Minority Populations

BLM IM 2002-164, Guidance to Address Environmental Justice in Land Use Plans and Related NEPA Documents provides policy and guidance for addressing environmental justice in BLM land use planning (BLM 2002b). IM 2002-164 defines minority persons as “Black/African American, Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and other non-white persons.” Furthermore, IM 2002-164 states that an area should be considered to contain a minority population where the minority population of the affected area exceeds 50 percent, or the percentage of minority population in the affected area is meaningfully greater than the percentage in the general population.

Populations of the four counties in the Planning Area are predominantly white and non-Hispanic. Table 3-84 lists the percentage of minority population, and population in poverty, in the counties in the Planning Area in 2000 and in the latest year for which data are available (2009 for minority, and 2008 for poverty). Although minority populations increased slightly from 2000 to 2009, three of the four counties have a larger proportion of non-Hispanic white residents than do the state or the country. Washakie County is the sole exception; it has a slightly higher proportion of non-Hispanic white residents than the state, although a lower proportion than the United States. Poverty data are discussed later in this section.

Table 3-85 lists population by race and ethnicity by town in the Planning Area in 1990 and 2000. Town-level data are not available for 2008. The table shows that there is important variation in minority population percentages in the counties, because some individual towns have higher (and lower) percentages of minority residents compared to their respective counties. In 2000, Worland, Burlington, and Byron had the largest percentages of minority residents, and Ten Sleep, Cody, Meeteetse, and Cowley had the smallest percentages. The table also shows that in almost every town in the Planning Area, the percent of minority residents increased between 1990 and 2000.

Table 3-86 lists population by race and ethnicity in the Planning Area for major racial and ethnic groups. The largest ethnic or racial group other than non-Hispanic whites in any of the counties is Hispanic or Latino (of any race). In Hot Springs and Park Counties, the percent of people in this ethnic group is lower than for the state as a whole; it is greater in Big Horn and Washakie Counties. Most ethnic and racial groups other than non-Hispanic white comprise a very small proportion of populations in Planning Area counties. Note that Hispanic/Latino denotes an ethnicity, and people of this ethnic background can be of any race.

Low-Income Populations

BLM IM 2002-164 states that low-income populations can be identified according to poverty thresholds published by the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, the IM notes that “when considering these definitions, it is important to recognize that some low-income and minority populations may comprise transitory users of the public lands and thus not associated with a particular geographic area.”

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) guidance for environmental justice analysis under NEPA defines a “low-income population” as “either a group of individuals living in geographic proximity to one another, or a set of individuals (e.g., migrant workers or Native Americans), where either type of group experiences common conditions of environmental exposure or effect” (CEQ 1997a). Although CEQ guidance does not provide a quantitative threshold (e.g., a limit on the percent of persons in poverty) for determining whether a population should be considered low-income, typically the percent of persons in poverty in the Planning Area is compared to that in a larger area such as the state. CEQ and BLM guidance do not specify quantitative criteria for what constitutes a low-income population.

As Table 3-84 shows, the percentage of people with income below the poverty level ranged between 11 and 12 percent for all counties in the Planning Area in 2008, and three of the four counties saw a reduction in poverty from 2000 to 2008 (all except Hot Springs, in which the percent of people in poverty increased slightly). In all four counties, the percentage of people in poverty in 2008 was slightly higher than in the state as a whole but lower than in the United States as a whole.

The town-level data in Table 3-85 also show reductions in the percentage of people living in poverty in almost every town and county between 1990 and 2000. However, there are likely concentrations of persons living in poverty within individual towns in the Planning Area. The percent of people in poverty was 20 percent or higher in Byron and Powell, and exceeded that of the United States in 9 of the 17 towns in the Planning Area in 2000. Note that more recent data on poverty for individual towns are not currently available, and likely will not be available until the U.S. Census Bureau releases 2010 Census data in 2012 or 2013.