Editorial: BLM is way off course

Saturday, May 20, 2006 | 7:29 a.m.

The Bureau of Land Management is struggling to meet the demands of managing the 262 million acres of public land it is charged with protecting, a new report says.

The agency, which manages much of Nevada, suffers from a shortage of staff and funding, and it is being pulled apart by the sometimes competing missions of protecting land and permitting drilling and mining, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The group notes that one result of the bureau's plight may be the eventual loss of important cultural and archaeological sites.

The Las Vegas Sun has long reported on BLM's struggles in the fast-growing West, where a population wave has swamped the agency's ability to keep up with modern-day demands. In addition to the traditional duties of managing conservation and preservation programs, grazing sites and recreation areas, the bureau has a growing list of oversight responsibilities: a controversial wild horse program, thousands of abandoned mines, obstinate all-terrain vehicle drivers, trash dumpers, squatters, vandals and lost hikers. In some areas, a single ranger patrols tens of thousands of acres.

Part of the problem is money - or a lack of it. President Bush has requested a mostly static BLM budget in recent years and Congress has obliged. National Trust President Richard Moe wants lawmakers to increase BLM's budget for cultural resource management from $15 million to $50 million, and he wants a new commitment from the government to protect the 26 million acres of BLM land that make up the National Landscape Conservation System - some of its most precious holdings.

The other major problem for the agency is a shift in focus away from conservation - specifically its own mandate to increasingly issue permits for oil and natural gas drilling, the report says. New energy legislation paved the way for rapid exploitation of natural resources of public lands and "gives the cultural resources staff in BLM little or no time to conduct surveys or produce inventory data," according to the report. Under orders to spend their time devoted to energy issues, some BLM officials have quit the agency.

The Bush administration has consistently been at war with the environment, from initiatives to put drilling over nature to its proposals to sell off parts of national forests and to slash conservation budgets. Congress should step in to empower the BLM to better protect our lands and it should give the agency the money it needs to do it.