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: May 23, 1996
- Contacts:
- Michelle Barret, BLM, (601) 898-0593
Chris Holmes, USFS, (202) 205-1006
(Breckenridge, Co.) -- A national agreement, signed today in Breckenridge, Colo., by the heads of the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, and the National Association of Counties, charts a course for increased cooperation in the management of the Nation's public lands.
"Our goal is to strengthen the collaborative efforts of our agencies and local governments in the planning and policy making for public lands," Mike Dombeck, acting Director for the BLM, said. "We have a good relationship with counties -- and we want to build on that."
Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas said, "I am pleased to be a party to this agreement. It builds on our past cooperative work with NACo. I am encouraging all Forest Service employees to look ahead and make every effort to strengthen and improve our relationships with counties throughout the nation."
The agreement, called a Memorandum of Understanding, calls for the three organizations to identify and explore opportunities for training, education programs, cooperation in land use planning and access management. It also calls for the groups to coordinate federal and local land management plans and identify pilot projects at the local or regional levels where the federal and local governments can implement land management policies.
In addition, the three groups will participate in the National Rural Development Partnership to help communities identify new ways to maintain economic vitality.
"It's gratifying to be part of something so positive with counties," Dombeck said. "This agreement will benefit not only our local communities, but also the health of our country's public lands."
In addition to the new agreement, Dombeck, who addressed NACo at its Western Interstate Region Conference, discussed the Departments of Interior and Agriculture's new fire management policy.
Dombeck called the new fire policy a "way to reduce the risk of devastating forest fires."
Our past perception that all fires are bad has caused a significant detrimental change in many parts of our western landscape, he said. We have systematically removed the natural flame from the western U.S. allowing dangerously high levels of fire fuels -- dead vegetation -- to build up and cause undesirable plants and trees to crowd out native, more desirable vegetation.
The new plan recognizes the natural and constructive role of fire in the landscape; directs that every area with burnable vegetation must have a fire management plan consistent with land and resource management plans; delegates responsibility for local wildland/urban interface decisions to local land managers; and directs that local managers develop and implement fire policies in cooperation with interested people and agencies.
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