The Largest and Least-Funded Public-Land Agency in America Is Finally Getting Backup

The Bureau of Land Management is having a moment. The largest public-land manager in the country is replacing gas wells with solar farms, elevating wildlife habitat to the same status as livestock grazing, and — starting this year — implementing provisions of the landmark Public Lands Rule, which aims to “restore” public lands that have been impaired by the federal agency’s long-running multiple-use management.

After decades of neglect, the BLM is starting to address overpopulations of wild horses and burros on its Western rangelands. It is reconsidering its role in domestic energy production as it replaces fossil fuel permits with renewable-energy facilities. And under its director, Tracy Stone-Manning, the agency is prioritizing recreational access on its working lands.

“The BLM is finally recognizing that its multiple-use mandate means more than just cattle grazing and dirt-biking,” said one Western conservation leader who has worked closely with the BLM through different presidential administrations. “But whether it can truly manage for multiple uses is an open question. It’s the largest federal agency, in terms of acres under its control, with the smallest budget. And given Congress’ lack of appetite for increasing agency funding, it is almost guaranteed to be under-resourced for as far ahead as I can see.”

If adding field staff and project managers is unlikely, Congress provided a measure of relief to the agency in 2017 when it authorized the Foundation for America’s Public Land, a chartered charity that can raise private funds to enable BLM priorities and which can advocate on behalf of the agency. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the launch of the Foundation for America’s Public Lands early in 2022, and named its four founding board members, including former Montana governor Steve Bullock.

“We are looking forward to partnering with the Foundation for the long haul to engage the public about the value of our public lands and their important role in our country,” Stone-Manning tells Outdoor Life. “Like its companion foundations for the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Foundation for America’s Public Lands is uniquely positioned to help the BLM expand and leverage partnerships and resources central to the agency’s mission.”

In June, the nascent foundation announced its first CEO: I Ling Thompson, a professional conservationist who previously led the Trust for Public Land. A resident of Grand Junction, Colorado, Thompson is in what she calls the “start-up phase” of the foundation. Outdoor Life sat down with Thompson to learn what the foundation can and cannot do, how it partners with the BLM, and how it can help manage competing priorities of resource development and recreation on a quarter of America’s real estate.

OUTDOOR LIFE: Why does a federal agency need a private-sector partner?

I LING THOMPSON: Until Congress authorized the Foundation for America’s Public Lands, the BLM was actually the only federal land-management agency that didn’t have a foundation. You’ve probably heard of the National Parks Foundation. That group, along with the National Forest Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, are congressionally-authorized charitable foundations that do fundraising, outreach, and awareness work on behalf of the National Park Service, Forest Service, and National Wildlife Refuges, respectively. We have the ability to learn from these other foundations about how they maximize their partnerships with the agencies and how to tap into the funder community. Our mandate is to support the agency by broadening the base of funding and awareness. And honestly, we have a lot of catching up to do on both fronts.

OL: You’ve been in the job less than a year. What are some of the early tasks of this ‘start-up’ phase?

ILT: We just received a small amount of federal funding in 2022 to establish inaugural board members. These founding board members are doing all the basic, unsexy things like establishing bank accounts and filing paperwork to establish the Foundation and drafting a strategic plan. But over the past year we’ve hosted listening sessions with various stakeholder groups to better understand how a foundation can really support the BLM. Personally, I’m on what I call my world tour of the BLM. I’m trying to visit every state and as many field offices as possible to get a handle on the challenges and opportunities that are both common across the agency and unique to different communities and landscapes. The first 3 to 5 years is so important for a foundation like ours in order to be a capable partner that can serve as a bridge between public-land managers and private-sector philanthropists and resources.

OL: You live in Grand Junction, one of the intersections of the multiple resources the BLM manages. That includes oil and gas development, livestock grazing, recreation to both roadless and off-road visitation, paleontology, and cultural resources. How does your hometown inform your view of multiple-use management?

ILT: In Grand Junction, I am surrounded by public lands. I recreate on them every day I’m in town, and when I travel I choose to go to destinations around the West that have a sizable BLM presence. My husband is a hunter, and I’m just getting started hunting. We fish. We hike. We do all the things. The role that BLM lands play in my life personally is important to the perspectives I bring to the Foundation and to people who love these places as I do.

OL: What role do charitable foundations play for other federal agencies? And how will the Foundation for America’s Public Lands be similar or different from its peers?

ILT: The other agencies’ foundations have been able to bring in private partnerships and private-sector philanthropy to augment the resources the agencies need to basically build capacity. The BLM, up until now, really hasn’t had that capacity. They’ve been able to take in some gifts and some outside donations, but there hasn’t been a mechanism to help this agency that has the largest portfolio of land and the smallest budget of any federal agency. Our biggest early challenge is picking a few areas to really get our footing and find some wins working with the BLM and stakeholders.

OL: What does a win look like? And what specific areas are you looking at first?

ILT: One of the things that came up in our listening sessions with stakeholders is recreational access on BLM lands. There’s a huge need and a huge opportunity there for the agency in the near term. The BLM has experienced a 40 percent increase in recreational use on its lands in the last few years. But it’s important to remember that recreation happens in specific places. It happens in communities that are connected to their public lands, but the BLM doesn’t have the budget or the infrastructure required to really scale up recreational access to meet that rising demand. We think we can partner with the BLM and communities that are interested in expanding and developing recreation infrastructure. Some of the things are as simple as signage, showing users where to park or providing information about trails or about how to reduce conflict between different user groups. I think about recreational shooting on public lands, and how to balance that use while minimizing conflicts with other users on the same BLM land. We think the Foundation can play a role in conflict reduction.

