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Show Bureau Opens Nonrninera! Filing For Public Lands in West States commented. One easy way for citizens today to-day to obtain public lands is to purchase a tract which the government gov-ernment has already placed on the market for sale. Those having hav-ing special requirements may still choose to locate lands themselves them-selves and file applications for it. Such procedures may not be as fast as purchasing land already al-ready classified because of the need to examine the lands before be-fore any final action to classify and open them may be taken. Secretary Udall cautioned the people seeking public lands to beware of unethical land locators loca-tors and promoters, people who in the past have bilked thousands thou-sands of people out of millions of dollars by selling useless services. serv-ices. It is not necessary for the citizen to obtain the services of the so called land locators for filing services. Non-mineral applications for public lands in western states, including Utah, may again be filed as a result of the lifting Tuesday by the Department of the Interior of an 18 month moratorium, according to R. D. Nielson. Utah state director of the U. S. Bureau of Land Management. Man-agement. The moratorium was declared by Secretary Stewart L. Udall to give the Department's Bureau of Land Management time to reduce a backlog of some 40,000 non-mineral applications, some of them three and four years old. j The figure is now down to 17,000 cases. In Utah, Mr. Nielson said, BLM has reduced the number of public applications from 368 at the start of the moratorium in February, 1961, to 253 cases currently, which is considered to be a oineline oneration. Some areas in certain states, such as Arizona, California and Nevada, remain closed to small tract filings until the lands are classified and offered for sale by an appropriate order. Ending of the moratorium will not open these lands. Secretary Udall emphasized that ending of the moratorium does not mean that applications would be approved for lands closed under special regulations, and he cautioned persons to find out if the lands are subject to filing making their applications. applica-tions. BLM has taken steps to designate desig-nate certain areas in Utah where tracts will be offered to the public. As these areas become identified and available they will be publicly publicized. The Bureau's land offices in several states took less than 18 months to eliminate their backlogs back-logs and the moratorium has already al-ready been lifted in those states. The Billings, Montana, land office of-fice was the first to clean up the backlog and began receiving applications ap-plications for lands in February. Febru-ary. Offices in Wyoming and Colorado, which also handle applications ap-plications for the few remaining tracts of the national land reserve re-serve in Kansas and Nebraska, were on a pipeline basis in April and the moratorium was lifted in Alaska in June. The moratorium has affected only non-mineral applications; oil and gas lease offers and other mineral applications were never affected. The backlog of applications which resulted in the moratorium morato-rium was created in part by speculative land locator activities activi-ties and party by outmoded law, Secretary Udall said. Most of the applications were, in effect, requests for BLM to classify and open the lands a process requiring re-quiring examination of all aspects as-pects of potential land use. "We hope that my more efficient effi-cient procedures and with more favorable action by Congress on certain revisions of the public land laws we will be able to keep the work current in the months and years ahead," he |