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Show Range Staff Officer Tells Kiwanians BLM Office Functions Gerald Kerr, range staff officer offi-cer from Washington, D. C. office of the Bureau of Land Management, Manage-ment, in Cedar City to attend the five state convention of land management officials, was the principal speaker at the meeting of the Kiwanis Club Monday evening. eve-ning. Keith Norris, local club member and manager of the Cedar City office of the B L M, introduced the speaker. Mr. Kerr told Kiwanians that the B L M is the "largest real estate concern in the world. We control over ISO million acres of land in the United States and over 2C5 million acres in the territory of Alaska. "It is the attempt of the BLM to administer the land as the public would have us do it," he pointed out. Speaking from experience, ex-perience, Mr. Kerr has been in government service since 1917 and spent most of his career with the BLM and similar agencies. ag-encies. Iron County Discussed In respect to the southern Utah area, Mr. Kerr expressed a belief that public lands in Iron and Washington counties were not being properly used. However, he pointed, the drought conditions make it practically impossible to determine just what is proper for this area. Five per cent of the land in this area is undergrazed, he stated. Only 2! per cent of the land is properly grazed, with GO per cent too closely grazed and 10 per cent severely grazed. "it is our purpose not only to maintain but to increase the resource re-source of public land," he said. In regard to seeding projects carried on by the local office of the B L M Mr. Kerr slid that only 7,500 acres' or roughly 30 per cent of the total area reseeded has been determined successful. lie also expressed a concern over the so-called dust bowl of Buckhorn Flat in Northern Iron Cbunty. "The BLM is concerned with this proMem," he said, "be- mai ." . . -. . . cause a portion of that dust is from public property. But, you don't have the problem of dust that is prevalent in the Panhan- j die country," he hastened to point j out. |