The Bureau of Land Management NEWS |
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The Bureau of Land Management NEWS |
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Last updated: 04/04/03
Release date: September 18, 1995
Contact: Tom Gorey (tgorey@wo0033wp.wo.blm.gov)
Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Acting Director Mike Dombeck announced today that they will participate in the first meetings of the newly established citizen Resource Advisory Councils. Babbitt and Dombeck will do so by means of a nationally accessible video teleconference with 24 council meetings that will be held throughout the West on September 21, 1995.
"These new Resource Advisory Councils will move rangeland health decisions out of Washington and put them in the capable hands of those on the ground," Babbitt said. "The councils, which were established under new rules that affect BLM-managed lands, are a key part of our effort to reach common ground through local leadership. I am pleased to be able to participate in the first meetings of these councils, whose membership reflects the diversity of local people who use and care about our public lands."
Dombeck said, "These 10- to 15-member councils will give ranchers, recreationists, environmentalists and others an opportunity to reach consensus on public land issues of local concern. Reaching consensus won't be easy, but it's well worth the effort, because the public lands belong to all Americans."
The Resource Advisory Councils are one of the components of a new grazing and public participation rule, which the BLM calls its Healthy Rangelands strategy. This strategy, published last February in the Federal Register, took effect on August 21, 1995.
Twenty-one of the 24 Resource Advisory Councils will hold their first meetings on September 21, with a second day of meetings to follow on September 22. Three Colorado councils have already held their first meetings; they met jointly last month in Grand Junction, Colorado, at a session that was attended by Secretary Babbitt and Colorado Governor Roy Romer.
The Babbitt-Dombeck video teleconference will be accessible nationally to news media and any other organizations or persons with satellite reception capability.
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