New Web Site Provides Centralized Public Access to Land and Minerals Record Information from the BLM's LR2000 Data Base

The Bureau of Land Management has established a web site from which the public may now view, print, and download information from the agency's LR2000 data base, BLM Assistant Director Pete Culp announced today. The new site may be found on the Internet at www.blm.gov/lr2000 and is designed to provide access to public land and minerals record information.

The BLM's LR2000 data base supports decisionmakers in the public and private sectors in applications as varied as recording mining claims, processing oil and gas leases, developing rights-of-way, and carrying out land exchanges. "This site is designed to provide a direct access to services that previously required a visit to an information access center at one of our regional offices," said Culp. "Providing standardized land and minerals information over the World Wide Web is just one more example of the BLM's commitment to customer service."

To handle the rapidly growing public land business, Congress in 1812 created the General Land Office, a predecessor of the BLM. The Government Land Office was given the responsibility to "superintend, execute, and perform all such acts and things touching or respecting the public lands of the United States." Today, these and other land and minerals records are maintained by the BLM, which is entrusted with keeping what now amounts to more than two billion land and minerals records. For many of these records, the public will now be able to select, view, print, and download the land and mineral information for the lower-48 states from a centralized site via the World Wide Web.

The BLM, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, manages more land – 264 million surface acres – than any other Federal agency. Most of this public land is located in 12 Western States including Alaska. The Bureau, which has a budget of $1.4 billion and a workforce of about 8,700 employees, also administers more than 700 million acres of on-shore minerals throughout the nation. The BLM preserves open space by managing the public lands for multiple uses, including outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, and mining, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources found on the public lands.