Full Title: Federal Lands and Natural Resources: Overview and Selected Issues for the 113th Congress
Author(s): Katie Hoover
Publisher(s): Congressional Research Service (CRS)
Publication Date: December 1, 2014
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The Property Clause in the U.S. Constitution (Article IV, § 3, Clause 2) grants Congress the authority to acquire, dispose of, and manage federal property. The 113th Congress is considering multiple federal land and natural resources policy and management issues. These issues are complex and often interrelated, and include how much and which land the government should own, and how lands and resources should be used and managed. These issues affect local communities, industries, ecosystems, and the nation.
Four agencies (referred to in this report as the federal land management agencies, or FLMAs) administer a total of 614 million surface acres (95%) of federal lands: the Forest Service (FS) in the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and National Park Service (NPS), all in the Department of the Interior (DOI). The federal estate also extends to the energy and mineral resources located below ground and offshore. These include about 700 million onshore acres of the federal subsurface mineral estate that are managed by BLM. In addition, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), also in DOI, manages approximately 1.7 billion offshore acres located in federal waters within and beyond the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. Not all of these acres contain extractable mineral and energy resources.