BLM\'s New Planning Guidance

A Telecast Originating from the BLM National Training Center

May 24^th^, 2000

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast. It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: the Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, \"The BLM
Planning Process: a View of What\'s New.\" And Now the Host of Your
Program, Ann Aldrich.

A. Aldrich: Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to Our Overview of BLM\'s
New Planning Guidance. Thank You for Taking Time out of Your Busy
Schedules to Join Us Today. We Want to Cover the Release of Our Draft
Land Use Planning Manual and Handbook Today. You\'ll Get a Chance to See
it on BLM\'s Website Coming Tuesday. Also on Tuesday the Federal
Register Notice of Availability Will Be Published in the Federal
Register. These Drafts Are Available for Public and BLM Comment until
July 10th. BLM Employees Are Urged to Comment to ‑‑ this Guidance Is Of
Great Interest to Our Constituents and We Are Asking All Managers and
Staff Make an Effort to Discuss the Draft Manual and Handbook with Their
Interest Groups and Counterparts, State and Local Governments and the
Tribes. We Hope this Broadcast Will Help You Become Familiar with the
Major Aspects of the Guidance. Today We Will Look at the Major
Provisions of the Revised Guidance and How When Finalized The New
Document Will Guide Us Through Our next Generation of Planning. These
Changes Encourage a More Collaborative and Multi‑jurisdictional Approach
to Planning. It Also Produces ‑‑ Provides Directions for Addressing New
Information and Circumstances Affecting the Public Lands. It Clarifies
the Relationships Between Planning and Our Nepa Requirements. And it
Addresses New Requirements and Approaches for Managing Public Land
Resources. It Also Clarifies the Relationship Between Land Use Plans and
Decisions and Implementation Plans and Decisions. First, Let Me
Introduce Our Panel Today. We Have with Us Deputy Director Nina Rose
Hatfield. Welcome, Nina.

N. Hatfield: I\'m Delighted to Be in Phoenix and at the Point To Be at
the Point to Talk about A Draft Planning Guidance.

A. Aldrich: Also with Us from Washington, D.c. Is Ted Milesnick.
Welcome, Ted.

T. Milesnick: I\'m Pleased to Be Here. I Have Been Heavily Involved in
This and I Am Excited to Share That with Our Viewers and People Who May
Be Interested in This.

A. Aldrich: Thank You. And Jesse Juen from Our Tucson Field Office Is
Here to Provide Us with a Field Perspective on The New Guidance.
Welcome, Jesse.

J. Juen: Good Morning, Ann. Thank You. It\'s Good to Be Here and I\'m
Looking Forward to Sharing Our Experiences in the Field with The
Audience Today.

A. Aldrich: and Last but Not Least Is

H. Bisson: the Assistant Director for Renewable Resources And Planning.

H. Bisson: I Am Glad to Be Here and I Have Been Around Planning for Most
of My Career And It\'s Exciting to See the Changes Coming to Planning
Right Now. When We Chatted for a Few Minutes Before the Presentation
This Morning, I Heard Nina Reiterate Rate a Statement She Likes to Make
about Planning Being the Soft Underbelly of the Bureau. She Right. This
Is Important Work. I\'m Really Glad to Be Part of This Broadcast Today.

A. Aldrich: Thank You. Before We Get Started, I\'d like To Encourage All
of You in the Audience That at Any Time During The Program, If You Have
a Question or Comment for Us, Please Give Us a Call or Send Us A Fax
Using the BLM Satellite Network Phone and Fax Numbers. We Will Get to
Your Questions as Fast as We Can. We\'ve Also Reserved Time near The End
of the Telecast for General Question‑and‑answer Segment. Now to Get
Things Started, Nina, I Know You Have Lots of Ideas And Thoughts on the
Issues That Have Moved Us Toward this New Planning Guidance. Would You
Share Those with Us?

N. Hatfield: Sure, Ann. As Henri Said, Tom and I Have Been Concerned
That Our Planning Is the Soft 81 Belly for the Bureau and That\'s Simply
Because The Land Use Planning Process Is the Key Tool Used by BLM to
Protect Our Resources and to Authorize Uses on the Public Lands That We
Manage. Now, at the Same Time That That\'s the Way That We Do It, We
Also Have to Be Realistic about The Fact That Our Planning Documents Are
Aging Documents About That a Third of Our Land Use Plans Are over 20
Years Old. 75% of Them Are More than 10 Years Old. When We Look at the
Age of Those Plans, It\'s Clear That They Need To Be Updated to Address
Current Issues. For Example, All of You Are Aware about the Fact We Have
a Huge Expansion of Population in The West. As a Matter of Fact, 8 out
of The 10 Fastest Growing States Are States Which Are Major BLM Areas in
Terms of Acres That We Manage. And That Population Increase Means That
Our Public Lands Have An Increased Recreation Need. We Have an Increased
Demand for Rights‑of‑way. Increased Demands for Use of Mineral
Resources. All of These Things Taking Place In an Arena in Which Our
Aging Plans Did Not Really Anticipate. At the Same Time, We Are Looking
At Increased T&e Species. As a Matter of Fact, since 1982, Our T&e
Species Have Been Listed Have Increased about Six‑fold That We\'re
Trying to Deal With. The Elt Has Talked about the Fact and Looked at the
New Species That Are on the Horizon To Be Listed and When You Compare
Those with the Map of BLM Lands, They Totally Overlay All of Our Lands.
So Our Plans Have to Take into Account These T&e Species. And at the
Same Time, as These Plans Have Been Aging, We\'ve Also Been Making a Lot
of Decisions about Things That Are Going on on the Land. So Our Plans
Need to Be Updated To Take into Account the Cumulative Impact of the
Decisions That We\'ve Made over The Last Several Years. So What We\'re
Seeing Is a Context in Which the Plans Need To Be Changed and We\'re
Getting Increased Challenges to Our Plans and to Our Nepa Documents. For
Example, We Have an Ohv Suit In Utah. We Have Suits in Montana
Challenging the Validity of the Land Use Plan to Support Mineral
Leasing. In Wyoming We Have Suits Concerning the Impact of Oil and Gas
Leasing and Consultation Relating to Grizzly Bears. At the Same Time We
Have Suits In New Mexico, Arizona, California, All Concerning T&e
Species. So That Is a Concern to All of Us, Making Sure That We Can
Sustain the Decisions That We\'ve Made via Our Land Use Plans. Now, We
Recognize That We Need Some Resources to Take Care of Helping Us to
Update These Plans. So as a Result of That, in Our Fiscal Year 2001
Budget Request, We Asked for a Substantial Increase to Help Us Sustain
Our Resource Decisions. This Year We Made a \$19 Million Request. We
Look at That as Being the First Installment for a Number Of Years That
We\'re Going to Need to Look at How We Can Update Our Plans. We Think
the Outlook Is Good, That We\'ll Get a Large Portion Of Our 2001
Request. At this Point in Time, the House Has ‑‑ R‑ ‑‑ Committee Has
Marked up the Bill and They Have Marked up about \$9 Million There. But
We\'re Looking Forward to Continuing to Converse with Our Constituents
and Continuing to Converse with the House and the Senate about the
Impacts and the Need for Resources to Update Our Planning Documents and
We\'re Very Hopeful We Will Be Able to Come Very Close to the \$19
Million. Now, While a Portion of That \$19 Million Has Been Earmarked
for An Increased Base Funding Capacity, a Budget Request Is Primarily
for Project‑specific Resource Assessments, Repairing And Updating Land
Use Plans and Nepa Analysis. Now, this New Planning Guidance, We Think,
Is Absolutely Essential to Help BLM Complete The Projects That Are Tied
to The Funds That We\'ve Asked For. We\'re Anticipating We Will Be
Preparing New Rmps for Our National Monuments, as Well as Standalone
Rmp‑level Plans for All of Our Ncas and Other Priorities That Include
Broad‑scale Amendments for T&e Species Listings and High‑demand Mineral
Development Areas. Now, I Think That We Have to Consider That Our
Planning Guidance Is as Old as Many of Our Plans, and So That\'s the
Reason That We\'re So Excited That We\'re at the Point Now That We Can
Talk about New Planning Guidance That Takes into Account The Kinds of
Experiences and Learning That We\'ve Had over the Last Several Years.
So,anne, I Look Forward to the Rest of Our Discussion.

