The Bureau of Land Management, as part of its continuing effort to curtail public input, gave notice on Thursday of its Friday socioeconomic workshop related to the Sonoran Desert National Monument’s proposed target-shooting amendment Friday, Aug. 12, at Arizona Game and Fish Department headquarters in Phoenix.
Despite the fact that they gave the public little notice, the workshop, scheduled from noon to 5 p.m., is open to the public. Game and Fish is located at 5000 W. Carefree Highway, about 1 mile west of Interstate 17.
BLM is hosting the workshop as part of the SDNM’s Resource Management Plan Amendment (RMPA) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The workshop will be exclusively focused on topics related to recreational target-shooting on the monument near Gila Bend.
The workshop is part of the process needed for the preparation of the EIS. The workshop creates a forum for user and community organizations, local and regional businesses, as well as local, state, tribal and federal government entities to discuss economic and social conditions and issues that might result from the proposed RMPA.
In 2015, BLM was ordered by the U.S. District Court in Arizona to close about 10,600 acres near the monument’s northern boundary to recreational target-shooting while an analysis of the environmental impacts of such shooting is conducted. About 98 percent of the monument, or more than 475,000 acres, remains open to recreational target-shooting.