Since the BLM has removed state websites and staff directories from the internet, and they now have only one portal for very limited information for the public, we thought we’d give you a quick update on who’s running the Bureau of Land Management at national and state levels. Source: BLM
Deputy Director, Programs & Policy
Brian Steed
Deputy Director, Programs and Policy, Bureau of Land Management
Exercising Authority of the Director
Brian Steed is the BLM’s Deputy Director for Programs and Policy, exercising authority of the director. Before joining the BLM in October 2017, Steed served as Chief of Staff for Representative Chris Stewart of Utah. Before that, he taught economics at Utah State University and was once a deputy county attorney in Iron County, Utah. Read the full biography
Acting Deputy Director, Operations
Michael D. Nedd
Acting Deputy Director, Operations
Michael D. (Mike) Nedd is the Acting Deputy Director of Operations. Prior to this appointment he served as Assistant Director for the BLM’s Energy, Minerals & Realty Management Directorate. In this capacity he provided vision and leadership for developing and implementing programmatic policies, guidance, oversight, and human and fiscal resources for the BLM’s renewable energy, fluid and solid minerals, lands and realty, and cadastral survey programs. Read the full biography
Alaska State Director
Karen Mouritsen
BLM Alaska Acting State Director
Karen Mouritsen was an attorney practicing law for DOI, but she was motivated to make a career change to the BLM after serving on detail as an Associate District Manager and learning how challenging and rewarding it is to work together as a team with many talented BLM employees. Read the full biography
Arizona State Director
Raymond Suazo
BLM Arizona State Director
Ray Suazo is the BLM Arizona State Director, responsible for leading a staff of nearly 500 employees and the management of more than 12 million surface and 17 million subsurface acres of public lands in Arizona. Ray joined the BLM Arizona State Office in 2006. He served as Chief Information Officer, Deputy State Director for Business and Support Services, and Associate State Director before his appointment as the Arizona State Director in 2011. Read the full biography
California State Director
Jerome E. Perez
BLM California State Director
Jerome E. Perez is the California State Director for the Bureau of Land Management. He previously served as the State Director for BLM Oregon/Washington and as the Deputy Regional Forester of the U.S. Forest Service’s Intermountain Region. Read the full biography
Colorado State Director
Greg Shoop
Acting BLM Colorado State Director
Greg Shoop has worked for the BLM on and off since 1977. He has been BLM Colorado’s Associate State Director since 2014 and is currently serving as its Acting State Director. Read the full biography.
Eastern States Director
Mitch Leverette
BLM Eastern States Acting State Director
Mitch Leverette started his BLM career 30 years ago as a staff geologist in the BLM California State Office. He worked in the California State Office for over 17 years working across several mineral programs and positions. Mitch started working in the Washington Headquarters in 2004 as Deputy Division Chief for Solid Minerals and was promoted to Division Chief in 2008. Read the full biography
Idaho State Director
Peter Ditton
Acting BLM Idaho State Director
Ditton attended Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology where he graduated with a degree in geological engineering. He began a career with the BLM in the cooperative education program out of Great Falls, Montana working as a petroleum engineer. He has worked in DC and a number of states including Alaska, California, Idaho and Arizona. Ditton has also held a number of detail and full-time positions including: petroleum engineer, planning coordinator, field and district manager, Associate State Director for Alaska and Idaho, California State Director. Read the full biography
Montana State Director
Jon Raby
BLM Montana-Dakotas Acting State Director
In Montana-Dakotas, Raby will oversee more than 8 million acres of public land and over 47 million acres of federal mineral estate in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. HIs career includes over 20 years with the BLM in Oregon, Montana and Washington D.C. In addition to the BLM, Jon has also worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service. He has also been the BLM Liaison to the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management, and the Chief of Staff in the BLM Director’s Office in Washington, D.C. Read the full biography
Nevada State Director
John Ruhs
Nevada State Director
John Ruhs has served as the Ely District Manager and Winnemucca District Fire Management Officer. In addition to his work in Nevada, John has also served as BLM’s Senior Special Assistant in Washington, D.C., and District Manager of the High Desert District in Wyoming. He has also worked for the BLM in Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon. Read the full biography
New Mexico State Director
Aden Seidlitz
Acting BLM New Mexico State Director
Aden Seidlitz began his BLM career in 1983 as a Petroleum Engineer in Wyoming, a Petroleum Engineer/Program Leader at the Alaska State Office, and a Supervisory Petroleum Engineer in Montana. He became an Acting Area Manager, then Associate Field Manager and then an Acting Field Manager in Montana. He worked as a Field Manager in Utah and became BLM’s Chief for the Fire Planning and Fuels Management Division in Boise, Idaho, and then became the BLM Boise District Manager. Aden was selected as the New Mexico Associate State Director on 2012, and is now Acting State Director. Read the full biography.