A. Aldrich: Thank You, Nina. I Think You Have Set the Stage For Us.
Henri, You\'ve Been Involved in Planning for a Long Time. Would You
Share Your Perspectives on Where We\'ve Been And Where We\'re Going?

H. Bisson: Sure, Ann. One of My First Assignments as a New BLM Employee
in the Early 1970s Was to Prepare Portions of The Unit Resource Analysis
and The Management Framework Plan in The Resource Area in Redding,
California, Where I Worked. At That Time, Management Framework Plans Had
No Nepa Requirement. They Were Very Prescriptive, That Is, They Were
Designed to Reach a Myriad of Specific Decisions for Each Program. They
Had Some or Limited Public Involvement, but by and Large, They Did Not
Look Beyond Our Boundaries. We Currently Have 52 Mfps Still In Place
Bureauwide. While the Passage of Flpma in The Late \'70s ‑‑ or with the
Passage of Flpma in the Late \'70s and in the \'80s and \'90s, We Moved
into Preparing New Resource Management Plans Where We Had Critical
Issues That Needed to Be Resolved and Where We Could Afford to Prepare
Them. Rmps Now Required Eiss to Be Prepared along with Them. They Were
Supposed to Be More Issue Oriented but They Were Also Very Prescriptive
as a Result of Supplemental Program Guidance We Prepared in the \'80s.
There Clearly Was More Involvement of the Public, but They Were Not
Multi‑jurisdictional. We Were Required to Be Consistent with State and
Local Plans to the Extent Practicable, But We Still Didn\'t Look Very
Far Beyond Our Boundaries. We Currently Have about 110 Rmps In Place,
and Many of These Are At Least 10 to 15 Years Old. Over the Years, Many
of Our on The Ground Planning Practices Have Moved Away from the
Procedures That Are in Our Current Manual. This New Guidance Recognizes
Many of the Departures Are Valid And Provides a Sound Process to Address
Current Issues. The New Guidance Is Much less re Prescriptive and
Process Oriented and it Opens the Door For Public Involvement at All
Levels. It\'s Designed to Provide More Flexibility and Opportunity for
BLM to Participate and Collaborative Planning Efforts With Indian
Tribes, State and Local Governments and Segments Of the Public at All
Levels And, Thus, it Recognizes the Realities of Our Land Patterns,
Particularly in the Urban Interface. Our Current Planning Regulations
Are Not Being Changed. They Have Been in Place since 1983, and They
Continue to Serve Us Well. Our Existing Planning Manual, Though, Is Well
over 300 Pages Long. Most of it Was Prepared in the Mid‑1980s, and It\'s
Been Nearly Five Years since We\'ve Updated Any of It. The Last Update
Was Supposed to Be Only an Interim Change until We Prepared the New
Manual Guidance. By Removing Outdated Material That We Feel
Unnecessarily Burdens the Process and Prescriptive Requirements, We Have
Been Able to Shorten the Guidance to about 100 Pages. It\'s Important
Our State and Field Offices Contact and Work With Our Constituent Groups
To Provide Information and Copies of the New Guidance and Encourage Them
to Comment. We Will Be Doing the Same Thing At the National Level. In
the Last 15 Years Our Workforce Has Changed and We\'ve Lost Much of Our
Planning and Nepa Expertise Through Attrition, Through Reassignment And
Promotions. If the Funding That Nina Mentioned We Requested Is Provided,
We Are Going to Look To Acquire the Additional Resources We Need to Meet
Our Planning and Nepa Requirements. This Is Going to Mean the Completion
of New Rmps to Replace Old Mfps and Revisions Or Amendments to Update
Many of Our Existing Plans. Consequently, Employees with More Limited
Planning and Nepa Experience Will Be Responsible For Much of this New
Work. Fortunately, We Now Have New Technology Such as Gis and We Think
We\'re Going to Have Many New Partners with Whom We Can Share Resources
and Data to Meet These Planning Requirements. The New Guidance Is Going
to Assist Them in Meeting the Challenges of Preparing and Updating Our
Planning and Nepa Base. In Conjunction with Issuing New Planning
Guidance, We Have Also Stepped up Efforts to Update Training. Shortly
the National Training Center Is Going to Be Distributing a Needs
Assessment Related to Planning and Nepa Training. And I Encourage
Everyone in Our Field Offices to Provide Feedback to the Training
Center. We\'ve Also Made a Commitment to Congress to Complete a
Comprehensive Evaluation of All Of Our Land Use Plans by the End Of
Fiscal Year 2002. And When That\'s Done, We Think We\'ll Have a Pretty
Good Handle On How Much Planning Work We Can Expect over the next 10
Years.

A. Aldrich: Thanks, Henri. I Think You\'ve Really Outlined Where We\'ve
Been and Where We\'re Going and I Think You Listed Some Key Things in
the next Several Years We Will Be Working On That We Will Need Field
Input For. At this Point I Would like Us to Turn to Ted and Have Ted
Give Us An Overview of the Guidance That He Has Worked Very Hard to
Complete with a Lot of Folks\' Help. So, Ted?

T. Milesnick: Thank You, Ann. I must Say Working on the Planning
Guidance Has Been One Of the Major Challenges of My BLM Career but I Do
Think We Have a Good Draft That Allows Us To Move Forward with Receiving
Comments from You and Creating a Final Document That Will Meet Our
Needs. I\'d like to Take Just a Minute To Thank Some of Those Who Helped
with the Initial Draft, Including Our Planning Team and Those Who Came
Back to Washington on Detail. Our Program Staffs Who Have Reviewed It,
Our Solicitor Who Provided Us Guidance, and the Public Who Attended
Early Scoping Meetings to Provide Comments on the Concepts That We Were
Looking at Rolling into Our New Planning Guidance. What I Would like to
Do Is Address Some of the Highlights Of the Planning Guidance and Then
Come Back and Follow up on A Few of Those Points in the Guidance. In
Terms of How it Differs, I Think One of the Main Differences in the
Guidance Is That it Combines 20 Individual Manual Sections into a New
Manual and Handbook and this Replaces Most of the Current Manual
Sections That We Have With the Exception of the Acec Manual Section, the
1613 Manual, And the Fluid Mineral Resources Handbook, 1624 Handbook.
The Reason We\'re Keeping These Is Because of the Emphasis That We Have
on Protecting Special Areas as Well as Some of the More Procedural
Requirements for Issuing Fluid Mineral Leases. The New Guidance Is More
Streamlined and We\'ve Pulled Some of the Information That Was In the
Previous Supplemental Program Guidance into the New Guidance and We\'ve
Also Transition to Do a More Flexible Planning Process. This Process Is
less Burdensome. We Think it Allows Greater Creativity in Planning and
It\'s Easier to Deal with Unique New Circumstances Facing BLM. It Also
Encourages Us to Plan With Others and I Think as an Example I Could
Throw out Is the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument Plan Which
We Recently Completed. I Know That They Used Some of The Techniques That
Are Currently in Our New Guidance. We Basically Gave the Planning Team
There the Green Light to Go Ahead and Use the Requirements In Their
Planning Regs but to Look at New Techniques for Involving the Public and
They Were Able to Do and That Develop Decisions That Everyone at Least
Had a Good Feel for Being Involved in the Process, Even Though They May
Not Have Agreed With All the Decisions in the Plan.

N. Hatfield: and Really Resulted in the Community Feeling Much Better
about What Was Really a Very Difficult Situation Going into That Plan.

