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The plan opens up 31 million acres of public lands to solar development across 11 western states.
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The agency’s preferred alternative includes a smaller project footprint, fewer turbines and more height restrictions, which it says respond to the many concerns raised. However, the announcement has been criticized by a number of groups and officials.
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Livestock were blamed for roughly two-thirds of the nearly 57 million acres that failed to meet environmental standards. But less than a million failing acres were attributed to wild horses and burros alone. Another 6.5 million failed due to a combination of cattle and horses.
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Newly released data from the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility shows that vast swaths of the grazing land administered by the Bureau of Land Management do not meet the agency’s land health standards. States in the West showed a wide range of compliance with those standards, with 82 percent of assessed rangeland in Montana meeting standards compared to just 10 percent in Nevada.
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The agency says the new rule puts conservation on equal footing with other uses of public lands, like ranching and mining.
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Last month, the Bureau of Land Management released a five-year Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Action Plan. The basic idea is to get more members of the public involved in scientific research that helps the agency better manage the many millions of acres under its control.
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The Bureau of Land Management is hoping to implement what it calls the Blueprint for 21st Century Recreation, and a new report identifies ways to achieve those goals.
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The public comment period for a proposed BLM rule on oil and gas leasing ends this Friday. Among other changes, the proposal would increase bonding requirements for cleanup costs and increase royalty rates.
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The Bureau of Land Management has outlined its plan to manage recreation on the roughly 245 million acres of public lands that it oversees. It includes what the agency calls “several major shifts” in its policies. Among the changes contemplated are expanding the use of fee collection technologies, diversifying BLM staff and taking steps to make public lands more accessible to underserved communities.
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The federal government is spending billions on infrastructure projects, including ecosystem restoration. Idaho Matters takes a look at what those dollars are buying.