The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) https://www.blm.gov/ is responsible for managing 245 million acres of land and 700 million acres of mineral estate concentrated primarily in the American West. This agency was originally established in 1812 as the General Land Office and became BLM in 1946. It is headquartered in Washington, DC and Grand Junction, CO and includes 12 regional offices. It’s legal authorities derive from Title 43 Chapter 1 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/43/chapter-1 of the U.S. Code and the regulations it enforces begin in 43 CFR 1000 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-43/subtitle-B/chapter-II.

Many BLM properties can be visited by the public Visit | Bureau of Land Management with possible activities including hiking, camping, climbing, hunting & fishing, recreational shooting, off-highway vehicles, mountain-biking and e-bikes, and rock hounding. Numerous historic and contemporary resources can be found on their website include their annual flagship publication Public Lands Statistics https://www.blm.gov/about/data/public-land-statistics with this being the 2025 report https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2026-08/BLM-Public-Land-Statistics-2025.pdf pp. 17-18 feature federal land ownership for the lower 48 states and Alaska & Hawaii.  This section of BLM’s website https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals covers their minerals and natural resources activities.  In addition, BLM also manages the Wild Horse and Burro Program https://www.blm.gov/whb protecting these animals on 25.5 million acres across 10 western states.

BLM’s 2027 congressional budget request was for $936,128,000 https://www.doi.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2026-04/fy2027greenbookblm0.pdf p. 8 and its workforce has over 10,000 employees https://www.blm.gov/about/organization-chart.

This blog post was submitted by Bert Chapman, Purdue University.