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Overview

At its height in 1867, the public domain of the U.S. comprised 1.8 billion acres of land. Between 1781 and 1802, seven of the original 13 colonies relinquished claim to 236 million acres as conditions of statehood. Purchases from France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia between 1781 and 1867 added an additional nearly 1.6 billion acres. Two thirds of the public domain were eventually transferred to states, corporations and individuals in the form of land grants, military bounties, sales, or various homestead laws.

At first, the federal government was primarily concerned with generating revenue from public lands and encouraging their settlement and privatization. As more and more of the public domain was developed and privatized, however, interest in conserving natural resources also increased. Between 1890 and 1945, approximately 200 million acres were reserved in the form of National Forests, Parks, Wildlife Refuges, and Department of Defense lands. By 1930 what remained of the public domain was mostly used for livestock grazing. In 1934, Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act and formed grazing districts to prevent damage to these lands. It was not until the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976, however, that Congress declared its intention to retain the remaining public lands unless their disposal was deemed to be in the national interest. Today the federal government manages approximately 640 million acres on behalf of the American people –the public lands. By the year 2018, of this total, 606.5 million acres are managed by four agencies: Bureau of Land Management (244.4), Forest Service (192.9), Fish and Wildlife Service (89.2) and National Park Service (79.9). A fifth agency, the Department of Defense, manages 8.8 million acres.

Public land management is highly complex. The USFS and BLM have legal mandates to serve as many users as possible while maintaining the long-term sustainability of public land natural resources. However, in reality these agencies do not have the resources required to adequately manage the millions of acres under their stewardship on their own. On rangelands, ranchers are involved in the day-to-day management of public lands. They maintain fences, water resources, and other infrastructure, implement management plans, and conduct resource monitoring. Conservation organizations carry out restoration projects, wildlife management, and work with agencies and other users to carry out management plans.

Pages on this site provide more information on how public lands management takes place, how ranchers and other groups collaborate with federal agencies on land management, and the important laws and regulations that influence rangeland management on public lands, especially the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Overview

Public lands are lands held in trust by the federal government on behalf of all Americans. The federal government owns roughly 640 million acres, about 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the U.S.Four major federal land management agencies administer 610.1 million acres of this land. They are the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and National Park Service (NPS) in the Department of the Interior (DOI),and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in the Department of Agriculture. In addition, the Department of Defense (excluding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) administers 11.4 million acres in the United States, consisting of military bases, trainingranges, and more.Most public lands are located in the Western U.S.

Overview

Since the early 1900s, the federal government has regulated the use of forage by domestic livestock on its lands through the issue of grazing permits. These programs are administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Forest Service (USFS), and in the case of some national monuments, the Park Service. As with other users of these lands grazing allotment permittees must comply with federal regulations, including numerous environmental restrictions. These pages review the extent and uses of public lands, the goals of the agencies that manage them and their users, the impacts of grazing, and the laws and regulations meant to reduce potential negative impacts.

This section is generally organized into two major sections:

1. general information about public lands and public lands grazing intended for both the general public and for ranchers who what to know more about the history and characteristics of the public lands grazing system, and

2. information specifically for ranchers who use public lands as a part of their operation; this section is intended to provide the information needed to successfully navigate the NEPA process.

In this section you will find information on the various aspects of rangeland ecology. You will discover how water is the single most important factor determining the type and production of vegetation in a rangeland community. Climate and drought will continue to have a huge impact on rangelands as the global climate trends toward warmer and drier. The most productive sites on rangelands are riparian areas because they are the transition zone between waterways and upland ecosystems. Healthy riparian areas purify water and are a center of diversity for plants and animals and a focal point for recreation. Finally, you will discover how altered fire regimes and undesirable plant and animal species can disrupt the delicate balance of a rangeland community. Understanding the complex relationships between water, vegetation, animals and fire, is the key to rangeland ecology and preserving these valuable landscapes.

Forces that Shape Rangelands

Rangelands are a dynamic landscape, composed of many resources, which produce many products. The rangeland landscape and its resources are constantly being modified by a suite of non-human forces, including: grazing, fire, and climate or weather.

Humans also modify rangelands directly through development (e.g., energy, mining, and transportation and communications infrastructure) and recreation. People also affect the other forces of change by introducing invasive species, controlling or igniting fires, managing grazing and potentially impacting the climate and weather patterns through human caused changes in atmospheric chemistry.

Managers need a way to predict how management practices or natural disturbance will impact the vegetation on rangelands, so they developed State and Transition Models. State and transition models are box-and-arrow diagrams used to describe vegetation change, or plant succession, from a specific disturbance based on the current vegetation community, the soils and climate of a site.

Sustainability of rangelands and the communities that depend on them require that society and the values they place on various goods and services produced from rangelands are considered. In this section, we explore some of the major concepts related to ecosystem services, the land owners who provide them, and the communities where they live. Ecosystem services from rangelands may include forage and habitat for livestock and wildlife, open spaces, water quantity and quality, pollinators, scenic views, spiritual and cultural sites, biodiversity, and many others that society values. While the federal government owns vast areas of western rangeland, ranchers are the largest private landowners of rangelands. Their well-being determines to a large part how rangelands are managed and we as a society benefit based on their management. Communities, where ranchers live and work, also depend on rangelands and affect how rangelands are managed. Everyone in society has a stake in how our rangelands are managed and the goods and services they produce either as a direct or indirect user of what comes from the land.