I was recently in Phoenix, and observed this conflict reduction in practice. The community there recognized the need to create more space for shooting sports but also concentrate the activity in specific places. Members of the community mapped out five locations and put ranges in those places with good input from other user groups. The result has been that shooters have appropriate, designated spaces and conflicts have been reduced on the balance of public land. I think we can help engage communities to find solutions to all sorts of public-lands conflicts. That has a huge potential to scale up as we look across the BLM’s portfolio and look at areas where we can help provide easements to landlocked public lands, and where we can work with partners to digitize maps to help the public better understand where access already exists, but where it might not be widely known.

OL: Why are these things not being addressed by the agency? Put another way, why does the BLM need a foundation to resolve these access issues?

ILT: The BLM’s multi-use mission spreads personnel and budgets so thin that the agency can’t always address priorities. I came from the private-lands conservation community, where the risk we addressed was losing special places to development. Private-lands philanthropists can come together quickly to purchase these properties, but they aren’t equipped to hold on to them, to own or manage them. So what do they do? They turn them over to agencies like the BLM. For the agencies, taking these additional properties into their portfolio creates budget and capacity constraints. When I look at the BLM’s multiple-use mandate, they have to balance so many management considerations that some get neglected.

Most BLM field staff I speak to want to be more responsive to local community needs, but they often don’t have the time or staffing or capacity to do so. The Foundation looks at places where we can support the agency to meet demands. An example of this is in southwest Idaho, where there is a longstanding conflict between mountain bikers and equestrians in a place called Wilson Creek Trail. The challenge was the number of unsanctioned trails on BLM land that weren’t mapped or managed from a BLM inventory perspective. User groups formed a coalition to approach the BLM about ways to make recreating a better experience for all users. They addressed parking to create more space to turn around a horse trailer, they recognized which trails are better for mountain bikers versus horseback riders, and they found the right signage and communication tools to help the BLM manage different expectations. There’re many places around the West like Wilson Creek where the BLM is trying to solve for these things, and we think we can help.

OL: Does the BLM simply need more money? Or can the foundation help with other agency needs?

ILT: We are here to provide whatever resources and capacity the agency needs. If that’s funding, we’ll help identify private-sector philanthropy that can provide funds to support the BLM’s multi-use, sustained-yield mission. If it’s information or research, we will work with non-profits and universities to bring a greater understanding of issues and more data to bear to amplify the role that the BLM plays in the tapestry of America’s public lands.

OL: The Public Lands Rule, passed by Congress earlier this year, provided a mechanism for the BLM to consider conservation and mitigation leasing on the same footing as traditional leases for livestock and energy development. Do you foresee the Foundation getting involved with conservation leasing of BLM land?

ILT: In our stakeholder listening sessions, I’ve learned that there is widespread agreement that restoration needs to happen on BLM land. For so much of its history, the land and waters the BLM manages have been looked at as working lands, and restoration hasn’t historically been a priority. There are a lot of questions about the implementation of mitigation and conservation leasing, and the Foundation is here to work with and to be an available resource and partner for those interested in seeing what’s possible with the Public Lands Rule. Our north star is, how do we keep these lands and waters as healthy and sustainable as possible to meet the agency’s multi-use mission? We can be that steadying force for the agency year over year, decade after decade, as administrations and directors come and go. What we care about most is how do we convene people around doing what’s right for the land and the water that the BLM manages.

OL: One of the BLM’s biggest management challenges has been dealing with impacts from overpopulations of wild horses and burros on public rangeland. How can the Foundation assist with what seems to be an impasse when it comes to managing this resource and reducing its impacts to fragile habitats?

ILT: Our establishment legislation actually requires the Foundation to work on the wild horse and burro issue. There have been a lot of people over the years who have examined the issue, and I don’t profess to be an expert, but I do see some bright spots where the Foundation can focus. The recent report from PERC, which focused on horse adoptions, is a reasonable solution to reducing the $108 million that the BLM spends every year on feeding and housing wild horses and burros. The BLM is offering $1,000 incentives to get these horses into good homes. That’s a practical solution to a difficult problem. Right now there are an estimated 83,000 horses and burros on the range, and that population grows by 20 percent every year. The appropriate management level is 27,000 horses. I look at what the agency could do with $108 million every year if they weren’t taking care of all these horses.

OL: There is a cultural divide between the BLM’s largest constituency, which is rural, often conservative Western livestock grazers and energy developers, and the Biden Administration’s Interior Department, which seems to want to change the BLM’s multiple-use mission to more conservation than extraction. How can the Foundation close that divide?

ILT: I recognize that cultural divide. But I think that multi-use mission is the key to narrowing the divide. As we talked about, Grand Junction is the poster child for the BLM’s multiple-use mission. The ranching community knows the land, and ranchers deeply understand the long history and cycles that occur on the land. They can be incredible partners to look at the long-term sustainability and health of our public lands. I’m excited to engage ranchers in implementing strategies the BLM is developing to improve rangeland health, things like virtual fencing and implementing new technologies and techniques that can support their operations and provide more tools for stewardship.

OL: Just this week the Foundation awarded a number of grants to address drought challenges in the Colorado River Basin and in southeast Arizona. What are other threats and opportunities are on your radar?

ILT: We’re seeing all sorts of challenges on our public lands, from wildfire and drought impacts to invasive species to water shortages. I think wildlife migration corridors is an issue with a lot of challenges and opportunities. In general, I look forward to taking the lead from the BLM about which challenges their employees need our help with, and then reaching out to our broad constituencies and partner base to direct resources to those issues.

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As the Foundation gets started, I think we’ll balance the practical with the aspirational. Where can we do the most good for the agency in the near term while keeping our eye on doing the greatest good into the future? Part of our initial project selection is finding tip-of-the-spear issues and solutions that can scale up, and where we can engage local communities in sustainable solutions. From what I’ve seen so far, there is no shortage of those issues.