'Scoping' meetings will including protection of 'cultural resources, watershed and vegetative community health, and habitat improvement for threatened and endangered species'

from Environmental News Service

WASHINGTON, DC, October 12, 2001 (ENS) - The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to prepare a massive environmental impact statement (EIS) for the conservation and restoration of vegetation, watershed and wildlife habitat on public lands administered by its staff in the western United States, including Alaska.

To begin the process, the agency will hold scoping meetings across the west and in Alaska starting in November. Completion of the EIS is scheduled for the summer of 2003.

The comprehensive EIS will update and replace analyses contained in four existing vegetation treatment and weed management EISs completed from 1986 to 1992.

The EIS will consider foreseeable activities planned in each state, to include reduction and treatment of flammable forest and rangeland fuel - trees, brush and other plants that have built up and could feed a fire. Treatment activities may include, but are not limited to, prescribed fires, restoration of native plant communities, control of invasive plants and noxious weeds, thinning of the forest understory, forest health activities, and other treatment projects in ecosystems where fire has played an active role in the past.

Besides fire management, the EIS will consider the protection of cultural resources, watershed and vegetative community health, and habitat improvement for threatened and endangered species. The BLM will look at new chemical formulations for herbicides that may be safer than those now being used, and address human health risk assessments for a variety of chemical herbicides that have become available since the last EIS was written.

The analysis area will include all public lands administered by the BLM in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, North and South Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

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