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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.
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Backcountry Conservation Areas are a relatively new land management tool established by the Department of Interior in 2017 to “support wildlife-dependent recreation and hunting opportunities and facilitate the long-term maintenance of big game wildlife populations.” A major, 120,800-acre BCA was just established near Boise, the largest of the handful created so far.
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On Tuesday, federal officials are holding a public meeting in Flagstaff to hear comments regarding the proposed 1.1-million-acre Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument. Among other things, it would make permanent an existing mining moratorium in the area.
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The public comment period for the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed public lands rule closed this week, with well over 200,000 people weighing in. The Center for Western Priorities, which supports the proposal, analyzed those comments and found that an overwhelming majority was supportive.
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One element of the BLM’s proposed Public Lands Rule would allow for so-called conservation leasing, which would enable public and private entities to carry out restoration work or compensatory mitigation to offset the impacts of projects. The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, says that such leases could speed the development of clean energy on public lands, an important prospect given the Biden administration’s ambitious goal of permitting 25 gigawatts of such projects by 2025.
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Tracy Stone-Manning, the director of the Bureau of Land Management, loves the travel that her work requires and above all, loves working hard. She says the challenges in front of her and her 10,000 BLM colleagues are met best through hard work.