The BLM oversees 246 million acres of land — the vast majority of it in the Western U.S. The agency’s mission is to “sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations,” but according to records obtained by bipartisan watchdog organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), it is failing to do so on nearly a quarter of the land that’s leased for grazing. “We must all work together to improve conservation practices on public lands,” said Chandra Rosenthal, PEER’s Rocky Mountain Office director. “This map is a wakeup call for the BLM to not only improve and modernize their data collection and mapping efforts, but also to take action to address the vast amounts of degraded lands.”
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