About Forests & People - BLM lands and National Wildlife Refuges

The Bureau of Land Management 

After everyone who wanted to buy, homestead, or otherwise acquire land from the Public Domain had what they wanted, and the National Parks and National Forests had been withdrawn from the Public Domain there was still a lot of land yet owned by the government.  Nobody wanted it.  Private ownership didn’t work because it wouldn’t produce enough income to pay the taxes.  These aren’t headwater lands or watersheds that fit with National Forest Purposes and they don’t have the attractions to be a National Park.   These are mainly dry lands suited for grazing cattle, sheep, goats and horses, so the Grazing Service, within the Department of Interior, was set up to administer them.  That lasted a while, then in 1946,  Interior’s General Land Office was consolidated with the Grazing Service to form the Bureau of Land Management, the lands were labeled “National Resource Lands,” but everyone calls them BLM lands.  (Paul W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, pg 128).  

The products of BLM lands include: recreation, wood products, grazing, wildlife, water and Wilderness.   Grazing is an important use because of the nature of the land, most of it is arid, lower country, yet higher in the foothills than what is irrigated private ranch land.  Ranchers have the privilege of grazing BLM lands during the summer while their ranch land is producing hay for the cattle during the winter.  The grazing privileges are administered according to the terms of a permit and there are grazing fees based on the number of animal-unit-months (one cow and one calf for 30 days) allowed by the permit.  

National Wildlife Refuges

The first National Wildlife Refuge, Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge off the western coast of Florida, was designated by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1903.  It came about because a small group of citizens were concerned because hunters had shot the pelican population down to just a few birds.  Paul Kroegel decided to do what he could for the pelicans and ended up doing a lot more for all wildlife across North America.  His efforts for pelicans expanded into what became a system of National Wildlife Refuges.

In 1966 Congress passed the “National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act” that constitutes the “organic act” for the National Refuge System - it took a while (53 years) for Congress to recognize the need. The law set up the Fish and Wildlife Service within the Department of Interior as manager of the Refuges.  Their focused purpose is to do what their name implies, provide wildlife refuge areas.  They don’t cater to people, wild animals come first on these lands.  The Fish and Wildlife Service does provide parking areas, trails, viewing areas and buildings for educating people about the wild animals at the refuge, but these are secondary to providing habitat for the intended wildlife.  

There are about 551 National Wildlife Refuges across the nation and thousands of small wetlands and special areas.   Total Refuge acreage is nearly 150 million acres (that’s a lot), huge amounts of this are in Alaska.  Not much Refuge land is forested, critters and fish need wetlands and open spaces where shrubs and grass prosper.  Certainly forests are important for hiding cover and thermal cover and some species rely totally on forest, squirrels and martins for example, but, mostly, the Refuges are serving the open space needs of wild birds, mammals and fish.   Even so, it’s appropriate to think about Wildlife Refuges in this discussion because these are lands where natural processes dominate the land over economic opportunities.