Doug Vilsack, who has headed the Bureau of Land Management in Colorado since 2022, is resigning after declining a transfer and new role.
“As many of you know, BLM leadership has transferred me to the National Operations Center,” Vilsack wrote in a letter to BLM employees Wednesday. “After considering this direction, I plan to resign from my position with BLM.”
A BLM spokesperson said Vilsack was not responding to media requests Wednesday. His resignation was first reported Wednesday by E&E News.
Vilsack told Colorado BLM employees that Brian St. George, the associate state director, would be helping the agency build its strategic plan through 2030. Karren Haslam, the deputy state director for support services, will serve as associate state director.
Vilsack said he would be leaving by the end of next week. He is among several Western BLM state directors who have been shuffled under the Trump administration, with acting state directors in Idaho, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Vilsack, a Colorado College graduate and lawyer whose father, Tom Vilsack, served as the Department of Agriculture secretary in the Obama and Biden administrations after two terms as governor of Iowa, joined the BLM after serving three years as the assistant director at the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, where he also headed up the department’s legislative affairs.
As the BLM’s Colorado state director, Vilsack oversaw management of 8.3 million surface acres and 27 million underground acres. He told employees Wednesday he had been reassigned to a new role at the agency’s National Operations Center at the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, the same complex that houses the BLM’s state office.
Staffing at the BLM, along with the Forest Service, has been slashed as part of reduction of the federal bureaucracy under the Trump administration. During the shutdown of the federal government last fall, the union representing federal employees sued the Trump administration over plans to cut 4,000 jobs across seven federal agencies, including 87 jobs from the 177 positions at the BLM National Operations Center and 33 of the 595 jobs at the BLM Colorado State Office.
The cuts landed as the Trump administration pushed the BLM to more closely focus on increased production of minerals, timber and oil and gas. The BLM in Colorado has spent most of the last year forming plans to implement executive orders to “unleash American energy,”expand timber production and increase mineral extraction on federal lands.
In a twist from the extractive focus, Vilsack earlier this month announced the BLM’s acquisition of a 4,012-acre inholding adjacent to the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness and the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area, telling The Colorado Sun it was “a monumental acquisition that checks all three boxes around conservation, recreation and agriculture.”
Vilsack told employees he would work with BLM leadership “to minimize the impact of this transition on our important work.”
“We have a strong team, and I have no doubt you will step up to meet this challenge,” Vilsack wrote to BLM staff. “Thank you in advance for your work to facilitate the transition, and for your patience as new leadership gets up-to-speed.”