T. Milesnick: Right, I Think They Did. Actually, We Did Have Some of The
State Employees Actually on The Planning Team Preparing That Plan. In
Those Regards I Think it Worked Very Well Working with The Communities.
One Thing in Reducing Some of The Prescriptive Nature of the Plans and
Combining the Sections Into One Section Is I like to Illustrate a
Comparison of What We Currently Have in Terms of Manual Guidance in the
One Hand Here Versus Our New Guidance and Just from the Standpoint of
the Field Being Able to Wade Through And it Find out Where Information
Is Located, It\'s Considerably Easier to Do than What We Currently Have.
The New Guidance Encourages Collaboration and Greater Public
Participation, and it Also Facilitates Multi‑jurisdictional Planning and
by Multi‑jurisdictional Planning, What We Mean Is We Plan for an Area
That Crosses Jurisdictional Boundaries Besides BLM Boundaries. We Are
Trying to Involve Local Communities and Governmental Entities, Other
Agencies Such as The Forest Service Who Maybe Adjoin Our Lands as Well
as the Public in These Planning Processes. The Planning Guidance Also
Highlights the Differences Between the Planning Process and The Nepa
Process, and We Did This to Make it Evident There Is Not That Many
Differences Between the Two. The Guidance Also Identifies Three Primary
Decision Categories, and These Categories Are Desired Outcomes,
Allowable Actions and Uses to Achieve Those Outcomes and Land Tenured
Decisions. The Guidance Provides Expanded Guidance for Certain
Resources, Including Special Status Species And Air and Water Quality
and These Are Areas We Have New Requirements That Have Come up Since the
Current Guidance Is in Place. The Guidance Also Changes the Way That We
View the Scope and Scale of Planning. We Have Removed References to The
Three Planning Tiers That Were in the Current Guidance, And We\'re
Recognizing That We Can Plan at Levels Beyond the Traditional Rmp Level
If We Have Issues That Cross Boundaries Between Resource Areas or Even
Between States, That We Can Look At Resolving Issues at the Scale
That\'s Appropriate to Resolve Those. The Guidance Identifies and
Distinguishes Between Land Use Plan Level Decisions and Implementation
Level Decisions. It Also Outlines Procedures for Combining Land Use
Plans and Implementation Decisions in the Same Document and Addresses
How We Consider New Information and Circumstances.

Ted, Just to Interrupt for a Second, There Are Probably Some Folks out
There Who Are Familiar That We\'re Actually Doing a Lot Of These Things
in Many Locations Now, Combining Different Types of Decisions in The
Planning Document. But We Really Have No Manual Guidance in Place to
Allow People to Share with this Process and Other Locations. It\'s Sort
of Word of Mouth. And I Think What the Planning Manual Will Do Now Is
Make That Tool Available for Everybody.

T. Milesnick: Right. It Does That and it Also Outlines Some Procedures
for the Mechanism Do Having That at the Decision Stage, Which Is One
Area That We\'ve Had Some Inconsistencies Between States On How They
Deal with That in Terms of Decisions Being Protestable Versus Appealable
And We\'ve Had Cases Where We\'ve Got Appeals Going on at the Same Time
as We\'ve Got Protests. Hopefully the Guidance Will Clarify That for the
Field and Give Them Some Direction for Treating That. I Would like to
Expand Just a Little Bit on Our Discussion of Collaborative and
Multi‑jurisdictional Planning. The Current Guidance, in the Fact It\'s
So Prescriptive, If We Followed the Guidance to the T, We Wouldn\'t Be
Able to Engage Other Entities in Doing Our Plans. They\'re Just Not
Interested in Developing That Type of Plan Under Those Kinds of
Requirements. So That\'s One Thing That the New Guidance Is ‑‑ Guidances
Hopefully Will Do, Is Allow Us To Work in and Outreach Better To the
Public\'s That We Deal With. One Thing I Would like to Highlight,
Though, in Terms of Working in a Collaborative and Multi‑jurisdictional
Manner, Is BLM Still Retains the Decision Authority for All the
Decisions That We Make on BLM Lands. So Even Though We Enter into These
Agreements, We Need to Structure it to Where We Retain The Decision
Authority and That We Follow Our Planning Procedures for Those Decisions
That We Make.

J. Juen: Another Comment There, and I Have Been Asked This Question,
That Being the Case for BLM, I\'ve Had Other Agencies Say, What Does
That Mean BLM\'s Role Is in Other Lands Besides Public Lands from The
Standpoint of Multi‑jurisdictional Planning? And That\'s Come up Before.

T. Milesnick: Well, I Think That Our Role Is to Try to Facilitate
Decisions on Our Land That Are Complementary of the Decisions on Those
Other Lands. We Are Trying to Encourage Management on a Broader
Landscape or Watershed Basis and So That We Have Decisions That Meet
Both Our Needs Better.

H. Bisson: Maybe in Furtherance of That, Many of the
Multi‑jurisdictional Plans We Have Been Engaged in Recently Have
Resulted Because of Listings of Endangered Species And it Doesn\'t Make
Sense for BLM to Be Doing One on its Land And the Counties to Be Doing
Plans for Private Lands and the Forest Service Planning for Forest
Service. If We Get Together and We Develop the Consistent Strategy For
Addressing the Habitat Needs Of a Species over All of Those Lands, Then
Appropriate Permits And Approvals Can Be Issued by The Field Service and
the Critter Benefits and So Does the Public.

A. Aldrich: I Think Those Are Excellent Points. I Know That Guidance
Really Is Focusing on Our Plans, but It\'s Not Prohibiting Us
Participating In Other Agency Plans and it Does Set out the Minimum
Requirements for Our Plans So That We Can Adopt Those Decisions into
Ours.

H. Bisson: We Have to Meet The National Requirements in Our Plans, but
it Provides Enough Flexibility to Work with Other Entities to Develop
Plans Consistent Across the Landscape.

T. Milesnick: Thank You, Henri. Those Are Excellent Comments That Really
Tie into What I Have Been Saying. The Planning Guidance Also Provides in
Dealing with this We Have a Specific Appendix That Addresses
Collaborative Planning And Some of the Techniques and Practices the
Field Can Use in Accomplishing That. These Practices Outline Tools And
Also References That the Field Can Go to to Get More Information.

N. Hatfield: Ted, Too, as We Look it a Being Collaborative And Certainly
I Know There Is a Lot of Emphasis with Our Field Offices and in the
Guidance to Incorporate Local Constituencies into the Planning Process,
It\'s Certainly Imperative That Our Field Managers Look and Make Sure
That We\'re Also Addressing Regional Interests and National Interests
Because, after All, These Are National Lands That We\'re Dealing With.

T. Milesnick: That\'s an Excellent Point. We\'re Looking at Developing
These Plans for All the Public\'s.

N. Hatfield: Right.

T. Milesnick: the Land Use Plan Also Identifies Some of the
Considerations That We Need to Be Concerned with in Terms of Faca,
Federal Advisory Committee Act. As We Work into More Collaborative
Planning, There Are Factors We Need to Be Aware Of. We Provide an
Appendix Section To Deal with That and Also a Decision Tree That the
Field Can Kind of Work Through to Figure Out If Faca Applies and If it
Does What They Need to Do to Continue with Those Kinds of Efforts. By
like to Expand Just a Little Bit on the Decision Categories That I
Mentioned Earlier. For the Desired Outcomes in Our Land Use Plan, We Lay
out That These Would Be Expressed as Goals, Standards or Objectives, And
the Land Health Standards Is An Emphasis Area We Have Been Moving
Towards Trying to Get Those Incorporated into the Plan. So the Plan
Validates and That Indicates That Those Be Determined Through the Land
Use Planning Process. The Plans Identify Allowable Uses and Actions That
Are Necessary to Achieve the Desired Outcomes, and it Also Identifies
Where Uses Are Allowed or Not Allowed. It Also Identifies Where We Can
Identify Restrictions or Protective Measures in Order to Achieve the
Desired Outcomes as Well. The Guidance Highlights the Plan Requirements
That Are in Addition to the Requirements for Making Decisions under
Nepa, and I Think this Is Really Interesting and I\'m Excited About That
Because I Think What It Does Is Illustrates That the Planning Process Is
Not That Much Different than Our Normal Nepa Process for Making
Decisions and That Land Use Planning Needn\'t Be Cumbersome In Making
Those Decisions. I Would like to Highlight What The Differences Are. We
Need to Do a Notice of Intent For Eas. We Need to Develop Planning
Criteria If That We Are Doing an Eis Level Document, We Had Need A
90‑day Public Comment. We Need to Make Sure Our Plans Are Consistent
with Tribal and State and Local Plans and Policies and That this Is
Something That We Normally Do in Our Decision Making Process Anyway. We
Have to Do a Governor Consistency Review. And We Have a Protest Process
And Requirement. If We Change a Plan as a Result Of Protest, a Notice of
Significant Change. These Are Not That Many ‑‑ or That Cumbersome
Differences from The Nepa Process. So the Handbook Is Geared to
Encourage the Field to Not Be Afraid of Land Use Planning or Making Land
Use Plan Decisions. As We Talked a Little Bit Earlier, the Guidance
Explains How We Make Decisions, Implementation Decisions and Land Use
Decisions in the Same Document and this Is Particularly Helpful in Terms
of Doing Projects Such as Land Exchanges or Rights‑of‑way That May Not
Be in Conformance with The Plan and Should Help to Streamline the
Process Quite a Bit. The Handbook Also Emphasizes Monitoring,
Maintenance and Evaluations of the Land Use Plans and this Is Need to Do
Keep Our Plans Dynamic Useful to Us and Avoid Them Sitting on the Shelf
and Collecting Dust, So to Speak.

