Idaho official Bush’s BLM pick

WASHINGTON — James Caswell, a public land manager working for Idaho, is being proposed to lead the federal Bureau of Land Management.

White House officials said Wednesday that President Bush plans to nominate Caswell for Senate confirmation to become director of the BLM, which manages 258 million acres in the Western states, including more than 65 percent of Nevada’s land.

Caswell leads the Idaho Office of Species Conservation, an office created in 2000 to set the state’s direction on endangered species issues.

Previously, he worked for 33 years in the BLM, at the Bonneville Power Administration and as a supervisor in national forests in Idaho and Montana, the Interior Department said.

Nevada conservationists said they were unfamiliar with Caswell, who will have a voice in wild horse management in the state, development of energy resources on public land and auctions of federal property in Las Vegas Valley.

Rick Johnson, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League, said hope exists that Caswell will leave a “positive legacy” in the job, which most likely will expire when President Bush leaves office in January 2009.

In Caswell’s dealings with environmental leaders, “there have definitely been times when we have sparked and there have been times we have worked together,” Johnson said. “He has a reasonably balanced approach to a tough job.”

Caswell put together management plans for wolves and for the Yellowstone grizzly and won passage of both in the Idaho Legislature in 2001.

Although he expects Caswell will be noncontroversial, Sierra Club official Sean Cosgrove said he thinks the nominee will face tough Senate questioning on forest management policies stemming from his involvement in old-growth logging in southern Idaho.

“The general consensus is that he does not have what you would call a progressive conservation record,” said Cosgrove, the group’s national forest policy specialist.

The Idaho Office of Species Conservation was created by then-Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, who now is Interior secretary and who again would become Caswell’s boss.

“I’ve known Jim Caswell personally and admire his ‘can do’ attitude, pragmatic leadership style and outstanding management skills,” Kempthorne said in a statement.

Caswell would replace Kathleen Clarke, a Utah native who resigned as BLM director in December.

In the meantime, the agency has been run by an acting director, Jim Hughes.