The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages approximately 245 million acres in the U.S., the majority of which are in the western half of the country. There have been several conflicts in Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Arizona, since 2010 that have resulted in a fatality, armed militias, several incarcerations, and lawsuits facing the federal government. Following a preliminary needs assessment conducted in Box Elder County, Utah, and a comprehensive review of the literature, further research was needed to understand BLM professional (BLM managers or BLM specialists) and rancher perceptions regarding BLM policies and procedures. The study specifically looked at attitudes, perception and knowledge concerning the implementation of range improvement projects to potentially address conflicts and relationship issues between ranchers and BLM professionals. A needs assessment model was used to frame the research. Two similar questionnaires, one for BLM professional and the other for permitees (ranchers) using federal land managed by the BLM, were developed by the researcher. The questionnaire was divided into four sections: participant characteristics; perceptions concerning BLM policies; knowledge questions related to BLM policies; and attitudes concerning federal land ownership and BLM policies. The rancher questionnaire was mailed to 182 ranchers and netted a 37.2% response rate. The BLM questionnaire was emailed to 15 BLM professionals in the Salt Lake Field office and netted an 84.6% response rate. Results were analyzed using descriptive and appropriate correlation statistics. Multiple relationships between rancher and BLM professionals’ perceptions and knowledge were identified. Rancher interventions should include (a) when to submit rangeland improvement projects, (b) what could result in a temporary reduction in AUMs on a grazing allotment, (c) where to access online NEPA documents, and (d) who makes final land management decisions for the BLM. BLM professionals’ interventions could include the steps required for planning a juniper removal project, and when to submit a new waterline or fenceline request. Ranchers’ background has minimal influence on their perception. Rancher age had a medium, positive relationship on ranchers’ attitude regarding the NEPA process working and needing no revisions. Finally, the majority of rancher respondents identified as somewhat agreeing, somewhat disagreeing, or strongly disagreeing with the federal government owning land.

Wild free-roaming horses in the American West continue to exist in tension with the land they inhabit, the government that “manages” them, and the people that are impacted by them. The problem, argued here, is the result of the ideological construction of mustangs in American culture, and it calls forth questions about human-nature relationships as well as contemporary understandings of Environmentalism. This research follows in the theoretical foundations of Raymond Geuss and Tommie Shelby to unpack the epistemic properties (empirical evidence of the contexts from which ideologies are formed), functional properties (consequences of suffering and benefits as a result of ideologies), and genetic histories (historical contexts the construct the ideologies in a culture) of ideologies relating to wild horses in the West; by doing so it also provides insight into nature identification, the borders and barriers of human creations, and the limitations of access for performing environmentalism. This text focuses primarily on the life and experiences of Velma Bronn Johnston as an exemplar of environmental change in unexpected ways. Her narrative culminates in the passing of the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 that created material changes for the lives of mustangs in the West as well as long-term consequences for citizens of the United States of America. Consequentially, mustangs of the West face a population “problem” that costs the United States more than $80 million annually with almost no signs of decreasing.

The Bureau of Land Managements (BLM) Emergency Fire Rehabilitation (EFR) policy was developed in 1985 to encourage protection of sites from soil erosion and to minimize potential changes in vegetation communities that may result from the dominance of weedy species. To achieve the goals of EFR policy, managers often used introduced perennial grasses that established quicker and competed better with introduced annuals than did native plants. However, the change of sagebrush-grass communities to communities dominated by introduced forage grasses has led to concerns for wildlife habitat. This concern contributed to a policy change encouraging the use of native species, when available, for rehabilitation projects. This study attempts to assess the effectiveness of BLM EFR projects in meeting the stated goals of the BLM EFR policy in the Great Basin. To do this, two field offices per state were randomly selected from an inclusive list of all Great Basin field offices. In 2001, we randomly selected three EFR projects per field office from those projects that used native species. On each project site, we used a common monitoring technique in association with monitoring techniques implemented by the BLM to assess if national EFR objectives were being met. A semi-structured survey was developed to determine the potential reasons why native and introduced plants were either used or not used, why monitoring was and was not proposed, and whether monitoring was implemented in rehabilitation projects. BLM monitoring techniques did not adequately evaluate EFR goal achievement. The time it took to implement any of the BLM methods did not differ significantly from the time needed to implement the common protocol on the two projects where BLM had implemented monitoring and used native plants (F[subscript 3,12]=1.63, P=0.23). Cost to implement the common monitoring technique was minimal and it directly measured aspects of stated EFR policy goals. Vegetative cover of all natives, seeded and volunteers, contributed half of the overall cover on EFR projects and was significantly higher than sown introduced species. Invasive species were intermediate and did not differ significantly from either the natives or the introduced. The seeded species were a subset of the native or introduced classes. Composition by cover between sown native, sown introduced, and invasive species did not differ significantly. Vegetation cover increased the surface soil stability 39% of the time and subsurface stability 56% beneath the vegetation. Respondents of the survey stated that they generally use more natives and more complex seed mixtures than they did historically. Many also stated that they prefer to use native over introduced species. However, most felt that introduced species are more effective in meeting EFR goals on the degraded sites than native species. All respondents would like to access a summarized report of other rehabilitation projects. The respondents were split between accessing it through the World Wide Web or through a written report. We believe that a common database could be created and maintained on the World Wide Web if a common sampling protocol was implemented. / Graduation date: 2004

