America's
Priceless
Heritage

Policy and Guidance

Laws and Regulations

BLM's Cultural Program is conducted under Federal mandates. No employee time or effort, contract expenditure or government equipment occurs unless authorized by Federal Statutes. The full text as well as descriptive paragraphs of laws and regulations that pertain to the Cultural Program my be seen here. Regulations specify how the laws will be implemented and are cited here.

Manuals

BLM operates and provides guidance to its employees under a system of instructions in the form of BLM manuals. Generally, laws specify what must be done; whereas, the manual provides the guidance as to how it should be done. You may access BLM's current 8100 series manuals that guide the Cultural Program here. These are in "Portable Document Format" (PDF) and may be searched using Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat for specific terms of interest. Earnest work on BLM's Cultural manuals began in 1976 and these documents have undergone many refinements and updates to date. The manuals are regularly reviewed and updated so that they are up to date.

Programmatic Agreement

In 1997, the BLM's Director, the Council's Chairman, and the NCSHPO's President signed a national Programmatic Agreement (PA) explicitly framed "to emphasize the common goal of planning for and managing historic properties under the BLM's jurisdiction or control in the public interest." The national Programmatic Agreement (Section 5. b.) calls for cooperation and enhanced communication among SHPOs and BLM States as well as "a protocol specifying how they will operate and interact under this agreement." Each BLM State has a "Protocol" agreement these may be viewed here BLM States Alaska Arizona California Colorado Eastern SO Idaho Montana Nevada New Mexico Oregon Utah Wyoming .

Program Overview

An overview and summary of BLM's Cultural Heritage program reviews significant legislation as well as partnerships that exist to promote legislative goals. Details regarding the functioning and meetings of the BLM's Preservation Board may be found here.