This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
After five years overseeing nearly 40 percent of Utah's land, Juan Palma retires Friday as the state director for the Bureau of Land Management.
While many state and local leaders would rather evict the federal agency from Utah, they don't feel the same way about Palma.
An easygoing leader who was able to navigate the fraught politics of public lands management in Utah, Palma is respected by environmentalists and oil and gas developers alike.
"He has been excellent," Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, told Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Palma's boss, recently. "He understands the people. He understands the culture. He understands the issues.
"I hope your replacement will be nearly as good."
Antagonists on both sides of Utah's land-use battles have hammered the BLM's decisions over everything from wild horses to roads. But most say they have lasting respect for Palma's ability to listen and respond to the public — whether it's a county commissioner hoping to expand drilling or conservationists looking to protect ancient Native American sites.
Deputy BLM state director Jenna Whitlock will fill Palma's shoes on an acting basis while national BLM Director Neil Kornze finds a permanent replacement for what promises to be one of the toughest jobs in government.
Stewart and other Republicans revile the BLM, saying the agency has abandoned any semblance of balance in its management of Utah's public lands. They say the agency errs on the side of shutting out development, motorized use and grazing.
But balance is precisely what Palma says he has tried to achieve in his decisions — ranging from a stern warning to organizers of last year's motorized incursion into Recapture Canyon to his deferral of oil and gas leases on culturally rich Alkali Ridge.
"They know I'm as sincere as they come," said 60-year-old Palma. "I might not be able to do what they want me to do, but I'm going to listen to their concerns and see what I can do."
When it came time to replace retiring state Director Selma Sierra in 2010, Interior bosses picked Palma, a veteran federal lands administrator who had family ties to Utah and was a faithful Mormon.
The child of Hispanic migrant farmworkers, he grew up in Toppenish, Wash., on the Yakima Reservation and served an LDS mission in South America. Palma started college at Brigham Young University and has lived in Alpine since 2003. He has three adult sons, all married to women from Utah.
Palma started his government career with the U.S. Forest Service and rose through the ranks to eventually supervise the agency's Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit.
After a stint running the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, he moved to the BLM, managing its Las Vegas field office, where he gained a knack for selling and exchanging federal property to acquire private lands in Nevada with conservation values, including wetlands near the Tahoe shore.
At the time the BLM sent him to Utah, he was director of the agency's Eastern States office.
Since then, Utah has experienced a nadir in its relationship with the agency overseeing nearly 23 million acres of its territory. And it may only get worse.
Palma arrived shortly after then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rescinded 77 oil and gas leases that monkey-wrenching climate activist Tim DeChristopher went to prison over. Salazar's decision angered industry and local leaders, who took the federal government to court.
The state has since returned to court numerous times about the BLM's handling of wild horses, roads and other proposed oil and gas leases.
Gov. Gary Herbert signed legislation in 2012 demanding the feds forfeit title to most of the public lands within the state.
Lawmakers now are contemplating yet another lawsuit to make the land transfer happen. Citing several alleged abuses by BLM agents, who are not overseen by Palma, lawmakers have demanded new leadership for the BLM's law enforcement.
Friction with the agency mounted despite Palma's tireless traveling to meet with local leaders and cultivate what he calls "human infrastructure."
Many of those leaders harbor strong feelings about how the BLM should manage its lands and sometimes threaten to take matters into their own hands if they don't get what the want.
In many cases, Palma de-escalated tensions and established productive dialogue. For example, he persuaded Iron County officials to call off their plan to round up federally protected wild horses last summer that ranchers alleged were depleting the forage and displacing their cows.
"Juan's job has put him in the center of controversy, and yet he has been deftly able to rise above the conflict and listen to all sides and earn the respect of people on all sides," said Alan Matheson, the governor's environmental policy adviser. "One thing that distinguishes Juan Palma is his willingness to get involved with the issues to drive a resolution, not just sit in his office and send out others to do the work."
Matheson hopes Palma's replacement "is as constructive."
Palma's decisions may not always have been popular in Utah's rural corners, but he believes the law required him to make these calls.
Federal land managers are obligated to follow numerous environmental statutes, mostly enacted under Republican presidents in the 1970s, that require multi-use, public participation in decision making, and consideration for a range of natural and cultural resources belonging to all Americans.
Despite industry complaints that the BLM puts up unnecessary, even illegal, impediments to oil and gas development, drilling accelerated on Utah's public lands with Palma at the helm.
Oil and gas leasing rebounded, and approvals of drilling permits broke records in 2012 and 2013 — nearly 1,000 in each of those two years.
Two major environmental reviews were completed, paving the way for the 1,300-well Gasco project and 3,700-well Anadarko project in the Uinta Basin.
Uintah County Commission Chairman Mike McKee said he appreciated the timely completion of these BLM reviews.
"There was a lot of things I would like to have seen happen that were left on the table," McKee said. "With a [national] Democratic administration, our state director was limited in the things he could do. To Juan's credit, he was very approachable and a good listener."
Twitter: @brianmaffly