A. Aldrich: That Really Is The Bulk of the Handbook, but I Know We Have
a Lot of Information Also in the Appendices to the Handbook. Would You
Give Us a Quick Overview of What\'s Contained There?

T. Milesnick: I Won\'t Go over All the Appendix Material but a Couple
Things I Would like to Highlight. We Have a Section of Program Specific
Guidance, but It\'s Not The Old Spgs. What We\'ve Done Is Looked at the
Spgs and this Is ‑‑ in Fact, This Is One Area That When We Put Our
Preliminary Draft out For Review That We Identified a Need to Capture
Some of That, That There Was a Lot of Good Information in There That We
Were Maybe Getting Rid Of. So We Pulled That in There. So What We Did Is
Captured the Portions of That Guidance That Laid out What Decisions Are
Made Through the Land Use Plan, What Decisions Are Made at the
Implementation Level, and Notices, Consultations or Hearing Requirements
That Are Required as Part of the Decision Making Process and These Are
Really the Key Things out of the Old Guidance, and These Are Really the
Things That Have Changed since We\'ve Initially Issued Our ‑‑ the
Existing Guidance That We Have. So I Think It\'s Exciting That We
Captured Some of That, Updated It, and it Should Be Very Useful For the
Field in Using Their Plans. For These Program Areas, Some of The Areas
That There Are Changes, I Would like to Highlight Quickly, the Clean Air
And Water Act. We Have Additional Guidance on That. Threatened and
Endangered Species, Particularly Consultation. Recreation and Ohv
Management. Livestock Grazing. And Also Fire Management, Which A Lot of
Our Land Use Plans Are Not Adequately Dealing with Fire, Haven\'t
Treated Fire and So it Gives Guidance on What Types of Decisions Are
Appropriate to Put in Our Land Use Plan to Guide Subsequent Fire
Planning Activities. We Also Have a Socioeconomic Appendix That
Describes Factors To Consider When Making Land Use Plan Decisions and
How We Factor In Those Things with Other Resource Values in Reaching
Decisions. And We Also Have a Flowchart in The Appendix That Lays out
Kind Of the Combined Planning Nepa Process for Both Ea and Eis‑level
Plans. We Have an Appendix Section That Identifies Protests and Appeal
Provisions, Which Should Hopefully Clarify the A‑distinction Between the
Two. And We\'ve Also Included the Memorandum of Agreement Between BLM,
the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service for Conducting
Consultations under The Endangered Species Act, and This Is an Area That
Virtually Affects All Our Plans and Activities on the Public Lands. Ann,
I Guess in Summary I Would Like to Highlight What I Think Are Some of
the Exciting Things In the Handbook. I Think the Moving Towards
Collaborative and Multi‑jurisdictional Planning, I Think the Fact We
Consolidated The Manual Sections and Removed Much of the Prescriptive
Process That Was in There, and We\'ve Also Highlighted Measures That Are
Separate Measures We Need to Do in Terms of Planning That Are In
Addition to Nepa and They Aren\'t That Many Differences. So with That,
Ann, I Will Turn It Back to You, and Thank You Very Much.

A. Aldrich: Thank You, Ted. I Think Did You a Great Job Summarizing the
Guidance, and I Do Hope Everybody Has Had a Chance to Look at It. We Do
Have a Question for You Already.

T. Milesnick: Certainly.

N. Hatfield: That Means Did You a Good Job.

T. Milesnick: Thank You.

A. Aldrich: the Question Is ‑‑ Is this Manual Intend to Do Address Land
Classifications? How about Withdrawals?

T. Milesnick: Yes, it Does. It Lays out Some Guidance That There Are
Some Guidance for Doing Land Classifications That Stem from the Taylor
Grazing Acted and When You Need to Do Classifications for Rmpp Leases
And Agricultural Development and Some of Those Type of Decisions, The
Guidance Lays That That out In Both the Body and Appendix Section for
Lands.

A. Aldrich: I Hope That If Our Fax Questioner Wants More Information
They\'ll Get Back Us To. Henri, it Sounded like You Wanted to Add
Something?

H. Bisson: I Was Going to Suggest That the Land Use Plan, I Think
Perhaps Ted Mentioned Earlier Is Also Where We Make Decisions on Land
Tenured Adjustment. And So the Land Use Plan Is Where We Make Decisions
on What Lands to Dispose of and What Lands to Retain.

A. Aldrich: That\'s a Very Good Point. Do You Want to Add Anything, Ted,
at this Point or Are You Ready for Your Second Question?

T. Milesnick: I Just Might Expand a Bit on the Land Tenure Decisions
That We Have in There. As We Lay out Procedures for Identifying Those
Areas That We Would Identify for Disposal and The Criteria That Would Be
Applied to Those Areas, and How We Identify Those Areas Through The
Planning Process.

N. Hatfield: You Know, Yesterday, I Had a Chance to Go To Agua Fria with
Mike Taylor From the Phoenix Office, and While I Was Traveling Back, You
Know, We Were Talking about One Of the Plans Here in Phoenix That, You
Know, He Needs to Update and It\'s Exactly That Kind of Issue Where the
Older Plan, You Know, Had Identified Some Area for Disposal That Now
Given the Rapid Development of Phoenix, You Know, There\'s Now a Need to
Look at That as a Potential Open Space. So It\'s Those Kinds of Things
That We Can Do with Updating Our Plans.

H. Bisson: it Just So Happens I Was District Manage Inner Phoenix ‑‑

N. Hatfield: Which I Figure Is the Reason They Need to Redo It, Right,
Henri?

H. Bisson: Yeah, I Can Tell Threw Has Been Significant Change since the
Late \'80s When That Plan Was Completed, and Some of the Lands That Were
Identified for Disposal, I Think There May Be a Good Case To Retaining
Them for Public Ownership. And Lands We Decided at That Time to Retain
Are Being Surrounded by Home Development, They Are Increasing for
Development. It May Make Sense to Use Those For Exchange Base to Block
up Ownership. The Way to Get That Done Through The Plan.

N. Hatfield: Absolutely.

A. Aldrich: Thank You Very Much. I Would Like, Ted, Maybe to Address
this Question from Lake Wood, Colorado. Ohvs Is an Issue That\'s
Becoming A Very Big One. Does the New Manual Change Our Approach on How
We Deal with Ohv Related Issues?

