Former U.S. Forest Service supervisor in SLT retires from BLM

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.

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