SALT LAKE CITY — Juan Palma is state director of the most controversial federal agency in Utah, but isn't a controversial man at all.
Even the most strident critics of the Bureau of Land Management say Palma is a genuinely nice guy who listens, really listens, even when his detractors are wailing, beseeching and even excoriating him for all that the BLM is, or is not.
"Juan's job has put him in the crucible of contentious public land issues and he has addressed those issues in a civil, thoughtful way," said Alan Matheson, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert's environmental adviser. "While I am sure no one agrees with all of Juan's decisions, I am also sure that most respect him."
Palma is leaving the agency March 6, retiring after 29 years of employment with the federal government and a decade with the BLM.
He will be 60 on March 1, and realized age was catching up with him when he reminded himself that his "baby," after all, is a 28-year-old man.
Palma tasted the dust of harvest as a young migrant farm worker, toiling alongside his family and traveling from state to state as a young boy.
His first public lands management job was as a seasonal clerk typist. Now, as head of the BLM in Utah, he controls 23 million acres, more land than the Utah governor oversees. The last three decades in public lands management have been a skyrocket ride.
Into the fire
In July of 2010, Palma stepped into the fray — no — launched into the contentious fray that exemplifies federal land management in Utah.
The full effects of Obama's first term in office were beginning to rain on the state's conservative political landscape with abrupt reversals of some actions under the Bush administration, and Utah politicians were awash in anger.
Seventeen months earlier, then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rescinded 77 controversial leases in Utah that were part of the notorious oil and gas auction hijacked by environmental activist Timothy DeChristopher, and ordered an exhaustive, on-the-ground review of the land offered up for potential oil and gas leasing.
Salazar also closed a loophole called "categorical exclusions" used for expediting oil and gas development and, within six months of Palma landing at the BLM, Salazar also implemented a new order directing an inventory of lands for their wilderness values.
In a state with so much land in federal control, in a state still smarting from the surprise move by President Bill Clinton designating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah leaders were practically apoplectic.
Still, over the last four and a half years at the helm of the BLM here, many say it has been Palma's quiet, listening ear and unflappable earnestness that has helped to keep local relationships in tact — even as the distrust and anger at Washington, D.C., threatens to explode.
"Working with Juan has been nothing but a true pleasure," said Iron County Commissioner Dave Miller, whose county is among those suing the federal agency for its wild horse management. "His true concern and passion is an example that I wish was emulated across federal agencies."
Added Cody Stewart, Herbert's energy adviser: "I think Juan is a good man in a tough job." And Kathleen Clarke, director of the Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, said: "I give him a lot of credit. He has been in a tough place. I think Juan did about what Juan could do to work with the state and accommodate the state's interests."
Steve Bloch, attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance — one of the most powerful and litigious environmental organizations in the state — said Palma mastered the ability to wade through the toughest of waters to find common ground.
"From the top down, being the state director of the BLM must be one of the most challenging posts for any individual to take over, and Juan has successfully navigated those waters to be mindful of the state and its concerns and listen and be responsive to the oil and gas industry, and be respectful and listen to the concerns of the conservation community, and that is no small task," Bloch said. "He has performed admirably in that."
Palma's tenure has brought him toe-to-toe with ranchers over wild horse management, put him in the political hot seat over BLM management policies on grazing, wildfires and trails access, and injected him into the debate over who "rightfully" controls lands within Utah's borders.
His comfortable office on the fifth floor of the downtown BLM headquarters could have been a place for him to hide.
Even he calls it a potential magnet for sitting, but he's resisted, adding there are many, many thousands of miles on his government vehicle from traveling throughout the state.
"I did not wait for someone to come into my office to visit with me. I went out there to visit with them," he said. "I know the roads. When they say there is a problem with the bend in the road, I know what bend they are talking about. When they are talking about that tree, I know what tree they are talking about."
Palma says he also understands the rhetoric of politics, although he may not agree, and he says the distrust of the federal government in Utah is deeply rooted in its history.
"I understand it, I am part of it. I am an individual who understands that view. (Mormons) were persecuted when we ended up here in Utah," Palma said. "So, it is a very deep emotional feeling in a generic sense — 'the government.' I understand it is not personal to me, it is just rooted in all of the things we do in Utah."
Palma said he would like for the wild horse overpopulation problem to be solved for rural Utah, and sees a great urgency to arrive at answers.
"We know what the problem is. What is frustrating for me and all of our employees is that we are sincerely wanting to take care of our ecosystems and to balance that, but we have certain laws and funding. I cannot just print my own money to go out and gather those horses."
Until laws or funding changes, he said the problem will only get worse.
"Some problems you can wait and tomorrow the problem will be the same, but I don't know that this is an issue where we have a lot of time to hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya.'"
Plowing middle ground
Palma said as much as the agency is linked with inaction or blamed for not doing enough, he said there are success stories.
