EDITORIAL: Move the BLM’s headquarters to Nevada

The Bureau of Land Management employs more than 11,500 workers and is charged with managing nearly 250 million acres of public land — more than 12 percent of the country. The vast majority of that property sits in a dozen Western states, including Nevada, where the government controls 85 percent of the landmass, more than in any other state.

So why are the great majority of BLM officials housed in a headquarters less than a mile from the Potomac in Washington, D.C., thousands of miles from the action?

That’s a question Congress and the Trump administration may soon ponder, as two recent bills propose moving the BLM’s headquarters out of the nation’s capital and into the heart of the American West at a yet-to-be-determined location. The proposals dovetail nicely with recent comments from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has embraced such a move.

“You’re dealing with an agency that basically has no business in Washington, D.C.,” said Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who has sponsored a measure in the upper chamber to house the BLM in any one of 12 Western states, including Nevada. Republican congressman Scott Tipton of Colorado has offered similar legislation in the House and has three Democratic co-sponsors, The Associated Press reported this week.

The move is long overdue. Tensions between rural Westerners and federal land managers have waxed and waned for decades, with the Cliven Bundy controversy being their latest incarnation. The roots of these conflicts are many and varied, but the fact that many Westerners who live and work on or near public lands view the far-removed federal bureaucracy as arrogant and detached from the region’s realities is obviously a contributing factor.

Bringing more agency officials to the region they manage would go a long way toward fostering a mutual respect and better understanding among ranchers, conservationists and federal land managers alike.

Mr. Zinke told the Review-Journal in December that his mission was to “work with local communities and to be better neighbors.” Getting his BLM management team out in the field would help.

In the meantime, this should be one idea on which members of Nevada’s congressional delegation can come together. In the House, Democratic Reps. Dina Titus, Ruben Kihuen and Jacky Rosen, along with GOP Rep. Mark Amodei, should sign on to Rep. Tipton’s bill. Sen. Dean Heller, a Republican, and Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, should do the same with Sen. Gardner’s proposal.

In addition, all of them should aggressively make the case that Nevada, with the highest percentage of federal land in the nation, would be an obvious location for any new BLM headquarters.

A previous version of this editorial misnamed Sen. Cory Gardner.