Ecological research, both basic and applied, can inform management decisions on public land in a number of ways. Most importantly, it can illuminate any negative effects of a given land use practice as well as the causes behind that effect. This type of information can be important to a management agency, such as the BLM, with a multi-use mission as these studies indicate under what management regimes a land use is in contradiction with other goals, such as conservation or restoration. The current body of research, however, is flawed. In order to make fully informed decisions, land managers are in need of site or ecosystem-specific studies, which may not be available for the ecosystem in question. In addition, as is the case with investigations of the effects of extraction of natural gas, lack of baseline data and systematically controlled experiments lead to incomplete answering of questions pertinent to land managers. To produce research that is more pertinent to land managers, researchers and managers can work together more closely. This could be facilitated if funding were available to BLM field offices to solicit investigation into questions they need answered locally. This may necessitate a certain level of decentralization or at least more discretionary power given to local managers within the agency. Close collaboration between researchers and land managers from the beginning would ensure the produced results could better inform management decisions. Public land managers of the BLM cannot only consider scientific research when making land use decisions, however. Its multi-use mission statement requires an integration of conservation, restoration, recreation and resource use and extraction. This can lead to a number of conflicts or contradictions between goals. In addition, national, state, and local values and priorities play into which land use practices are deemed acceptable, often regardless of scientific research. In order to remedy the situation, boundary spanning, a transdisciplinary approach, and decentralization have been suggested.

This thesis is an examination and description of the United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management's program for the management of cultural resources in the State of Oregon. The author has worked for the Bureau from March, 1975 to the present as a District cultural resource specialist. The major emphasis of the thesis is a description and explanation of the Bureau's cultural resource management program and its major problems in relation to the taxpayer and archaeologists.

Conflict among residents of a gateway community regarding the breadth of perceptions of impacts from commercial whitewater rafting and the need for mitigating policies persists despite an intensive planning process and implementation of policies to mitigate negative effects. With an overarching purpose of exploring the nature of conflict, specific study objectives are 1) to characterize Pilar resident perceptions of recreation and the BLM, 2) to describe how Pilar as a community adjusts to recreation, and 3) to characterize Pilar resident expectations of BLM regarding recreation impacts. Methods include coding interview transcriptions, participant observation summaries, meeting minutes, and public comments on an environmental impact statement. Findings suggest that perceptions of recreational boating are influenced by factors such as occupation and place attachment and that these factors also determine group interaction and reactions to commercial boating and BLM policies. / Graduation date: 2002

Wilderness preservation has been at the center of debates about public land policy for almost half a century, and nowhere has the controversy been more intractable than in Utah. Despite its vast expanses of unsetded and undeveloped red rock desert, managed primarily by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Utah has less designated wilderness than in any other state in the West. In this study, I focus on San Juan County in southeast Utah to study the conflict over the designation of wilderness. The controversy pits local residents and state politicians against state and national environmental groups, with the BLM shifting positions in between. I analyze and interpret the wilderness debate from three different perspectives. The fIrst explores the history of the Utah wilderness debate from the first BLM wilderness inventory in the 1970's through its re-inventory in the 1990's. I examine the influence of national, regional, and local forces such as institutional change within the BLM, in-fIghting among Utah-based environmental interest groups, and the sagebrush rebellion and county supremacy movements. The second perspective incorporates the spatial analytical techniques of geographical information systems to provide a relatively objective view of landscape characteristics used to defIne wilderness. I interpret the landscape as a continuum of varying degrees of wildness, a product of inherent naturalness and the influences of human impacts. Lastly, I examine the personal views of the meaning of wilderness through the words of actual participants in the debate. In an analysis of the statements of both county residents as well as the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, I explore the mental images and ideas that influence the ways in which people value and understand the desert environment.