If nominees to lead various federal agencies are any indication, it appears the western United States is rising again in D.C.

President Donald Trump nominated former Wyoming Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik to lead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, adding another western U.S. leader who has a lifetime of experience living and working on the land to the list of nominations. 

Brian Nesvik retired from his post as the Wyoming Game and Fish Director in early 2024 and returned to the ranch near Pinedale. A former game warden, Nesvik is particularly well versed in grizzly bear management, something Wyoming Stockgrowers executive Jim Magagna said is positive.

Magagna, who is a longtime fixture in Wyoming agriculture and policy, has long said endangered species protections, when not needed to preserve the species, only become a hindrance to good management of wildlife and other uses on public and private lands, and this is something Nesvik understands. Recently, Wyoming was among the states that requested the delisting of grizzly bears. In response to their request, the Biden administration in it’s final days not only denied the petition, but doubled down and proposed a wildly expanded proposed habitat area for the species.

This grizzy bear discussion is, of course, important for Coloradans to be aware of as misguided advocates are enthusiastic supporters of inappropriately campaigning to reintroduce photogenic predators to the state.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Magagna, who pulls no punches, is clear many of the issues agriculture in western states face stem from endangered species and wildlife management, and government interference in that wildlife management. State agencies are best equipped to manage wildlife — hard stop.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who previously led Denver-based Liberty Energy, preaches how fossil fuel production can lift people out of poverty and has denounced the “green new scam” — all things I can applaud.

As I wrote last week, the miserably inadequate stakeholder process the Department of Energy has rolled out in New Mexico and southeastern Colorado about the proposed siting of the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) has moved into the fourth phase with the closing of the public comment period. Colorado U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who represents Kiowa, Baca and Prowers counties, attended virtually the Prowers County Commissioners meeting last week where they passed a crystal-clear resolution opposing the NIETC. Boebert sent a letter to Sec. Wright asking him to pull the plug, if you will, on the project that would use eminent domain to take land and then be granted access to millions in funds to share with private energy companies to develop an unknown number of lines or “an alternative non-transmission solution.”

I’m confident Sec. Wright will see this NIETC in his home state for what it is and remedy the embarrassment the DOE under the previous administration has sold as engagement and transparency. The thing I’ve heard repeatedly through covering this project, one that affects multiple families I know well and count among my friends on both sides of the state line, is they’re not anti-development or anti-renewable energy. What they are opposed to is the utter lack of communication and the destruction of their ability to exercise their rights.

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, has been nominated as Bureau of Land Management director. Magagna said he worked with her in the past on a number of projects and is pleased with her nomination.

New BLM leadership is heavily laden with oil-and-gas experts, certainly a nod to President Donald Trump’s executive order to unleash American energy. The daughter of a petroleum landman, I was raised to appreciate a good topo map, to throw around the words “Minnelusa” and “shale,” and to believe wholeheartedly a country unable to feed or fuel itself, is a country unable to defend itself.

That gospel sung, the BLM would benefit from experts who know which end of a cow rises first when she stands. Public lands, in the beginning, are now, and ever shall be, multiple-use lands. Grazing is an irreplaceable conservation activity on public and private lands and the voice of western ranchers belongs in the leadership of the BLM.

I did, coincidentally, suggest to Rep. Boebert on a phone call last week she needs a “Graze, baby, graze” shirt to complement her “Drill, baby, drill” shawl. It was one of my finer moments.

The good news about the BLM leadership is I am confident they appreciate agriculture, even if it isn’t their love language. That said, BLM leadership doesn’t know western public lands ranching’s names, but they don’t hate us either. There’s something to be said for that.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication. Gabel is a daughter of the state’s oil and gas industry and a member of one of the state’s 12,000 cattle-raising families, and she has authored children’s books used in hundreds of classrooms to teach students about agriculture.