T. Milesnick: it Does Provide Updated Guidance on Ohv Issues And in the
in the Appendix Section for Recreation, We Have Laid out Some Procedures
and Requirements for What Level of Ohv Decisions Are Made at Both The
Land Use Plan Level and the Implementation Level, and Our Current
Interpretation of the Regulations Is That the Designation of Specific
Roads And Trails Be Done to the Land Use Planning Process and Not Later
in Subsequent Implementation Planning Processes and this Is a Difference
from What Some of the Fields During. Some of the Fields Are Currently
Doing it Through the Land Use Plan but Not All of Them and This Guidance
Kind of Directs Them to Do it Through the Land Use Planning Process,
Which Is There Some Benefits of Doing That in That Those Decisions Are
Protestable to the Director and Not Appealable to Ibla. So in Some Cases
That Could Shorten the Process for Doing Those Designations.

H. Bisson: and Also in a Few Weeks We\'re Going to Begin a Process to
Engage the Public in A Dialogue Related to Ohv Management on the Public
Lands And Our Director Likes to Think Of this as a Process to Develop
Some Tools, Some National Solutions That Could Be Used at A Local Level
to Address Ohv Concerns. Over the Years, I Think as Ted Just Described,
We\'ve Had Some Plans That Have Gone Through the Point of Making
Specific Designations in the Land Use Plan. We\'ve Had Other Plans That
Have Identified Sort of Broad Goals For Ohv Management, but They\'ve
Relied on Another Subsequent Process to Do Activity Planning To
Designate Roads and Trails For Appropriate Use, and Frankly In Many
Locations We\'ve Gone Through the Process and Either Because of Lack of
Funding ‑‑ We\'ve Just Not Been Able to Implement Those Designations. So
We Hope That by Having a National Dialogue over the Summer We\'ll
Provide Some Additional Tools for the Field To Use and There\'s No
Question There\'s a Direct Link, Ted, Between the Ohv Process That
We\'re Going Through this Summer And Implementation of the Planning
Process as ‑‑ That We Will Be Getting into over the Next 10 Years.

T. Milesnick: We\'re Looking Forward to the Completion of and That
Incorporating Some of Those Ideas and Thoughts. We\'ll Incorporate That
as Appropriate. So We\'re Excited They\'re Proceeding Ahead with That
Effort, Henri.

A. Aldrich: Well, I Think at This Point I Would like to Move On to Jesse
and Hear How He Feels this Guidance Is Going to Help Him in the Field.

J. Juen: Thanks, Ann. I Appreciate That. I Would like to Really Start
out By Complimenting Ted and All the Folks in Washington as Well as All
the Folks That Helped from The Field. I Think They Really Hit the Heart
of the Matter Here and Have Given Us an Opportunity to Compliment, as
Henri Said, a Little Earlier a Lot of Things Already Ongoing in the
Bureau to Meet the Needs of Community as Well as Help Us Work with the
Resource Issues on the Ground. One of the Things That I Hear Constantly
Throughout the Bureau, Throughout the Department, Throughout the
Communities Is There\'s Two Assets That BLM Really Brings to The Field,
and One of Them Is That We Have Probably the World\'s Best Experts in
Resources, Understanding and Knowledge of Resources and Resource
Management. The Other One Is That, Again and Again I Hear That We Have a
Phenomenal Capability in Working With Constituents on the Ground. A
Pretty Broad Array of Constituents, I Might Add, Really Diverse Groups
out There And I Think the Planning Guidance That Ted Has Done Such A
Great Job Highlighting Really Complements Those Strengths That We Have
as an Agency, and it Becomes, I Believe, Really, Really Critical for
Bureau Managers and Bureau Field Personnel to Really Embrace the Concept
of Revitalizing Planning Again Within the Agency, and This Is Going to
Lead Really Integrating, as It\'s Already Been Mentioned, the Land Use
Decisions Long Term with the Needs That Are Coming out Now Within Our
Communities, Not Just In a ‑‑ the Old Mfp Mind Set but
Multi‑jurisdictional. We\'re Looking at Landscapes. We\'re Looking at
Watersheds Now And That It\'s Not That We Haven\'t Looked at That in the
Past, but Now We Have the Tools Available to Really Propel Us Forward as
an Agency. Again, as Henri Talked About, These Examples Are Already
Ongoing Across the Bureau. I Think Many of Us Have Been Through These
Experiences and We Can Bring That Kind of Expertise To the Table, but
What I Wanted To Share with You Today Is an Example in Arizona That I\'m
Very Familiar With, Which Is One That We\'ve Been Working on for the
Last Five Years and It\'s Called The Sonoita Valley Planning
Partnership, and Interestingly Enough, We Started That Process Five
Years Ago, and I Think That We\'ve Been Thinking about These Processes
for at Least Five Years, at Least in the Bureau, On How to Come about
with Some Guidance, and Almost Step by Step the Efforts That We Went
Through in this Collaborative Planning Process Follows Very Closely with
the Planning Guidance and I Think That Lends Credibility to Washington
and Other Folks Really Honing in on What Successes Are out on the Ground
and What the Needs Are From the Field Perspective. So, Again, I Thank
You, Ted, and Everybody That\'s Worked on That. The Process That We
Started Five Years Ago Started out as a Traditional Rmp Basis, and We
Had Two False Starts. Basically Communities Said ‑‑ Took the Approach
That, You Know, Oh, Well, Get Together, Figure out What\'s Best for Us
And Then Tell Us in Not Only the Scoping but in the End, and We\'ll
Decide Whether We like it Or Not. We Backed up from That Point and Said,
\"Something\'s Wrong Here, This Just Isn\'t Working, Evidently There Is
a Disconnect With the Community.\" As a Result, We Backed up and Said,
\"How Better Should We Do This?\" They Gave Us Some Very Honest
Feedback, and I Think it Was Very Helpful, and One of the Things We Did
Is We Started as a Watershed Unit. We Brought in All of the Government
Entities That We Could Think of and Brought Them To the Table Together,
Had this Discussion About, What about Looking at it
Multi‑jurisdictionally? How Do We Get the Public Involved to Give Us
Input? We\'re Not Giving over Authorities but How Do We Get Them
Involved to Say Here\'s Things We Need. Can You Help Us Get There from
Here? And What That Resulted in Is a Phenomenal Learning Curve, I Think,
for Me Personally but Also for the Office, And, Ted, You Mentioned
Earlier the Three Primary Decision Categories and I Really Think That\'s
Worth Mentioning Again If You Could Highlight That.

T. Milesnick: Certainly, Jesse. We Would like to Lay out Our Decisions
in Terms of Desired Outcomes Which Are Standards, Goals and Objectives,
in Terms Of Actions and Uses That Are Necessary to Achieve Those, and
Then the Land Tenure Decisions As a Third Category.

J. Juen: and That\'s Really The Approach That the Bureau Was Able to Set
Those Same Sideboards for the Community. You Guys Come up ‑‑ We\'re All
Going to Work Together. We\'re Going to Tell You What the Sideboards
Are. You Can\'t Do This. Here\'s Our Legal Frameworks What We Can Do
Regulatory Wise but We Have to Come up with the Resource Goals First,
the Objectives and Then We Can Overlay the Uses That Will Help Us Get
There from Here. And I Think That Was Critical Because They Had a Lot of
Buy‑in At That Point and They Understood That They Were Expressing Their
Needs and Then They Realized at Certain Points That, Well, We\'re Not
Going to Get There. But They Were Willing to Accept That. The Other
Thing I Would like to Highlight from this Collaborative Process Is Some
Real Values That Came Directly To Us as a Field Office, but Also as a
Manager. One of the Things We Talked About Extensively Is How Do You Get
the Interest Groups Involved? How Do You Get All Those Special Interests
That Are out There? And It\'s Local, It\'s Statewide, It\'s Regional,
It\'s National Interests, All the Players There Are and Traditionally I
Think They\'ve All Lobbied for a Position. Hey, Can You Make Sure You
Get This into the Plan? By Taking this Approach and Having Them Involved
and Understanding What the Sideboards and Having Them Discuss Ranchers
with Environmentalist, Recreationalists and So On, it Helped Defuse All
of That Tension from the Standpoint of Trying to Lobby in One Particular
Interest Versus Another. The Other Aspect of it That Really Came Home
for Me Was That It Took Me out of the Role of Having to Make ‑‑ Decide
All These Little Fine Points About, You Know, What Will or Won\'t Be
Done on a Piece of Land, Even by Having Them Get Involved in Development
of Looking at Alternatives Within the Scope of That Planning and I Think
it Was Really, Really Valuable Long Term. Saved Us a Tremendous Amount
of Time, Saved Us Litigation Proceedings down the Road and I Think Those
Are All Real Benefits from the Standpoint of Having a Plan That\'s Going
to Work after You Have this Plan Put Together.

