Bureau of Land Management, (U.S.)

Four federal agencies administer most of the 671.8 million acres of land in the United States owned by the federal government (as of 2004, 29.6 percent of the total): the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department of the Interior, and the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture. The BLM manages the largest proportion, 261.5 million acres (12.5 percent of the total land in the United States) and is responsible for managing subsurface mineral resources on an additional 300 million acres. Most of the lands the BLM manages are located in ten western states and Alaska and are dominated by rangelands and deserts and, in Alaska, by forests, high mountains, and arctic tundra. The ...