BLM issues call to restore our public lands

“The Restoration Blueprint: A Critical Call to Restore Public Lands”

NARRATOR, DAVID HOWELL (BLM Senior Communications Specialist): Welcome to this special edition of “On The Ground”; I’m David Howell. The Bureau of Land Management has been working intensively on public lands restoration for most of the last 25 years. In 1999 and 2000, extreme wildfires prompted the Bureau to develop a native seed and plant materials program to aid in the land’s recovery. Since that time, BLM has also added "prolonged drought, catastrophic flooding, heatwaves, invasive species, and increasing demands for extractive and recreational uses" to the list of stressors that require the Bureau to practice proactive restoration. (See Restoration Blueprint, p. 7)

This week BLM released a Restoration Blueprint that aims to guide proactive management in the years to come. Our colleague Brian Hires sat down with three BLM officials to discuss the Blueprint: Sharif Branham is BLM’s Assistant Director for Resources and Planning; Katie Stevens is the acting Deputy Assistant Director for Resources and Planning; and Fred Edwards is BLM’s National Restoration Program Lead.

BRIAN HIRES (BLM Press Secretary): So thanks for making time to have this chat with me. I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys on what it is and why it matters to.. like “why should the average American care about this?” And so I’ll start with: What does the BLM do? Like, why should Americans care about the Bureau of Land Management’s work?

SHARIF BRANHAM (Assistant Director, Resources and Planning): The BLM is responsible for recreation, for energy, for wildlife habitat. We are responsible for a multiple use mission. So, not only responsible for managing for commercial purposes – so, our ability to produce things like minerals and oil and gas and solar energy and all these things – but [also] for purposes that are related to managing for things like conservation, and wildlife habitat, and water quality, and those sorts of things. 

And so part of our main responsibility is to ensure that there's not only the ability to manage the land for those uses for now, but also for the future. The land that we manage is for, on behalf of all Americans. That is the place that we manage the natural resources, those things that result in energy and minerals, but also things like clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat and things that matter to all Americans.

HIRES: So some of our measuring also includes that the BLM’s existing efforts to restore degraded lands and protect at-risk ecosystems instills hope that there's a possibility of sustainably managing our public lands. I want to drill down into that concept a little bit. We're looking at huge changes to our landscapes, right? I suspect most Americans, like, don't quite grasp – and I probably don't even – the extent that our public lands are... it's a challenge managing for helping sustainable public lands, in a time of, like, you know, these growing threats like increased wildfire season and invasive species. Do you feel hopeful, given these growing challenges that we're facing, that we can meet those?

FRED EDWARDS (National Restoration Program Lead): I personally do. BLM's mission: it really came out of the Dust Bowl. It came out of a very rough beginning when there was a need to protect public lands, and consequently those investments then have paid off in healthy range lands, just like the investments we're proposing now, and thinking about now, will pay off in the future.

KATIE STEVENS (Acting Deputy Assistant Director, Resources and Planning): I think we have kind of a simultaneous challenge here, of using what we've learned over the past decades, and also trying new things and not being limited by what we believe to be true today. So we are trying things we've been successful with in the past – so we've been focusing on things like conifer encroachment in places where we know that conifers didn't exist at the levels they occur today. We're also looking at low tech, process-based restoration and beaver dam analogs. We're looking at returning fire to native ecosystems where we know fire played a role. We've been engaged in that work for decades, too, but are trying to use it at a pace and scale that responds to the challenges ahead of us. And there's exciting new things happening with cheatgrass restoration in different parts of the country. 

So I think the, kind of, the call-to-action requires us to be hopeful and requires us to use both what we've learned, and “new and innovative.” And in some cases, very traditional techniques that we just haven't used as much in the past, including indigenous knowledge. 

HIRES: And so the cheatgrass issue, like, invasive cheatgrass: can somebody share what that challenge is – like, kind of, the scale we're looking at there? And why, like, local communities across the West and partnering with, like, say, local communities, and why it impacts wildlife as well?

EDWARDS: Non-native grasses – they're from outside of North America, that's sort of by definition. And they have characteristics that let them be successful in disturbed environments. They're also very competitive. So, you bring those two things and you introduce it to a new environment in North America, and they're very successful. 

This is a problem across most of BLM lands in the western US. In the Mojave Desert, there's red brome. In the Great Basin, there's cheatgrass. And in the Sonoran Desert and the Chihuahua Desert, there's buffelgrass. 

