Fiscal_Year (FY) 2008 Cultural Resources Management (CRM) Program Annual Report; DD: 08/30/2008

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20240

April 29, 2008

In Reply Refer To:
8100 (240) P

EMS TRANSMISSION 05/13/2008
Information Memorandum No. 2008-121
Expires: 09/30/09

To: All State Directors

From: Director

Subject: Fiscal_Year (FY) 2008 Cultural Resources Management (CRM) Program Annual Report DD: 08/30/2008

Program Area: Cultural Resources Management Program

Purpose: This directive requests the assistance of all the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Field Offices in completing the CRM Program Annual Report.

Policy/Action: The BLM State Offices are asked to complete the attached questionnaire (Attachment 1), as well as provide information in narrative or tabular form, according to the following headings. Please keep responses short and concise.

State Highlights. Summarize major annual accomplishments in the CRM program, including implementation of the National Programmatic Agreement, Native American Coordination and Consultation, Collections Management and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) inventories, major inventories and excavations, CRM publications and brochures, outreach efforts, etc. The States should provide detailed information (i.e., two to three paragraphs) on their top four or five accomplishments, along with graphics to illustrate the work completed. On the less significant work, all States should limit the information provided to short bullets.

Partnerships. Attachment 2 includes a partial list of Base and One-Time funded FY 2007 and FY 2008 Challenge Cost Share (CCS) heritage resource projects. States should attempt to accurately quantify the matching contributions on each of these projects, including monies, materials, equipment, and staff time, waiver of overhead expenses, etc., for each completed project (i.e., some 2007 CCS projects may not previously have been reported on, while many 2008 projects may not yet be complete). For volunteers, States should only report the number of volunteer hours on each project, and the Washington Office Division of Cultural, Paleontological Resources and Tribal Consultation (WO-240) will convert those hours to a dollar value using a standard per hour rate.

In addition to partnership projects funded out of 1770, State and Field Offices should also report on completed heritage resource projects funded out of 1050 and other subactivities, calculating both the BLM and cooperator input. Also, State Offices should report on the matching contributions of partners in each State’s Cultural Resources Data Sharing Project, including the match provided by the State Historic Preservation Offices.

For all partnership projects, State Offices should briefly describe the work accomplished (e.g., inventory, excavation, analysis, outreach) and its location (e.g., name of site or locale where work took place).

Public Outreach. Discuss your State's efforts at promoting public education and awareness of the BLM's cultural heritage resources. The BLM’s Project Archaeology partner, Montana State University, will collect Project Archaeology information separately.

Heritage Education Effort. Please follow instruction on the form (Attachment 3) to report heritage education and outreach. Note that units are not necessarily the same as quantity. For example, one new brochure is 1 unit, but the number printed (quantity produced) could be 1,000.

National Register of Historic Places. Please update your State's list of National Register properties.

BLM Historic Structures. Please update your State’s listing of standing historic structures (Attachment 4).

LOOT Form. Complete the NPS Listing of Outlaw Treachery (LOOT) form (Attachment 5) for any archaeological looting incident.

Section VI–Enforcement. States are required to collect data on archaeological enforcement and prosecutions from their field offices and compile it for their States. Please coordinate, as necessary, with your Special-Agent-in-Charge in the completion of this section.

Paleontology. Please update the data for paleontological resources. This is a new section in response to informational requests and to minimize additional data calls.

The reporting unit is each State Office. Colorado should describe the Anasazi Heritage Center’s accomplishments in a separate attachment. Please ensure internal consistency with data provided in previous fiscal years. The annual reports should summarize accomplishments achieved as of the end of July 2008.

Timeframe: The Office of Management and Budget and the Department of the Interior (DOI) continue to have an accelerated schedule for submission of the combined Chief Financial Officers/Stewardship Assets report.

Because of this, WO-240 is asking State Offices to submit their CRM annual reports, consisting of numerical data and narratives, no later than August 30, 2008.

Budget Impact: The budget impact is expected to be minimal.

Background: The BLM is required to compile this information to comply with the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (P.L. 96-95; 93 Stat. 721; 16 U.S.C. 470a et seq.) and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (P.L. 89-665; 80 Stat. 915; 16 U.S.C. 470). The data is assembled and submitted to the National Park Service to enable them to complete the “Secretary of the Interior’s Report to Congress on Federal Archaeological Activities.” The data is also used to complete the Public Land Statistics (PLS), the Chief Financial Officers/Stewardship Assets and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act reports, “Public Rewards from Public Lands” report, the DOI’s “Performance and Accountability” report, as well as occasionally respond to congressional inquiries. Heritage education information is used for an annual BLM educational report. Reporting on paleontological resources is required for the Department of the Interior’s Strategic Plan. Information on paleontological resources use permits is to respond to questions from Congress in reference to increased workload under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and background data for the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act.

Additionally, Executive Order 13327 of February 4, 2004, on Federal Real Property Asset Management, requires all executive branch departments and agencies to develop and implement asset management plans, define historic properties as Federal real property and require reporting of these assets.

A copy of the consolidated CRM report for FY 2007, along with the attachments to this directive, can be found on the Heritage Program Intranet website at http://web.blm.gov/internal/wo-200/wo-240/data_08CRM.html/. Information on the CCS accomplishments, the BLM National Register of Historic Place listings, and BLM Historic Structures for FY 2007 can also be found there.

Contact: For additional information, please contact Rebecca Lasell, Archaeologist, Division of Cultural and Paleontological Resources and Tribal Consultation (WO-240), at email, rebecca_lasell@blm.gov or (202) 452-0326.

Signed by: Authenticated by:
Henri R. Bisson Robert M. Williams
Acting, Director Division of IRM Governance,WO-560
4 Attachments

1 – Cultural Resource Annual Report (9 pp)
2 – FY 2007 and 2008 Funded CCS Projects (4 pp)
3 – BLM Annual Report of Heritage Education Effort for FY 2008 (1 p)
4 – Listing of Outlaw Treachery (LOOT) (2 pp)
5 – BLM Historic Structures (6 pp)