Bureau of Land Management
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which administers America's public lands, totaling approximately 264 million acres (1,070,000 km²) or one-eighth of the landmass of the country.[1] Most public lands are located in western states. With approximately 9,000 permanent employees, and over 1,000 more temporary, this works out to over 26,000 acres (105 km²) per employee. Its budget is nearly 1 billion dollars for 2007 ($3.50 per acre, $3.30 per person).[2]
The BLM's stated mission is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.
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[edit] History
The BLM's pure roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. These laws provided for the survey and settlement of the lands that the original 13 colonies ceded to the Federal government after the War of Independence. As additional lands were acquired by the United States from Spain, France, and other countries, the United States Congress directed that they be explored, surveyed, and made available for settlement. In 1812, Congress established the General Land Office in the Department of the Treasury to oversee the disposition of these Federal lands. As the nineteenth century progressed and the Nation's land base expanded further west, Congress encouraged the settlement of the land by enacting a wide variety of laws, including the Homesteading Laws and the Mining Law of 1872.
These statutes served one of the major policy goals of the young country—settlement of the Western territories. With the exception of the Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 (which was amended), all have since been repealed or superseded by other statutes.
The late nineteenth century marked a shift in Federal land management priorities with the creation of the first national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. By withdrawing these lands from settlement, Congress signaled a shift in the policy goals served by the public lands. Instead of using them to promote settlement, Congress recognized that they should be held in public ownership because of their other resource values.
In the early twentieth century, Congress took additional steps toward recognizing the value of the assets on public lands and directed the Executive Branch to manage activities on the remaining public lands. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 allowed leasing, exploration, and production of selected commodities such as coal, oil, gas, and sodium to take place on public lands. The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established the U.S. Grazing Service to manage the public rangelands. And the Oregon and California (O&C) Act of August 28, 1937, required sustained yield management of the timberlands in western Oregon.
In 1946, the Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Office (a product of the country's territorial expansion and the federal government's nineteenth-century homesteading policies) to form the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior. When the BLM was initially created, there were over 2,000 unrelated and often conflicting laws for managing the public lands. The BLM had no unified legislative mandate until Congress enacted the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA).
In FLPMA, Congress recognized the value of the remaining public lands by declaring that these lands would remain in public ownership. Congress used the term "multiple use" management, defined as "management of the public lands and their various resource values so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the present and future needs of the American people."
[edit] The BLM today
The BLM offers visitors opportunities in the following areas: hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, boating, hang gliding, shooting, off-highway vehicle driving, mountain biking, birding, and visiting natural and cultural heritage sites. The BLM administers 205,498 miles (330,717 km) of fishable streams, 2.2 million acres (8,900 km²) of lakes and reservoirs, 6,600 miles (10,600 km) of floatable rivers, over 500 boating access points, 69 National Back Country Byways, and 300 Watchable Wildlife sites. The BLM also manages 4,500 miles (7,200 km) of National Scenic, Historic, and Recreational Trails, as well as thousands of miles of multiple use trails used by motorcyclists, hikers, equestrians, and mountain bikers.
Of BLM’s 261 million acres (1,060,000 km²), the Bureau manages 55 million acres (220,000 km²) of forests and woodlands, including 11 million acres (45,000 km²) of commercial forest and 44 million acres (180,000 km²) of woodlands within 11 western States and Alaska. Fifty-three million acres (210,000 km²) are productive forests and woodlands on Public Domain lands and 2.4 million acres (9,700 km²) are on Oregon and California Grant lands in western Oregon. Additionally, as part of its trust responsibility, the BLM oversees minerals operations on 56 million acres (230,000 km²) of Indian lands. In addition, BLM also has a National Wild Horse and Burro Program in which it manages animals on public rangelands. Even though BLM manages one of the largest amount of public land in the United States, resource protection of the our BLM public lands is being done by an on-going reduced budget, with one uniformed law enforcement ranger patrols on an average of 1.45 millions acres per ranger.
BLM is a significant revenue producer to the United States budget. In 2009, public lands will generate an estimated $6.2 billion in revenues, mostly from energy development. Nearly 43.5 percent of these receipts are provided directly to States and counties to support roads, schools, and other community needs [4].
Increasingly, the BLM has had to address the needs of a growing and changing West. Ten of the 12 western States with significant proportions of BLM-managed lands have among the fastest rates of population growth in the United States.
One of the BLM's goals is to recognize the demands of public land users while addressing the needs of traditional user groups and working within smaller budgets. Perhaps one of the Bureau's greatest challenges is to develop more effective land management practices, while becoming more efficient at the same time.
The BLM has a wide range of responsibilities, including collecting geographic information, maintaining records of land ownership and mineral rights, conserving wilderness areas while allocating other areas for grazing and agriculture, and protecting cultural heritage sites on public land. The BLM operates the National Landscape Conservation System, which protects some U.S. National Monuments, some National Wild and Scenic Rivers, and some designated wildernesses among other types of areas including wilderness study areas.
BLM is a major employer of wildland firefighters, range conservationists, foresters, botanists, land specialists, geologists, archaeologists, biologists, outdoor recreation planners, and surveyors.
In 2008, around the month of November, the BLM announced that they can no longer afford to care for the wild horses and burros and that they will either release the animals back into the wild or euthanize them.[citation needed]
On December 19, 2008, a BLM land auction was disrupted when a University of Utah student, Tim DeChristopher, successfully outbid other organizations for thousands of acres of land.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Bureau of Land Management. This article incorporates text from this agency's website.
- ^ DOI. (2007) DOI 2007 Budget Key Numbers
- ^ Western States Data Public Land Acreage
- ^ Department of the Interior FY 2009 Budget
- ^ Salt Lake Tribune, Jan 4, 2009
[edit] External links
- Official Bureau of Land Management Website
- Map of land managed by the BLM
- Cobell Indian Trust case
- BLM Careers
- BLM Law Enforcement Rangers
- Opportunity & Challenge:The Story of BLM - Official History
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