Oregon-Washington State Director
Jamie Connell
BLM Oregon-Washington State Director
Connell received her B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Montana Tech in 1985, and began her BLM career as a petroleum engineer in Miles City, Montana. Connell’s managerial experience includes stints for the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service in locations across the West, including Great Falls and Malta, Montana; Boise, Idaho; and the cities of Montrose, Silverthorne, Glenwood Springs, and Grand Junction, all in Colorado. Connell most recently served as the State Director for BLM-Montana/Dakotas. Read the full biography
Utah State Director
Ed Roberson
BLM Utah State Director
As BLM Utah State Director, Ed Roberson, who has had a 37-year career with the BLM. He was most recently Director of the BLM National Operations Center in Denver. Roberson also served in top BLM roles in New Mexico, and held senior level positions in Washington, D.C., including a seven year tenure as the BLM Assistant Director for Renewable Resources and Planning. Read the full biography
Wyoming State Director
Mary Jo Rugwell
BLM Wyoming State Director
Mary Jo Rugwell was selected as the state director for the Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming. She had been acting state director for about a year and a half prior to being chosen. Mary Jo served as the Associate State Director in Wyoming for over two years. She is a native of Cheyenne, WY. Read the full biography
Categories: Uncategorized
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
From COUNTERPUNCH
NOVEMBER 23, 2017
“He introduced himself to me as Bill Stringer, one of the three Uintah County commissioners. In the 10 years before he took office in 2014, Stringer ran the Vernal branch of the Bureau of Land Management. Under him, the outpost grew from a single-story affair to one of the busiest licensing offices in the country. Stringer and his staff approved nearly three times the number of permits per year as his predecessor did.
They granted “every application put before them,” says Stan Olmstead, an inspector for the BLM who quit in disgust under Stringer. “We couldn’t do site inspections; anyone with integrity up and left.”
Clarke was the Director of the BLM, appointed by G.W.Bush, responsible for implementing the Cheney energy policy. She was responsible for Bill Stringer’s hiring
Current Zinke nominees include Ryan Nelson as Solicitor and John Tanner as DOI Legislative Affairs Director - both former Sen. Orrin Hatch aids - and
BRIAN STEED, Rep. CHRIS STEWART’S former Chief of Staff, as interim Director of BLM.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/23/zinkes-reorganization-of-the-blm-will-continue-killing-babies/
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BLM LEADERSHIP CODDLES HOSTILE AND LAW BREAKING NEVADA RANCHERS LIKE CLIVEN BUNDY
JANUARY 11, 2016
By Katie Fite / WildLands Defense
But within weeks, BLM folded. All of Argenta was again flung open to grazing. Leadership under Nevada BLM Director John Ruhs had forced a settlement deal indulging the ranchers’ every whim. Ruhs, bonded at the hip with the Cattlemen, had been “Acting” Director, and then officially became Nevada Director.
The deal was greased through by the “National Riparian Team“, composed of livestock industry sycophants from within BLM and the Forest Service, and outside cattle consultants.
The cabal bars the public and press from observing their monitoring of grazing damage, and from their closed door discussions that dictate management. The group tells BLM what to do to keep the ranchers happy.
Days after BLM caved in Argenta, one of the very same permittees (Filippini) rewarded BLM appeasement efforts by unleashing their cattle on the nearby North Buffalo allotment. North Buffalo, like Argenta, was closed for drought protection. It is home to a very small struggling population of sage-grouse, whose habitat is also being consumed by foreign gold mines.
BLM could not help but notice the cows turned out illegally, since the rancher crowed about the trespass to the Elko newspaper, flaunting their power. Leadership under Ruhs promptly rewarded this trespass with another Settlement deal.
Appointment of Ruhs as Nevada Director, sweetheart settlement deals and toleration of overt law-breaking all have taken place under national BLM Director Neil Kornze, a native of Elko, Nevada and son of a mining engineer.
Is this ineptitude on the part of BLM leadership, political interference, or something else? Kornze increasingly appears to be either the most bungling BLM Director ever – or a fellow traveler with the Nevada public Land Grab crowd.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/08/blm-leadership-coddles-hostile-and-law-breaking-nevada-ranchers/
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“Judge rules to dismiss standoff case against rancher Cliven Bundy, 2 sons of all charges!!!!!”
Justice? Really? Do our public lands actually stand a chance?
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“Before joining the BLM in October 2017, Steed served as Chief of Staff for Representative Chris Stewart of Utah. Before that, he taught economics at Utah State University and was once a deputy county attorney in Iron County, Utah.”
Just for starters, and without looking up many past articles about the actions, just know that Utah’s Chris Stewart was the one that introduced an amendment to the Interior Department’s 2018 spending bill that would send thousands of America’s wild horses to slaughterhouses. And you may remember that it was the Iron county Utah commissioners who threatened BLM when they requested to remove or reduce the privately owned domestic livestock and then went so far as to state they would round up and wild horses themselves if the BLM didn’t do it.
https://rtfitchauthor.com/2017/07/08/wild-horses-burros-congressman-chris-stewart-violates-u-s-c-title-18-conspiracy-to-defraud-the-united-states/
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NEVADA
Fossil from Nevada cave spurs discovery of extinct horse
By Henry Brean Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 26, 2017
https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/science-and-technology/fossil-from-nevada-cave-spurs-discovery-of-extinct-horse/
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