A Bureau of Land Management field office responsible for overseeing hundreds of thousands of public acres in Northern California is scheduled to close by this summer, a casualty of federal government efficiency cuts, a Bay Area congressman recently announced.
The proposed closure of the BLM Ukiah Field Office by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was disclosed last month by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael. It is part of a nationwide Trump administration initiative helmed by billionaire Elon Musk to decrease government spending by eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse.” So far multiple agencies and workers have been caught up in the cuts, with the Ukiah field office among those ending up on the chopping block.
The Ukiah field office manages approximately 270,000 acres of land and 214,000 acres of mineral properties in Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Napa, Marin, Solano, Sonoma, and Yolo counties and a portion of Mendocino County.
Three popular protected areas fall under the Ukiah field office’s jurisdiction: The California Coastal Monument, including cattle grazing lands along state Highway 1 and hiking grounds surrounding Point Arena Lighthouse; Cow Mountain Recreation Area, located just outside of Ukiah and popular with hunters, campers and off-road vehicle enthusiasts, and Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, an expansive protected space managed in partnership with the National Forest Service known for being one of the most biologically diverse in the state. The office also manages The Geysers, an isolated area straddling the Sonoma-Lake County border that is home to the world’s largest geothermal field.
The role of the Ukiah field office is vast. Closing the office may impact a wide range of activities, including grazing permits for ranchers, campground and trail management, wildfire prevention measures, habitat conservation projects, hunting and off-road vehicle permitting, mining and drilling permits, renewable energy projects, historical preservation work, the policing of poaching and environmental education outreach.
The Bureau of Land Management falls under the purview of the U.S. Department of the Interior. According to a list published by the General Service Administration, 164 offices are slated for closure across the country under DOGE. Offices at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service are also scheduled to close.
The Ukiah field office is the only office impacting the Bay Area that the department plans to close according to the GSA. It is set to close by Aug. 31.