels, creating a legal template that prioritizes conservation and motorized recreation in different places while channeling any fossil-fuel extraction into technically complex, subsurface-only arrangements. That combination alters project feasibility, permitting strategy, and BLM resource-allocation priorities.
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What This Bill Actually Does
Section 3 establishes five new wilderness areas administered by the BLM: Encampment River Canyon, Prospect Mountain, Upper Sweetwater Canyon, Lower Sweetwater Canyon, and Bobcat Draw, each with explicit acreage and mapped boundaries and with specific short-distance exclusions around roads and particular legal routes. The designations follow the Wilderness Act framework but include precise mapped cutouts and language to preserve preexisting motorized routes where noted.
Section 4 sets out administration rules: the Secretary must manage the new units under the Wilderness Act but may take necessary actions for fire, disease, and insect control. A fire-management plan is due within 180 days to coordinate with Wyoming Forestry Division and counties and to protect adjacent lands.
Grazing that exists on enactment remains authorized and subject to established Wilderness Act grazing rules and Interior Department guidance. The section also confirms that no buffer zone is created merely because outside activities are visible or audible from within a wilderness area.Section 5 removes section 603(c) protections from listed portions of multiple wilderness study areas that the bill does not convert to wilderness, freeing those lands for management under FLPMA and applicable land-use plans.
The bill then prescribes distinct management treatments for several released parcels: Copper Mountain and Bobcat Draw permit oil-and-gas leasing only via directional drilling from outside the parcel with an absolute ban on surface occupancy; Dubois Badlands released land will be used to form a new National Conservation Area with motorized-access limits and a full withdrawal from most public-land dispositions; and Bobcat Draw released land must receive a travel-management plan within two years and is withdrawn from disposal, subject to narrow oil-and-gas exceptions.Sections 6 and 7 create the Dubois Badlands National Conservation Area (about 4,446 acres) and a 368-acre Dubois Motorized Recreation Area. The NCA is managed to protect scenic, cultural, wildlife, and recreational resources and restricts motorized use to existing roads and Secretary-designated routes; administrative and emergency uses are allowed.
For the Recreation Area, the Secretary must build a western boundary fence on federal land west of North Mountain View Road and adopt a travel-management plan to coordinate off-road vehicle use.Section 8 establishes multiple Special Management Areas across Wyoming (Bennett Mountains, Black Cat, Sweetwater Rocks, Fortification Creek, Fraker Mountain, North Fork, Cedar Mountain, and others), each governed by a common rule-set: no new permanent roads, motorized use limited to existing and designated routes (except for narrowly enumerated administrative or land-health activities), grazing to continue under applicable law, prohibition on commercial timber harvesting in many SMAs, travel-management plans due within two years, and withdrawals from public-land disposals and mining laws with a consistent directional-drilling/no-surface-occupancy exception for oil and gas. Some SMAs also bar wind/solar leasing or overhead transmission and authorize certain land exchanges only if they do not reduce Federal land holdings.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill designates five wilderness areas totaling roughly 20,412 acres across named mapped parcels, each with precise exclusions for roads and small private holdings.
The Secretary must adopt a fire-management plan for the new wilderness areas within 180 days of enactment and must coordinate with the Wyoming Forestry Division and affected counties.
Copper Mountain and Bobcat Draw released lands may receive oil-and-gas leases only if they are accessed by directional drilling from outside the parcel and forbid any surface occupancy or disturbance on the released land.
The Dubois Badlands National Conservation Area is established at approximately 4,446.46 acres, withdrawn from public-land disposals and mineral leasing, and limits motorized vehicles to existing roads or Secretary-designated routes.
For multiple Special Management Areas and the Bobcat Draw release, the Secretary must complete travel-management plans within two years that identify existing roads/trails, designate which are open to motorized/mechanized use, prohibit new motorized road construction, and permit continued nonmotorized trails.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Designation and mapped boundaries for five wilderness areas
This section converts specified BLM parcels into wilderness status under the Wilderness Act, naming each unit and giving acreage and dated map references. It also carves out narrowly defined excluded strips—typically 100 feet from road centerlines—and preserves any legal routes with authorized motorized use that exist on enactment. For practitioners, the operative detail is that mapped boundaries plus textual road exclusions govern where motorized access remains lawful despite the wilderness label.
Administrative rules: fire plans, grazing, and no buffer-zone creation
Section 4 directs the Secretary to manage units under the Wilderness Act but adds operational prescriptions: a fire-management plan within 180 days, coordination with the state and counties, and the retention of preexisting grazing under Wilderness Act rules and Interior Department guidelines. It also clarifies that visibility or audibility from inside a wilderness unit does not create legal limits on activities outside the boundary — a detail that reduces claims for implied ‘protective perimeters.'
Release of multiple wilderness study areas and parcel-specific management
Congress finds that specific WSAs have been adequately studied and lifts FLPMA section 603(c) protections on portions not designated as wilderness, returning them to ordinary BLM management. The section then prescribes bespoke rules: Copper Mountain and Bobcat Draw released tracts can host oil and gas only via directional-drilling leases without surface occupancy; Dubois Badlands released land will form an NCA and follow statutory NCA constraints; Bobcat Draw also requires a travel-management plan and, apart from narrow oil-and-gas exceptions, is withdrawn from public-land disposals and mining claims.
