Vegetation Treatments EIS and Environmental Report

Overview

An important facet of the BLM’s multiple-use mission is the management and control of vegetation on public lands. To meet that responsibility, in 2001 the BLM launched a multi-year effort to develop a programmatic environmental impact statement that contains national guidance for using herbicides and other treatments to manage vegetation on BLM-administered public lands in 17 western states. This effort also responds to directions from the President and Congress to implement the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 by taking more aggressive actions to reduce catastrophic wildfire risk on public lands.

The BLM started this Programmatic EIS project to replace analyses contained in four existing EISs completed between 1986 and 1992 for 14 western states, and to analyze vegetation treatments in two additional western states and Alaska. This Programmatic EIS will provide a comprehensive NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) document that can be used by BLM field-level staffs for local land-use planning.

The BLM’s Draft Vegetation Treatments Using Herbicides on Bureau of Land Management Lands in 17 Western States Programmatic EIS (PEIS) has two primary objectives:

  • To determine which herbicide active ingredients are approved for use on public lands in the western U.S., including Alaska, to improve the agency’s ability to control hazardous fuels and unwanted vegetation.
  • To develop a multi-agency, state-of-the-science human health and ecological risk assessment methodology that will serve as the initial standard for assessing human health and ecological risk for herbicides that may become available for use in the future.

This PEIS is accompanied by a Draft Vegetation Treatments on Bureau of Land Management Lands in 17 Western States Programmatic Environmental Report (PER), which describes the environmental impacts of using non-herbicide vegetation treatment methods on public lands.

Supporting reports and documentation are also available on links listed below.

The final PEIS will guide the BLM’s actions through its proposed treatment of vegetation on approximately 932,000 acres annually in 17 western states in the United States, including Alaska, using 14 currently approved and four new herbicide active ingredients.

The final PER will guide the treatment of 5.1 million acres by other means, including prescribed fire and manual, mechanical, and biological methods.

The proposed actions would reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires by reducing hazardous fuels and restoring fire-damaged lands, and would improve ecosystem health by controlling weeds and invasive plant species and managing vegetation to benefit fish and wildlife habitat, improve riparian and wetlands areas, and improve water quality in priority watersheds.

The public has been involved throughout the scoping process for this project, and the BLM now invites you to read these documents, attend scheduled public meetings if possible, and send constructive comments to the BLM during the public comment period, Nov. 10, 2005, through January 9, 2006. Details for sending comments are in the Frequently Asked Questions.

Last updated: 01/12/06

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