N. Hatfield: Can I Make an Observation about That? It Seems to Me
Sometimes I Hear the Concern That You Go Through the Collaborative
Process and Then At the End You May Still Get Sued, And, of Course,
Being a Lawyer That Doesn\'t Necessarily Offend Me, but I Think That We
Have to Recognize That Going Through the Collaborative Process Hopefully
Does Decrease The Kinds of Things We May Be Sued Over, And, You Know,
May in The End Eliminate a Lot of Even Need for a Suit, Because Can You
Talk about Those Things as You Mentioned in the Sideboards That We Have
and Come to Sort of Joint Understanding about What\'s Going to Happen.
And So I Don\'t Think That We Should Be Concerned about the Fact That in
the End it May Not Come out to Be Perfect, but We Will Have a Much
Better Decision Than We Had.

J. Juen: I Think That\'s Absolutely Valid, and One of the Things That I
Realized Going Through the Process Is That We Now Have a Much Broader
Foundation of a Constituency, a Much More Diverse Constituency That Are
Working Together. They Are Actually Working Together and ‑‑

N. Hatfield: and Supporting Us.

J. Juen: and Supporting Our Decisions Long Term. I Think That\'s a
Critical Aspect. Yes, Anybody Can Put a Stamp and That Send in That, but
I Think That Reduces it Tremendously.

N. Hatfield: I Agree.

H. Bisson: I Think Another Thing That Changed That\'s Dramatically Alter
Ring the Government in Our Plan and Public in Our Process Is the
Internet. We\'re Putting Our Plans, Nepa Documents on the Internet. We
Are Getting Comments from Around the World on Some of the Documents and
People Go to Chat Rooms and They Talk about BLM, They Talk about BLM
Issues. There\'s Just a Lot More Interest In the Types of Planning That
We\'re about to Engage in and Planning We\'ve Done in the Last Couple
Years than There Was When We Did These Plans in the \'80s. So We Have to
Consider Many More Points of View.

N. Hatfield: Absolutely.

J. Juen: Another Aspect I Was Going to Mention Is That as a Benefit,
Which We Didn\'t Expect This to Happen, but this Group Started out to Be
200 and Kind Of Whittled down to a Fairly Consistent 40‑member Group
That Has Been Meeting Monthly for Five Years. That Group, Though, Keeps
a Network Going All the Time. I Mean, They Send Something out And Say,
Hey, this Is What\'s Happening, or Vice Versa, the National Perspective,
They Will Contact Their Constituents at The Local Level and Say, \"What
Is Going On? And What Are the Decision Points Being Made?\" I Think the
Other Thing That\'s Happened, Which I\'m Just Tickled With Is Some of
You May Know That this Planning Area Is Being Considered as a National
Conservation Area Through Congressman Jim Kolbe\'s Office. That Effort
Was Really Spearheaded by That Group, the Sonoita Valley Planning
Partnership. It Wasn\'t Something That Evoked From BLM as a Need out
There, But Really Came from the Bottom Up. To Me That Says a Lot Towards
What You Were Talking About, Nina, Having All the Groups Worked Together
and Support What We\'re Doing out There on the Ground. A Couple Other
Things I Would Like to Say Is That I Really Feel Strongly That this
Planning Guidance Is ‑‑ Not Only Plays to Our Strengths, but it
Complements Where We\'re Heading On Community Based Type Planning, Yet
Recognizing That There\'s National Interest. We Bring That to the Table.
We\'re Doing this for the American Public. We\'re Telling Our
Constituents at Those Sessions, And They\'re Also Echoing That. It May
Be a Rancher That Is Beginning to Say, I Have a Whole Industry
Throughout and this Is What We\'re Talking About, or Recreational
Industry. The Other Aspect That I Think Is Wonderful Is the Flexibility
it Adds. None of These Situations Are Going to Be Stamped, Cookie‑cutter
Type Situations. They Are All Going to Have Unique Aspects and I Think
the Guidance Lends Itself to Doing That. And the Other Thing Is it Gives
Us Tools. This Is for the First Time That I\'ve Been with the Bureau in
20 Years We\'ve Got Handy Things Available Us To, I Think You Mentioned
Faca as One of the Appendices There, and I Know When We Start into Our
Process, We Struggled a Lot with That. We Had to Call a Lot of Folks And
They Had to Do a Lot of Research on Was this into the Faca Category or
Outside the Faca Category. But the Bottom Line Is Those Tools Are There
Now. The Ones We Need on a Daily Basis with the Communities While We\'re
Doing the Planning Are All There. And with That, I Think That What
We\'re Seeing with this Type of Approach and Revitalizing the Planning
out There Is We\'re Really Beginning to Deal with The Changes and the
Realities That We Face Now and into the Future and It\'s Becoming a
Partnership as Opposed to the Agency Taking the Burden of Planning on
Itself.

T. Milesnick: I\'m Glad from Your Perspective You Feel the Guidance Does
That. That\'s One of the Goals We Were Trying to Achieve When We Were
Writing. It\'s Encouraging We\'ve Captured Some of That.

A. Aldrich: Thank You, Jesse. I Have to Echo Ted\'s Comment That I\'m
Very Pleased to Hear That You Think That the Guidance Actually Will
Support Efforts Like You\'ve Been Struggling with And Leading in the
Sonoita Valley of Arizona over the Last Five Years, and Hopefully Will
Prevent a Few False Starts in The Future. I\'d like to Mention Again
That The Documents Are ‑‑ or Will Be Available on the Website,
Www.BLM.gov Beginning on Tuesday. Most of You Should Have Copies Of the
Documents in Your Hands At this Point, but If You Don\'t, They\'re
Available Through the State Office and Field Office Network. I\'d like
to Mention to Our Viewers That in a Few Minutes We Will Be Having a
General Question‑and‑answer Session. We Hope the Previous Presentations
Will Have Generated Some Questions That We Can Answer for You. So If You
Do ‑‑

We\'re about to Life Because We Industrial Our Life Lines. We Haven\'t
Had to Use Them Yet. We Have Veronica Sitting by in Washington to Answer
Any Questions We Can\'t Cover.

A. Aldrich: That\'s Right. But I Again Remind You That If You Have a
Questions for Any of Our Panelists or Some Thoughts Would You like to
Share with Us On the New Guidance, Please Give Us a Call or Send Us a
Fax. We\'ll Get to as Many of Your Questions as Possible in the Time We
Have Remaining. We Do Have a Fax That Came in I Think While Ted Was
Talking, Which Jesse You May Want to Shed Some Light On. The Question Is
‑‑ What Priority Is to Be Given to Socioeconomic Factors Relative to the
Biological and Physical Sciences? Maybe If You Could Relate That To the
Effort You Have Been Going Through.

J. Juen: I Think That\'s a Critical Aspect. It Will Vary by Situation,
Socioeconomic Factors Are Going To Depend on the Scenario. But a Lot ‑‑
If You Have the People Involved and All the Interests Involved, They
Tend to Surface Those Issues in the Process And, Again, I\'ll Get Back
to Needs. Economically What it Is ‑‑ it May Be as Henri Mentioned,
Development Potential at this Point in Time Where it Wasn\'t Ten Years
Ago. It Just Was Not High Valued Land. Or it May Be That the Community
Has Put a Price Tag on it from The Social Price Tag in That They Wanted
Open Space. They Don\'t Want to Look at the Straight Dollar Value of the
Piece of Land. All of Those Things Need to Be Weighed in and Factored
into That Process Because That Gets At the Heart of the Land Use
Decisions That We\'re Coming up With. It Could Be Retention, it Could Be
Disposal, it Could Be Land Classification, Recreation and Public Purpose
Leases out There. So I Think It\'s Critical Critical to the Process.