Dubois Badlands National Conservation Area established and motorized-use limits
This creates a roughly 4,446-acre NCA with a statutory purpose to conserve ecological, cultural, and recreational values. The Secretary must manage permitted uses to further that purpose, allow motorized vehicles only on existing or Secretary-designated roads, permit administrative and emergency exceptions, and apply withdrawals barring most disposals, mining claims, and leasing — a configuration that prioritizes preservation but allows controlled public access.
Dubois Motorized Recreation Area: fence and travel plan
The Recreation Area (about 368 acres) requires the Secretary to authorize construction of a fence along its western boundary on federal land and then adopt a travel-management plan to coordinate off-road vehicle use. The fence plus the travel plan is the bill's mechanism to contain and manage concentrated motorized recreation in a defined unit rather than dispersing it across adjacent public lands.
Special Management Areas: common rules and targeted prohibitions
Section 8 sets up multiple SMAs, each administered to enhance scenic, habitat, and recreational values. Across SMAs the bill forbids new permanent roads, restricts motorized use to existing designated routes (with enumerated exceptions for administration, wildfire, range health, etc.), bans commercial timber harvest in many units, and requires travel-management plans within two years. It also withdraws SMAs from disposal/mining laws but consistently permits oil-and-gas leasing only when accessed by directional drilling and without surface disturbance; some SMAs additionally bar wind/solar rights-of-way and new overhead transmission.
Fremont County transfers, motorized-recreation study, and implementation team
The Secretary is directed to pursue land exchanges with the State for specific Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, subject to appropriation and legal requirements. The bill orders a study on special motorized-recreation areas in Fremont County and creates a Fremont County Implementation Team, whose membership includes the Secretary (or designee) and county appointees; the team is exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The team is an operational conduit for local input during implementation.
Studies for Hot Springs and Washakie Counties on motorized recreation
The Secretary must study the potential for new special motorized-recreation areas in Hot Springs and Washakie Counties, excluding lands already off-limits to motorized use. The studies must evaluate suitability, staging and camping needs, and include public input and coordination with state parks; reports are due to congressional committees within two years.
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Explore Environment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Motorized-recreation users and local outfitters — The bill creates a dedicated Dubois Motorized Recreation Area and requires travel-management plans that explicitly designate motorized routes, providing predictable places and infrastructure for off-highway-vehicle activity and related businesses.
- Local counties and tourism-dependent businesses — By authorizing specific recreation areas and committing to studies and a county implementation team, counties gain a formal voice in land-use decisions that can support tourism growth and local economic planning.
- Grazing permit holders with preexisting allotments — The statute preserves established grazing in wilderness units and requires grazing administration under existing federal grazing laws and Interior guidelines, reducing the risk of immediate permit elimination.
Who Bears the Cost
- Renewable-energy developers and transmission project sponsors — The bill expressly bars new wind or solar leases and prohibits certain overhead transmission and communications towers in specified parcels, narrowing development opportunities and raising siting complexity.
- Mineral claimants and mining interests — Extensive withdrawals from public-land disposals and mining laws across the new NCA, SMAs, and released parcels limit future mining and mineral entry, constraining potential exploration and extraction on those acres.
- BLM (and USFS for Black Cat) operational capacity — The law imposes multiple new deadlines (e.g., a 180-day fire plan, travel-management plans within two years, studies and reports) and prescriptive management duties that will require staff time, mapping, consultation, and potential rulemaking budgets not authorized in the text.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is balancing permanent, mapped conservation protections with localized access and economic concessions: the bill protects landscapes by withdrawing them from many forms of development while simultaneously accommodating motorized recreation and preserving a technically constrained route for oil-and-gas extraction—an arrangement that protects surface values at the potential cost of continued subsurface fossil-fuel use and increased management complexity.
The bill attempts a transactional approach: convert certain parcels to the strongest conservation status while simultaneously carving out adjacent or nearby areas for motorized recreation and conditional resource uses. That fragmented palette eases some local access and economic concerns, but it increases the complexity of on-the-ground management.
Officials will need to reconcile overlapping maps, reconcile where preexisting motorized routes intersect newly designated wilderness boundaries, and monitor compliance with strict no-surface-occupancy lease terms. Enforcement of subsurface-only oil-and-gas leases raises technical and monitoring questions: how will the BLM verify that directional wells have no incidental surface disturbance, and who bears remediation costs if surface impacts occur?
Another tension concerns energy policy and climate objectives. The statute erects explicit barriers to wind and solar development in several SMAs and the Copper Mountain release, while preserving a path for fossil fuel extraction via directionally drilled wells—an approach that safeguards scenic and recreational values but may lock in trade-offs between local land uses and broader decarbonization goals.
Finally, timelines and coordination obligations (180-day fire plan; two-year travel-management plans; county studies and reports) create immediate workload spikes. Because the bill ties many actions to map-based references and to “valid existing rights,” litigation risk will focus on map clarity, the scope of reserved rights, and the sufficiency of environmental analyses used in subsequent travel-plan or leasing decisions.
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