BLM works on wilderness agenda

As part of Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s push to build a bipartisan wilderness agenda that can be enacted in the 112th Congress, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) state offices will solicit suggestions and recommendations from state and local elected officials, Tribes, and other federal land managers on areas that deserve wilderness protection and that have broad support for congressional designation. “The focus of this effort is to identify lands that have strong backing for protection as wilderness and that might be appropriate for congressional action,” BLM Director Bob Abbey said. “The best ideas for conservation come from the ground up, and we hope this effort will help lay a foundation for a bipartisan wilderness agenda in this Congress. We’ve heard from the public and many people have expressed how much they value wilderness areas.” This effort is an extension of Secretary Salazar’s June 10, 2011, letter to Members of Congress requesting their ideas on “crown jewel” areas of public lands that have strong local support for permanent protection as Wilderness under the Wilderness Act. This fall, the Department of the Interior will submit to Congress a list of “crown jewels” it believes are ready for Wilderness designation by Congress based on the combined input from Congressional, state, local and tribal partners...more

The BLM’s Instruction Memoranda is available here.