So, they change ecosystems by spreading fire, but also by competing with natives. Right? If you think about lots of little seedlings, and the non-native grasses are very competitive and they're able to outcompete natives at the at the very beginning, and they changed the environment to suit them. By that I mean those layers of thatch that these grasses create. They suppress natives, but they also foster, they create an environment that's fosters the non-native grasses.

HIRES: So can you guys help us understand, like, what the Restoration Blueprint is and why it's important?

BRANHAM: Well, it's important for us to really show that we have a plan for “how do we make sure the landscapes that we manage on behalf of the American people are resilient.” A moment ago, we were talking about the problem of cheatgrass, right? Cheatgrass not only is amongst the species that create an environment where fire can more easily impact the landscape on a larger scale, so that's economic impact. There’s also a natural habitat impact. It impacts the ability of those species that are relying on native grasses -- they are, you know, it's taking away options from them, right? If you're disturbing the ecosystem, then those native plants are not there. Incomplete life cycles for certain species. 

So, we're talking about a way to articulate how “this is our plan, our plan to make sure that these landscapes provide those natural benefits for ecosystem services, not only for the near future, but going forward. Here's how we're going to restore landscapes to better health and how we're going to maintain that. And where we see new problems emerge, we want to be positioned to be able to take on those new problems. We still have multiple uses as a responsibility, but here's how we're going to restore and maintain the landscape so that it is possible in the future to have all the options before us for these multiple uses.” We don't want to be in a place where we have not protected the landscape, we have not maintained it or restored it, and so some of those options for multiple uses are now off the table because we let the land get too degraded.

HIRES: So they're actually 5 categories called for on the plan, right, to help us restore public lands and natural resources. So, why don’t we go through each one of these individually? The first is to “Ensure clean water.”

EDWARDS: Clean water provides not only support for humans, it supports fish and wildlife habitat, so most of the work we're doing for clean water is through partnership with state agencies and NGOs – non-governmental organizations – and so this is a twofold process. 
One is to use a lot of the low-tech beaver dam analogs, and these are the structures that we install in degraded aquatic systems. And essentially, they capture sediment, they capture nutrients, they provide habitat for aquatic organisms. 

Then the other, sort of, part of the clean water and wildlife story: it gets to reconnecting and managing invasive species that are disconnecting our aquatic environments. Quagga mussel is a really prevalent example. And then also, we're removing, sort of, obstructions and working to remove obstructions that link disconnected fish habitat, and this is especially important in the Pacific Northwest for salmon.

HIRES: And so, “protecting communities from wildfire.” That sounds like an important one. Who in the west doesn't have wildfire on their minds these days? So, can you share how it will aim to help us make our community safer from wildfire, this increasing threat?

STEVENS: So in the past decades, we're just seeing unprecedented things from fire behavior because of the change in vegetative communities and the places where people live. And in a lot of cases, Bureau of Land Management-managed public land is in that urban interface zone between where people live and between, you know, broader swaths of public land. And so, as we've seen, these fires increase in intensity, increase in duration, increase in frequency because of the changes in vegetative communities.  It's giving our fire management teams bigger challenges in responding effectively to those fires. 

And so we know that fuels treatments – what we call fuels treatments, which is changing the vegetative structure to promote greater resilience to fire and greater fire safety – we know those things matter. We've been doing this work for, in a really focused way, for several decades since the National Fire Plan called attention to this in the early 2000s. And so focusing, continuing to focus on that work in light of these changes in fire behavior is critically important. 

And so we are partnering with communities and neighborhoods to do fire community assistance programs right in and around neighborhoods and that interface between neighborhoods and public lands. We're also doing fuels treatments and managing for healthy forests, and also for wood products in our public lands areas that aren't right against communities, in some cases. And those treatments are also important in managing for healthy forests and in creating pockets where we can take different fire protection tactics when we do have a fire; they give us a chance to get around fire to grab it when we have a chance. And so we're doing these treatments to fight fire on our terms and increase our level of effectiveness.  

HIRES: So the third goal is “promote productive rangelands.” Most a lot of people know that, you know, grazing happens on public lands. How would the Blueprint help us promote productive range lands?