N. Hatfield: and I Think the Appendix That\'s in this Planning Guidance
Tries to Put That in The Proper Perspective in Terms Of Considering
Those but Also Considering the Other Important Legal and Technical
Things That We Have to Look at in the Plan.

A. Aldrich: Ted or Henri, Would You like to Add Thoughts?

T. Milesnick: I Guess I Would Echo the Thoughts of Jesse and Nina,
That\'s Certainly a Key Part of Our Making Decisions and Weighing the
Benefits and Uses Of the Public Lands. So ‑‑

J. Juen: the Other Thing I Will Add to That Is I Think More And More
That, Although It\'s Hard to Put a Dollar Value on Endangered Species or
Riparian Habitat or Whatever, There Is a Social Consciousness, an
Increased Awareness, That Those Have Direct Economic Values Long Term. A
Good Example Is Sonoita Valley Is the Area We\'ve Done the Planning for
Provides 11,000 Acre‑feet of Water Annually to The Community of Tucson.
45 Minutes Away, but at the Same Time There\'s a Real Resource Value
Associated with Fresh Water Supply into the Tucson Area and it Becomes a
Very Critical Factor.

H. Bisson: I Might Add from My Spur Spec Tiff, I Think Socioeconomic
Data Is Just One Set of Data along with the Biological Data, Other
Resource Data We Have to Look at When We\'re Doing a Plan. Oftentimes,
You Know, It\'s Counties and Cities Who Are More Concerned about
Socioeconomic Impacts of the Decisions We Make And We Need to Talk with
Them, Take That into Consideration. But Ultimately, You Know, Our
Concern Is with Protecting Resources on the Public Lands And Authorizing
Appropriate Uses, And, You Know, We Will Consider the Socioeconomic
Impacts as We Proceed, but We\'ve Got to Be Concerned with the Health of
the Land as Well as The Health of the Folks.

N. Hatfield: Well Stated, Henri.

A. Aldrich: and I Think That We\'ve Tried to Portray That in The
Guidance. So We\'ll Look Forward to Comments in this Area. We Have
Another Fax, And, Ted, It Has Your Name on It.

T. Milesnick: Ok. Very Good. Someone out There Probably Knows Me.

J. Juen: It\'s Your Mother, Ted.

A. Aldrich: Reading the Statement, It\'s a Nice One, it Says, Ted, You
Did a Wonderful Job. I Applaud You. The Question Is ‑‑

N. Hatfield: it Is Your Mom!

T. Milesnick: or My Wife.

A. Aldrich: How Does the New Guidance Cover the Protest Process?

T. Milesnick: Well, We\'ve Got A Section in the Guidance That Identifies
What the ‑‑ What the Requirements Are in the Protest Process, What the
Public Needs To Do in Terms of Meeting the Requirements of the
Regulations, And Then How We Go about Handling Those Through the Protest
Resolution Process, What We Look at in Resolving the Protests And, You
Know, If We Make Changes, the Fact That We Need to Go out with a Notice
of Change or Provide Feedback Back To the Protestants and Also Back To
the Field Office Who Developed the Plan.

A. Aldrich: Thank You. I Think We Have a Call Now. Hello, Dennis?

Caller: Yes.

A. Aldrich: Welcome to the Show.

Caller: Thank You. I Appreciate Your Broadcast Today. I Know this Is a
Draft Guidance, But I\'m Curious as to What the Final Process and Time
Line Is For the Final Approval of the Handbook.

A. Aldrich: Ted, Would You Like to ‑‑

T. Milesnick: Certainly. I\'m Not Going to Make Any Firm Predictions
When We\'re Going to Complete It, but Our Goal Is to Complete it ‑‑

N. Hatfield: Now, Ted!

T. Milesnick: Our Goal Is to Complete it by the End of the Fiscal Year
and I Am Going to Do Everything I Can to Make That Happen, and a Lot of
it Is Going To Depend on the Comments We Get Back from You in the Field
and What Your Suggestions Are and I\'m Sure There\'s Going to Be Changes
We Will Need to Make in It. We Recognize It\'s Still a Draft, But We\'re
Going to Expeditiously Move Forward with Completing This and Getting it
out to the Field So You Guys Can Use It.

A. Aldrich: Good‑bye, Dennis. Nina, this May Be a Good Time For Us to
Maybe Summarize Some Of Our Thoughts on What We\'ve Heard this Morning.
Would You like to Share Some ‑‑

N. Hatfield: I Think That We Recognize That, Especially as We\'re
Dealing with These Urban Interface Issues, That the Kinds Of Appreciates
Pressures That BLMers Have Been under over the Last Few Years Because
We\'ve Had Very Flat Budgets, a Decreasing Staff and Yet in the Creased
Population, in Creased Need for Recreation, Multiple Uses on the Land,
the Fact That We\'ve Been Dealing with All These T&e Species, Has
Created an Enormous Amount of Stress for Our Workforce and I Think
That\'s Why We\'ve Been So Aggressive in Trying to Recognize That We Had
A Big Need Here to Go in and Do What, I Think, of a Long Term Need of
Trying to Update These Plans and like I Said Earlier, I Think We Have to
Keep in Mind That We Are Looking at this as Being a Long‑term Process.
What We\'ve Asked for in the 2001 Budget Is the First Installment Over
Several Years to Enable Us To Update Our Plans. And, You Know, We Are
Not the Only Ones Who Recognize That We Have a Concern Here with the Age
Of These Plans. As a Matter of Fact, I Was Astonished When I Found out
That One of Our User Groups Had Been In Washington Talking to the
Administration Because They Were Concerned about Whether or Not Our
Plans Would Be Able to Sustain the Kinds of Decisions We Were Making
with Regard to Their Industry, and They Recognized That They Don\'t Want
To Make an Investment on the Basis of a Decision We\'ve Made And Us Not
Be Able to Sustain Our Decision. So It\'s Important to Our Users As Well
as it Is to the ‑‑ Our Public\'s in Terms ‑‑ Publics in Terms of
Maintaining the Health Of the Planned. And I Think That What We\'re
Looking at Is We Want to Make Sure That We Don\'t Have a Train Wreck
Here, That We Recognize That We Have a Need to Update These Plans, That
We Go Through The Process of Updating Them in A Systematic Way Trying to
Deal With the Most Important Issues First, and Do it While We Still Have
Some Room to Take Actions On the Public Lands and We\'re Not, You Know,
Stalled in the Kinds of Things That Need to Happen. And So Now Is the
Time for Us to Take the Opportunity. Now\'s the Time for Us to Plan in
Terms of How We\'re Going to Address this Issue and Get on With Fixing
It. And I Think That the Agency and The Land Itself Will Be Far Better
off as We Go Through this Process. You Know, What I Really like About
the New Planning Guidance, And Jesse, I Think You Made a Really Good
Case for It, Is That I Think That What Ted and Others Have Done Has
Really Incorporated, I Think, Best Practices Lessons Learned from The
Kind of Multi‑jurisdictional Planning That We\'ve Done. One of the
Concerns That I Have Is Making Sure That as We Go Forward in this
Planning Process That We in BLM Don\'t Limit Our Horizons, That Is, We
Look at Cumulative Impacts, That We Are Aware of the Fact That That Can
Cross Field Districts, it Can Cross State Lines, Multi‑states. So That
We Have to Look At, You Know, the Landscape That We\'re Dealing with and
the Appropriate Scale That We Need to Make the Decision On.

T. Milesnick: and I Might Comment to Nina Here. The Guidance Lays out a
Section On Doing Resource Assess. And We Specifically Identify That
Those Assessments Be Tailored to the Scale of Decisions That Need to Be
Made. And There Are Assessments Done To Determine Current Stat Us and
Trends, Risks That May Be Affecting Public Lands and Also Opportunities
to Resolve Some of Those and Work into the Decision Making Process of
Identifying, You Know, Desired Outcomes and Actions That Would Be Taken
into Achieve Those Outcomes. So We Do Address, at Least on an Assessment
Standpoint, in Kind Of a Broad Guidance for Decisions on Looking Beyond
Our Traditional Rmp Boundaries So We Can Look at Cumulative Impacts And
the Effects of Our Actions Beyond Our Local Districts.

