Forests and Woodlands Management

One fourth of the lands – 67 million acres -- managed by the BLM are forests or woodlands. These make up an important part of the BLM’s multiple-use mission and are managed for a variety of critical uses for the benefit of all Americans. Of these lands, 11 million acres are commercial forestlands, generally with species used for traditional forest products such as lumber, plywood, and paper. Fifty five million acres are woodlands, of which 11 million acres overlap with rangeland sites. These BLM lands are mostly piñon/juniper, western juniper and aspen and provide high quality wildlife habitat. Woodlands produce fuelwood, posts, poles, greenery and biomass for energy production to local communities.

BLM’s forests and woodlands are comprised of the highly productive Oregon & California (O&C) lands in western Oregon (2.3 million acres) and the public domain lands scattered across the 13 Western states (32 million acres) and Alaska (33 million acres).

The O&C Act (Public Law 75-405) requires that the O&C lands be managed for permanent forest production in conformance with the principle of sustained yield for the purpose of providing a permanent source of timber supply, protecting watersheds, regulating stream flow, contributing to the economic stability of local communities and industries, and providing recreational opportunities.

The management of the public domain lands is focused on forest health restoration, reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire, and forest product sales by commercial green and salvage timbersales as well as personal use permits.

Under the Healthy Forest Initiative (HFI), Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) and Tribal Forest Protection Act (TFPA), BLM has implemented stewardship contracting and is implementing a biomass utilization strategy.