Defenders' Experts
National Forests and BLM Lands
Defenders is working to maintain the protections and processes that
make effective wildlife and resource management possible on our National Forests and Bureau of Land Management lands.
Every American owns about 1/3 of the United States in the form of
our public lands! Public lands are our endowment, and they include over 450 million
acres of National Forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
lands.
Public lands provide diverse habitats and wide-open spaces essential to wildlife like elk, wolves, and salmon, but are under constant pressure for logging, grazing, mining, and motorized recreation.
Bush Administration Again Proposes Weakened Regulations
On April 10, 2008, the Bush Administration published new regulations for managing national forests and grasslands. Unfortunately, the regulations contain almost all of the same problems as the agency’s 2005 regulations that were struck down in 2007.Effective strategies have been developed for managing public lands and accommodating diverse interests. These include:
- meaningful long-term management plans
- environmental impact analysis
- wildlife monitoring and protections
- public oversight
The Bush Administration is retreating from these modern resource management strategies, eliminating wildlife and resource protections and public oversight opportunities and threatening a return to a bygone era when the Forest Service and extractive industries paid little heed to wildlife or the public.
Priorities for Modern Public Land Management
Defenders' public land priorities include items such as
- a bill to maintain wildlife on public lands
- a lawsuit supporting strong forest management plans
- monitoring “indicator” wildlife species
- maintaining accurate data on roads and trails
Protecting Wildlife Species on National Forests and BLM Lands
Defenders protects many species dependent on public lands. Learn more about some of them, including:
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