OCR Text |
Show Conservation. Restoration BLM Launches Sweeping EIS For Western States The Bureau of Land Management will prepare an environmental impact statement for the conservation and restoration restora-tion of vegetation, watershed and wildlife habitat treatments on public lands administered by its staff in the western United States, including Alaska. To begin the process, the agency will hold scoping meetings across the West and in Alaska. Completion of the EIS is scheduled sched-uled for the summer of 2003. Utah meetings will be held: January 8, 6-9 p.m., Utah Department of Natural Resources Bldg., 1594 West North Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah. January 22, 6-9 p.m., BLM Office Conference Room, 345 East Riverside Drive, St. George, Utah. The comprehensive EIS will update and replace analyses contained in four existing vegetation vege-tation treatment and noxious weed management EIS completed complet-ed from 1986 to 1992. The EIS, which is national in scope, will consider reasonably foreseeable activities planned in each state, to include reduction and treatment of highly flammable flamma-ble forest and rangeland fuel (trees, brush and other plants that have accumulated). Treatment activities may include, but are not limited to, prescribed fire, riparian restoration, restora-tion, restoration of native plant communities, control of invasive inva-sive plants and noxious weeds, thinning of forest under-story, forest health activities, and other treatment projects in ecosystems where fire has historically played an active role. The analysis area will include all surface estate public lands administered by the BLM in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, North and South Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Issues that have been initially identified for analysis during the EIS process are: reduction and treatment of highly flammable forest and rangeland fuel (trees, brush and other plants that have accumulated), including mechanical treatments; noxious weed control activities; restoration restora-tion of ecoystem processes; protection pro-tection of cultural resources; watershed and vegetative community com-munity health; habitat improvement improve-ment opportunities for threatened threat-ened and endangered species, and sensitive and special status species; new chemical formulations formula-tions for herbicides that may be more environmentally favorable than those now being used; smoke management and air quality; emergency stabilization and restoration of wildfire-affected wildfire-affected landscapes; and watershed water-shed and water quality improvement improve-ment The EIS will also address human health risk assessments for a variety of chemical herbicides herbi-cides that have become available avail-able since the last EIS was written. writ-ten. A reasonable range of alternatives, alter-natives, including a No Action alternative, will be developed to respond to the issues identified at the outset of the NEPA process. Each alternative will provide solutions to the issues and concerns brought out through public scoping to develop devel-op reasonable approaches to conservation and restoration activities. The BLM's interdisciplinary project team will coordinate closely with local, state and tribal trib-al governments, in addition to working with . the Western Governors Association and the National Association of Counties. Locations and dates for public scoping meetings will be announced in a future I Federal Register notice and in local and statewide media. During the initial scoping phase, written or e-mailed comments com-ments regarding the issues listed above or any additional issues will be accepted for 30 days after publication of the Notice in the Federal Register. To provide written comments, com-ments, or to be placed on the mailing list, contact Brian (See BLM on page 4-A) BLM From Front Page Amme, Acting Project Manager, Bureau of land Management, P.O. Box 12000, Reno, NV 89520-0006; tel: (775) 861-,6645. 861-,6645. Comments will be available avail-able for public inspection at the BLM Nevada State Office, 1340 Financial Blvd., Reno, NV 98502. People making comments may request confidentiality. If you wish your name andor address withheld from public review or disclosure under the Freedom of , Information Act, you must state this prominently at the beginning of your written or e-mailed comment. Such requests will be honored to the extent allowed by law. The BLM will not, however, consider anonymous comments. All submissions sub-missions from organizations or businesses, and from individuals identifying themselves as representatives repre-sentatives or officials of organizations organi-zations or businesses, will be available for public inspection in their entirety. The BLM, an agency of the U.S. bepartment of the Interior, manages more land 264 million mil-lion surface acres than any other Federal agency. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which gave the BLM its comprehensive com-prehensive mission to manage the public lands for a variety' of uses so as to benefit present and future generations. The BLM accomplishes this by managing for such resources as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing and mineral development, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on the public lands. Most of the country's BLM-managed public land is located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. These lands, once remote, now provide the growing communities of the West with open space that gives the region much of its character. The Bureau, which has a budget of $1.8 billion and a workforce of about 9,000 employees, also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the Nation. |