He pointed to a watershed initiative that restored 1.2 million acres through the collaborative efforts of the Utah Partners for Conservation and Development, and several oil and gas projects like Bill Barrett, Anadarko and Gasco that he says balance resource extraction with environmental safeguards.
"While the rhetoric is up here," he said, gesturing above his head, "the work is getting done. Outside of the rhetoric, things are getting done on the ground."
Bring up oil and gas development, though, and no one is ever quite happy with the Utah BLM, a sentiment that even Palma's affable persona cannot overcome.
"I think some of those accomplishments (Anadarko, Gasco) of the agency are not entirely due to him. Some of those have been in the pipeline and the heavy lifting was done at the field offices," said Lowell Braxton, Utah's representative for the Western Energy Alliance, an association of more than 300 independent oil and gas producers in the region.
Braxton said he's known Palma for nearly eight years, and served with him on the Utah BLM Resource Advisory Council.
"He's very easy to talk with. I don't see him as a potent decision maker. He held his counsel very carefully. I did not see him make a decision in public that reflected his managerial style."
He said many of the approved projects Palma touts came after years of painful delays and began in the previous administration.
"We felt they (the approvals) could have been made more much timely. We felt Washington, D.C., had the thumb on the pulse of the timing on that as much, if not more, than the state office."
Like others, Braxton said Palma has always been willing to meet with him.
"But I did not see any hard decisions made at his level unless they were decisions that negatively affected our organization," he said.
Both Braxton and Bloch pointed to the much-awaited, but not-yet-delivered master leasing plan for Moab, an unprecedented, landscape-style approach to carving out land use designations in advance of industry interest — sort of like a planning commission approach to zoning that designates appropriate places for oil and gas development.
Palma said the draft should be out in a couple of months, but the reforms were announced five years ago by the U.S. Department of Interior.
"In terms of substantive work we have been able to complete with him, it is unfortunately going to be a legacy unfulfilled," Bloch said. "There are a lot projects underway less completed than we would have liked to see."
Bloch did praise Palma — and Braxton criticized him — for the decision to pull offered oil and gas leases in the San Rafael area because of potential impact to archaeological resources.
"In this instance, by thinking first, he decided it was not the right time to offer those leases," Bloch said. "In some regards, those are exactly the type of approaches we have been advocating for."
Palma predicts the controversy over oil and gas leasing in Utah will continue long after he steps down because the "easy" parcels have already been taken by industry.
"All the low-hanging fruit has already been leased," he said. "When you've got 80 percent of the area leased, the easy stuff was done a long time ago. Every parcel that is put on the table is going to have a potential for conflict."
Congressional constraints
The BLM pace is not one that anyone is apt to praise, but Palma said he believes people misuse the word "mismanagement" when it comes to the agency and how quickly, or slowly it acts.
"I wonder when they say mismanagement if they mean acceleration of resource use," he said, hinting that "acceleration" is what some of his critics would like.
He adds that the timing of the agency is constrained by endless environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Wilderness Act, and so on.
"We have been given a task to do that rests among all the laws Congress has passed, and I do not have the option to choose which of the laws I follow and which laws I will not follow," he said. "If that is their definition of mismanagement, that I should just go ahead and approve that, I can't. I would probably wear the label of mismanagement sort of with pride. Because I have to comply."
He's circumspect about the chorus of anti-federal sentiment that is steeped in the movement to wrest control of Forest Service and BLM lands in Utah.
"I don't live in the dimension of the rhetoric of politicians," he said, gesturing widely with his hands. "While I hear it, understand it and appreciate it, I live in the world where we get things done. … I think sometimes the rhetoric of politics gets in the way of great opportunities here in Utah."
In Nevada, when he was in charge of the Las Vegas district, Palma said the BLM completed $3.5 billion in land sales to interested entities, with revenue that went to support schools, water conservation districts and other organizations.
"The majority went to local entities. It can be done, but we are lacking that conversation."
The BLM's critics say it is hard to have a fruitful conversation when the ultimate decision maker is in Washington, D.C., and at best disinterested.
"I think the concerns of Utah are decisions that are out of his hands and above his pay grade," said Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, and the architect of Utah's Transfer of Public Lands Act.
Palma sees that the discord over who owns the lands will continue, because the "federal government isn't handing over the keys anytime soon," and it is time for him to step off the battlefield.
He has no plans to leave Utah, for it is where he raised his children, began his schooling at Brigham Young University, and where he has journeyed among many of its varied landscapes.
As he prepares to vacate his office and the views of the Oquirrh Mountains, he'll pack up family photos and other mementos, but leave without misgivings.
"No," he said, offering a big smile. "I don't have any regrets. I am super excited about the future. I don't know what it is going to be on the other side of the bend in my life, but whatever it is, it will be exciting."
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