The Bureau of Land Management's Conservation Mandate - Areas of Critical Environmental Concern in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Ne

In this report, WildEarth Guardians analyzes the effort of the BLM in four states to protect 'areas of critical environmental concern'.

The Bureau of Land Management, the Nation’s largest land manager, generally suffers from a myopic view of its Congressional mandate to protect sensitive natural resources on the more than 265 million acres that it manages for the American public. Though the landscapes the BLM administers are biologically diverse, scenically stunning and rich in cultural and natural history, the BLM-especially under the Bush Administration-continues to degrade these resources and ignore its conservation mandate.

In this report, WildEarth Guardians analyzes the effort of the BLM in four states to protect ‘areas of critical environmental concern’. The ACEC mandate, if deployed as Congress originally intended, could provide the BLM with a road map to respond to the mounting biodiversity crisis as well as meet other emerging conservation challenges and, in doing so, elevate the agency’s profile as a steward of our Nation’s unique natural heritage.

The BLM is often unwilling to designate ACECs where the most serious threats to resource values occur and where the most controversy over management actions is likely to take place. Where ACECs do exist in these conditions, a failure to implement necessary management directives or to enforce existing management directives has almost universally compromised the effectiveness of the ACEC designation. A fundamental change is necessary, from the highest levels of the Interior Department to the on-the-ground land managers that recognizes the need to limit or discontinue destructive land uses on the small percentage of lands that are truly “areas of critical environmental concern”.

Read the Report 3/1/04 (PDF)


 

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