Integrated Public Lands Management is the only book that deals with the management procedures of all the primary public land management agencies—National Forests, Parks, Wildlife Refuges, and the Bureau of Land Management—in one volume. This book fills the need for a unified treatment of the analytical procedures used by federal land management agencies in planning and managing their diverse lands. The second edition charts the progress these agencies have made toward the management of their lands as ecosystems. It includes new U.S. Forest Service regulations, expanded coverage of Geographic Information Systems, and new legislation on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Wildlife Refuges.

"The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains. It's an American commons, and it is under assault as never before. Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the reader on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons. Ketcham begins in Utah, revealing the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, and exposing rampant malfeasance in the federal land management agencies, who have been compromised by the profit-driven livestock and energy interests they are supposed to regulate. He then turns to the broad effects of those corrupt politics on wildlife. He tracks the Department of Interior's failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act--including its stark betrayal of protections for the grizzly bear and the sage grouse--and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry. Along the way, Ketcham talks with ecologists, biologists, botanists, former government employees, whistleblowers, grassroots environmentalists and other citizens who are fighting to protect the public domain for future generations. This Land is a colorful muckraking journey--part Edward Abbey, part Upton Sinclair--exposing the rot in American politics that is rapidly leading to the sell-out of our national heritage"--

Rangelands comprise between 40 and 50 percent of all U.S. land and serve the nation both as productive areas for wildlife, recreational use, and livestock grazing and as watersheds. The health and management of rangelands have been matters for scientific inquiry and public debate since the 1880s, when reports of widespread range degradation and livestock losses led to the first attempts to inventory and classify rangelands. Scientists are now questioning the utility of current methods of rangeland classification and inventory, as well as the data available to determine whether rangelands are being degraded. These experts, who are using the same methods and data, have come to different conclusions. This book examines the scientific basis of methods used by federal agencies to inventory, classify, and monitor rangelands; it assesses the success of these methods; and it recommends improvements. The book's findings and recommendations are of interest to the public; scientists; ranchers; and local, state, and federal policymakers.

It is the largest landholder in America, overseeing nearly an eighth of the country: 258 million acres located almost exclusively west of the Mississippi River, with even twice as much below the surface. Its domain embraces wildlife and wilderness, timber, range, and minerals, and for over 60 years, the Bureau of Land Management has been an agency in search of a mission. This is the first comprehensive, analytical history of the BLM and its struggle to find direction. James Skillen traces the bureau's course over three periods—its formation in 1946 and early focus on livestock and mines, its 1970s role as mediator between commerce and conservation, and its experience of political gridlock since 1981 when it faced a powerful antienvironmental backlash. Focusing on events that have shaped the BLM's overall mission, organization, and culture, he takes up issues ranging from the National Environmental Policy Act to the Sagebrush Rebellion in order to paint a broad picture of the agency's changing role in the American West. Focusing on the vast array of lands and resources that the BLM manages, he explores the complex and at times contradictory ways that Americans have valued nature. Skillen shows that, although there have been fleeting moments of consensus over the purpose of national forests and parks, there has never been any such consensus over the federal purpose of the public lands overseen by the BLM. Highlighting the perennial ambiguities shadowing the BLM's domain and mission, Skillen exposes the confusion sown by conflicting congressional statutes, conflicting political agendas, and the perennial absence of public support. He also shows that, while there is room for improvement in federal land management, the criteria by which that improvement is measured change significantly over time. In the face of such ambiguity—political, social, and economic--Skillen argues that the agency's history of limited political power and uncertain mission has, ironically, better prepared it to cope with the more chaotic climate of federal land management in the twenty-first century. Indeed, operating in an increasingly crowded physical and political landscape, it seems clear that the BLM's mission will continue to be marked by ambiguity. For historians, students, public administrators, or anyone who cares about American lands, Skillen offers a cautionary tale for those still searching for a final solution to federal land and resource conflicts.

How it is that the United States—the country that cherishes the ideal of private property more than any other in the world—has chosen to set aside nearly one-third of its land area as public lands? Now in a fully revised and updated edition covering the first years of the Trump administration, Randall Wilson considers this intriguing question, tracing the often-forgotten ideas of nature that have shaped the evolution of America’s public land system. The result is a fresh and probing account of the most pressing policy and management challenges facing national parks, forests, rangelands, and wildlife refuges today. The author explores the dramatic story of the origins of the public domain, including the century-long effort to sell off land and the subsequent emergence of a national conservation ideal. Arguing that we cannot fully understand one type of public land without understanding its relation to the rest of the system, he provides in-depth accounts of the different types of public lands. With chapters on national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, Bureau of Land Management lands, and wilderness areas, Wilson examines key turning points and major policy debates for each land type, including recent Trump Administration efforts to roll back environmental protections. He considers debates ranging from national monument designations and bison management to gas and oil drilling, wildfire policy, the bark beetle epidemic, and the future of roadless and wilderness conservation areas. His comprehensive overview offers a chance to rethink our relationship with America’s public lands, including what it says about the way we relate to, and value, nature in the United States.

Handbook on best practices for marine managed areas boundary making within a geographic information systems framework. Covers federal, State, and local marine managed areas. Produced under the auspices of the Federal Geographic Data Committee's Marine Boundary Working Group

The story of homesteaders and settlement on the public lands of the United States has been told by many. It seems from those stories that settlement was done in a very orderly fashion, but that was not the case. This book tells the untold stories of squatters, speculators, and timber thieves and the government agents that were employed to combat their illegal activities. The homestead acts were supposed to be about fair opportunity for all. But many would abuse and misuse the land entry laws for their own greedy gain. The first western cattlemen got used to controlling vast areas of public rangeland. When the settlers came, some of them fenced them out and interfered with the "Federal purpose" of settlement. The General Land Office surveyed the lands, opened them for settlement, and received the claims of the settlers. The General Land Office special agents were to make certain that all requirements of the land entry laws were lawfully obeyed. The vast public timber lands were subject to timber barons finding ways to steal the timber right under the nose of the government. Later, the timber barons found ways to manipulate the land entry laws to acquire huge tracts of the public timber lands for their own ownership. Eventually, this would lead to massive land fraud and in some cases resulted in the indictment of a senator, a congressman, and the Commissioner of the General Land Office. The book goes on to recount the struggles of the General Land Office and the Grazing Service to establish control over the public lands. These two agencies would merge to create the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM would struggle for many decades attempting to find effective ways to see that the public lands laws were obeyed. After much and heated debate, eventually the BLM would be granted law enforcement authority by the Congress. There would be few public land issues that would carry greater controversy and political sensitivity. A foundation of special agents and rangers would be built to serve the investigative and enforcement needs of the BLM. These government agents worked hard to accomplish the protection goals of the BLM, but would be subject to extraordinary scrutiny along the way.