EDWARDS: In recent years, we've really explored working with ranchers and communities through outcome-based grazing. And outcome-based grazing is a way for BLM to work with permittees in a more flexible manner to restore rangelands. So, as we think about the Restoration Blueprint, yes, we will be implementing a lot of riparian treatments in allotments; we will also probably be doing some post fire seedings. Outcome-based grazing allows us to shift use with permittees so that these treatments can have a more positive effect.

STEVENS: But overall, the goal is healthy and productive rangelands and functional ecosystems, and having not just cows, but wildlife, sage grouse – having all those different wildlife and domestic species able to depend on those and have a durable landscape condition that's going to support their needs going forward.

HIRES: Thanks, Katie; thanks, Fred. So, to our goals in the Blueprint: “ensure healthy fish and wildlife habitat.” Some 3,000 species live on BLM lands, it sounds like? BLM does not manage the wildlife on our public lands; it's the States and other partners that do that, right? And we manage the habitat. So, it sounds to me like we would need to work really closely with state and other partners to make that work.

EDWARDS: Yeah. The core of our restoration work is with state agencies as we think about wildlife and we think about wildlife habitat. When you mentioned 3,000 species, that's about 3,000 federally-listed species, threatened state-listed species, as well as Bureau sensitive species. There's actually many more thousands of species that are on public lands in North America. But that's just the subset. 

There are, like, fish and game species that we're also working toward managing habitat. These are deer, these are elk, these are pronghorn antelopes, they're salmon, migratory fishes. So working with state agencies, they very carefully manage the population of those game species. And I think where you're talking about habitat, we can come in and we can support the habitat management. They don't manage the land itself. They can help us, but they also do post fire seeding; for example, in Nevada, the Nevada Department of Wildlife, they do a lot of post fire seeding in Eastern Nevada in support of BLM and in partnership with BLM.

HIRES: In recent years, we've seen historic numbers of Americans visiting public lands. It's clear, like, America has rediscovered their passion and love for the outdoors, and connecting with the public lands. So I’m wondering: how does the Blueprint “benefit recreational public lands?” That's the fifth goal of the Blueprint.

EDWARDS: All the, sort of, the threats we've talked about before – wildfire, invasive species -- all of those affect the character of public lands, as well as “a lot of people.” We know, we've seen this in national parks, where you have more and more… people are loving the land more, that has a footprint as well. So, thinking about human disturbances, thinking about natural disturbances, restoration helps put that character and maintain the beauty of public lands and the “wildness” that the public really has come to expect from BLM lands.

STEVENS: We have people choosing where to live today based on access to daily, quality-of-life recreation. And so understanding what they're looking for from their public lands, understanding what makes those experiences meaningful to them, whether it's a daily mountain bike ride or trail run, or if it's more of a backcountry experience: those things are critical, and making sure that we design the right management to meet the public's needs. 

I think the Blueprint calls on us to be innovative and nuanced and specific, and understand what people are looking for so that we can do a really good job of protecting the things that make that recreation experience meaningful to all the different people who are using it. And we, also, just… we really want to remove barriers as well for folks to enjoy the outdoors. We're seeing big increases in adaptive technology and we really do fundamentally believe that the public lands are and should be available to everyone in the United States and beyond. So removing some of those barriers to help people get out on their public lands and enjoy them is also a critical component of a modern recreation strategy.

HIRES: Thanks, Katie. I really enjoy our conversation; our time is winding down here really quickly. In closing, I want to ask Sharif what are the next steps with the Blueprint? 

BRANHAM: I just want to make sure that everyone understands that the benefit of this Restoration Blueprint is that it will help BLM deliver on its promise of multiple use and sustained yield. And that means that we have a promise, on behalf of the American people, to manage these magnificent landscapes in the way that they would want us to do, right? So that we not only manage for those multiple uses, but for the sustained yield piece of it, such that going into the future they have all the options still available to them. That's how we can make the best use of the land for the benefit of the American people.

NARRATOR: Sharif Branham is BLM’s Assistant Director for Resources and Planning. We also heard from Katie Stevens, acting Deputy Assistant Director for Resources and Planning; and Fred Edwards, BLM’s National Restoration Program Lead. Special thanks to our moderator this week, Brian Hires from the BLM Communications Office. If you’d like to learn more about the Restoration Blueprint, navigate over to BLM.gov/restorationblueprint where you can read it for yourself. At that site you can also find numerous stories, videos and some of our podcast episodes showing restoration happening throughout the country. 

Thanks for joining us on this journey! I’m David Howell, and we’ll see you out there, On The Ground.  

- BLM -