BLM-led "National Public Lands Day Partnership" Selected to Receive Hammer Award

A team comprised of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), eight other Federal agencies, and the National Environmental Education & Training Foundation has been selected to receive Vice President Al Gore's Hammer Award for the team's work in developing National Public Lands Day into a high-impact, nationwide celebration. This annual volunteer event, now in its seventh year, is an example of the successful implementation of a powerful reinvention formula: making government work better and cost less. The eight other participating Federal partners are: BLM, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA Forest Service, National Park Service, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The National Environmental Education & Training Foundation, chartered by Congress in 1990, coordinates the various Federal agency activities relating to National Public Lands Day.

"The Hammer Award is an excellent tool for tearing down an outmoded structure and is also very successful in building something new and better in its place," said Morley Winograd, senior policy advisor to Vice President Gore and director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. "For that reason, the Vice President has chosen it as his way of recognizing the efforts of those Federal employee teams who have successfully reinvented a process or program in order to make it work better and cost less."

The National Public Lands Day (NPLD) Partnership has reinvented how Americans care for the nation's most extensive natural resource: our public lands. Each year, the success of National Public Lands Day activities depends on cooperation among Federal agencies, State and local governments, private organizations, businesses, and citizen volunteers, who are invited to invest their efforts in our nation's public lands. This annual event takes place on the last Saturday of every September. The day provides an opportunity for Federal managers to call on those who use and enjoy the lands to gain a sense of shared stewardship and to restore and enhance places that are of value to all Americans.

Federal land managers design hands-on workdays for NPLD volunteers, who build trails and bridges, make facilities universally accessible, renew tired buildings, improve wildlife habitat, remove invasive plants to make room for native species, restore shorelines, protect cultural resources, and perform many other projects that could not be accomplished without the fruitful partnership that is at the heart of National Public Lands Day.

Involvement in National Public Lands Day has grown from one agency (BLM), three sites, and 700 volunteers in 1994, to nine agencies, more than 250 sites, and 30,000 volunteers in every state in September 2000. This year, BLM alone coordinated an extraordinary variety of work and educational activities at a record 50 sites in 18 states from Florida to Alaska, enlisting the aid of more than 6,000 volunteers of all ages, backgrounds, and skill levels. The BLM-hosted improvements made on that day are valued at over $1 million out of an estimates total of $8 million in work done nationwide for all agencies.

BLM 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 agency also administers 700 million acres of onshore mineral estate located 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.