Heart of BLM multiple use is 25

Heart of BLM multiple use is 25-year-old land policy

Oct 20, 2001

This week marks the 25th anniversary of a law many of you have probably never heard of, but if you live and work in the West, you have surely felt its impact. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, commonly called FLPMA (Flip-ma) by the Bureau of Land Management, handed this small Interior agency a broad, complex mandate to manage millions of surface and subsurface acres of public lands for the benefit of present and future generations.

The Act gave BLM what we call a "multiple-use" mandate, which means that no one resource or use of the public lands would be primary. Instead, BLM employees would manage the public lands in a combination of ways that best meets the needs of our country. Public participation and land-use planning were major tools provided for by FLPMA to assist BLM in management decisions.

Management for multiple uses has been challenging over the past 25 years. During this same time, Colorado’s population has nearly doubled. Over the past 25 years the amount of coal and natural gas produced from public lands has seen a six-fold increase. When FLPMA was passed there were no BLM lands managed for wilderness, and now there are nearly 800,000 acres of wilderness or wilderness study areas. Simultaneous increases in mineral production and wilderness protection are a testament to the multiple use mandate.

FLPMA expanded the scope of BLM programs to include not only traditional resources such as grazing and minerals, but emerging disciplines such as archaeology, wildlife habitat, wilderness, recreation, and water quality. Today, that means that on any given day, a BLM Colorado employee may be found on the public lands evaluating a wild horse herd management area in the morning, reviewing the impact of off-highway vehicle use in the afternoon and consulting with county commissioners in the evening to gather input on a land-use plan.

In Colorado, BLM manages more than 8.4 million surface acres of public lands and nearly 28 million acres of mineral estate. If you’ve traveled through the Piceance Basin in west-central Colorado and seen the oil and gas wells, this is the result of FLPMA. If you’ve visited the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores and discovered the rich ancestral Pueblo culture of 850 years ago, you’ve enjoyed some of the benefits of FLPMA. If you’ve experienced the solitude of hiking through the red rock canyons of the Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness area west of Grand Junction, it is the passage of FLPMA that contributed to this adventure.

In 1976, few anticipated the West’s rapid growth and its associated demographic, social and economic changes. It’s not only four million people living in Colorado, but people from around the country and international visitors who use the public lands. However, the language of FLPMA has endured for 25 years and remains the right mission for the West at this time. Thanks to FLPMA, we are confident that BLM has the tools needed to cooperatively and wisely manage our nation’s public lands.

Ann J. Morgan is the Colorado state director of the Bureau of Land Management.