H. Bisson: Nina, You Made a Comment about the Money That We Get this
Year Is Sort of the First Installment in the Process.

N. Hatfield: Absolutely.

H. Bisson: in Fact, a Report We Sent to Congress That They Requested
with the President\'s Budget Identifies this as a Long‑term Process.
This Can\'t Be a One‑shot Deal. If We Only Get the Amount of Money
We\'ve Requested for this Year and Keep it at That Level For the next
Ten Years, We\'re Never Going to Accomplish the Job We Have in Front of
Us. I Know a Lot of Our Field Offices Are Concerned about It. We\'ve
Actually Identify to Do Congress and Omb We\'re Going to Need about
\$\$50 Million a Year To Complete this Work over the Next 10 Years.

A. Aldrich: I Was Going to Remind Folks If That They Haven\'t Seen the
Report to Congress on the State of Our Planning in BLM, it Is Available
On the Website. It\'s Attached to the Budget Documents for 2001.

H. Bisson: and I Want to Take A Second and Mention Something That We
Haven\'t Talked about Yet This Morning, and We Did Mention The Fact That
NTC Is Going to Be Doing an Analysis to See How Much Training Is Needed
for Our Planners, Because We Expect We\'ll Have a Lot of New Folks
Getting into the Planning Business. But NTC Has Developed What\'s Called
the Partnership Series of Training Courses, And, You Know, That
Partnership Series Is Intended to Go into a Community And Not Just Train
the BLM Folks There in How to Engage in Planning, but It\'s to Get
Everybody Who Is Going to Be Involved in the Planning Process To Sit
Down, to Learn How to Work Together, to Understand What\'s at Stake for
Everybody Regarding One of Our Planning Efforts, and One of the Things
That I\'m Weighing, Nina, Is the Idea That Perhaps Before Any Field
Office Engages in a New Planning Process, Particularly With New Money,
That We Get Some Sort of Commitment to Bring One Of the Partnership
Training Courses into That Community as They Begin. Where It\'s Been
Used, Places From Elko, Nevada, Jesse, I Think You Probably Used it in
Tucson ‑‑

J. Juen: Actually We Didn\'t But I Know We\'ve Used it in Phoenix.

H. Bisson: I Know It\'s Been Used in New Mexico. I Just Heard Nothing
but Positive Feedback Not Just from BLM Folks but People in the
Community How Important it Was To Get off on the Right Foot and This
Training Series Provides That Opportunities.

A. Aldrich: Thank You for Bringing That Up. We Did Have a Fax Regarding
That Series and How it Fit into the New Guidance. So You Just ‑‑ Great,
Henri. Thank You Very Much. I Would like to Remind Everybody Again That
We Are Taking Your Calls and We Would like to Hear From You, Because We
Do Believe That the Implementation Plan of This New Planning Guidance
Will Make Changes in How We Do Business in BLM. As We Heard from Jesse,
Some of Our Field Offices Are Currently Engaged in Planning Efforts like
This, but Other Areas May Not Have Had the Resources or the Issues to
Move in this Direction. So Please Give Us a Call. Or Send Us a Fax. Give
Us Your Questions and Thoughts. At this Point I Would like to Go To a
Caller from Palm Springs. Welcome to Our Program.

Caller: Good Morning. I Have a Question for the Group About the
Assessment Boundaries Will BLM Be Shifting Towards Watershed Boundaries
in this Document?

T. Milesnick: I Might Try to Go Ahead and Address That. I Think That the
Guidance We Have in the Document Here Recognizes That Assessments Would
Be Tailored to Whatever Boundary or Area You Need to Make. And I Would
Also like to Say That We\'ve Got an Assessment Team That\'s Working on
Trying to Develop an Assessment Strategy For BLM, and When That Team
Gets A Little Bit Further Along, We\'ll Take What They\'re Recommending
and If We Need to Make Changes in Kind of the Broad Guidance That We
Provide In the Handbook, We Would Make Those. But We\'re Not Saying it
Specifically on a Watershed Basis Because it May Go Beyond a Watershed
Basis and We Would Design Assessments to Address Issues That We Have. So
it Could Be a Watershed. It Could Be Larger than That.

H. Bisson: I Would like to Jump in on That for Just a Second. At Our
January Elt Meeting We Made a Corporate Decision, Is How I Would
Describe It, to Work On a National Assessment Pilot Where We Would
Attempt to Collect Information Regarding a Series of Indicators. I Think
We\'ve Got about 24, 25 Indicators That We\'re Collecting Information
On. And That We Would Go Back to the Elt and Discuss the Results of That
Pilot Before We Initiate a Regional ‑‑ Any Sort of Regional Assessment
Concept. At the next Elt Meeting in June, Terry Barnett Leading That
Project Is Going to Make a Presentation to Elt and Frankly I Am Pretty
Impressed with the Results So Far. I Think It\'s Going to Be Very
Helpful to Us to Answer Questions Related to How We\'re Doing Against
the Strategic Plan And Answer Any Questions That Congress May Have about
the Health of the Public Lands. I Know in Our Plans for next Year We
Have, I Believe, Nine Regional Assessment Projects That Are Proposed,
and Our Concern Right Now Is That Probably in July We\'re Going to Try
to Get the Folks That Are Going to Be Working on Those Projects Together
to Discuss What Their Plans Are, Look at Similarities and Differences
and See Where We Need to Have Consistency Before We Begin to Spend Money
on Regional Assessments. We Want to Make Sure We Are Spending Our Money
Wisely. I Think People Can Look Forward To That Sorted of Discussion
Happening in Mid‑july.

N. Hatfield: as Henri Knows, I Think this Is Absolutely a Critical
Effort for Us Because If You Look at All the Work We Do Throughout the
Bureau and You Break it Down, the Work We Do, You Know, the Assessment
Process And the Planning Process Underlie Everything We Do and So We
Really Do Need to Get to a Level of Consistency That Makes Sense for the
Bureau.

A. Aldrich: Caller, Does That Answer Your Question or Would You like to
Ask Some Additional Information?

Caller: No, it Does. I Come from a Background, I Guess, with Watershed
and I Think That When We Move Towards Doing That More in the BLM of
Assessing on a Watershed Scale, It Will Help Us at the Community Level
When We Move into Our Implementation of These Habitat Conservation Plans
to Be Able to Have That as a Watershed Framework, Watershed Councils,
These Sorts of Things That Can Help the Communities We Live in Obtain
Implementation Grants and Funding.

J. Juen: this Is Jesse. I Think What You Said Hits the Nail on the Head.
I Have a Couple Experiences with That, and I Think That the Key Through
to What You Said Is You Have to Involve the Community in That Assessment
Approach, Too. Because They Have Needs, as You Said, like an Hcp, and
That Goes ‑‑ I Mean, That Could Be Multi‑state. It Could Be, You Know,
Multi‑jurisdictional for Sure. And Each Situation May Dictate a
Different Level of Geographic or Other Resource Type Assessment. So I
Think That\'s Really Important. I Think You Hit It.

Caller: Thank You Very Much, Guys. This Is a Great Thing Do You for
Employees.

A. Aldrich: Thank You for the Call. Thank You Very Much for Calling Us,
Danella and at this Point I Would like to Move to a Fax From Terry Reed
at Winnemucca. Is There Any Guidance or Tools To Make Estimates of the
Costs And Budget Needs for Planning Under this New Guidance? Any
Volunteers?

N. Hatfield: How about Line Number 1? Do We Have the Audience ‑‑

I Want to Use My 50‑50 Here.

N. Hatfield: That\'s What I Was Trying to Get To.

H. Bisson: You Know, I Think That until We Begin to Do These Plans and
Can Use the A‑b‑c Data That Results from It, It\'s a Little Hard to
Speculate. I Know Terry Quite Well, and I Know That from Terry\'s
Previous Experiences and My Own Experiences, When We Were Doing Planning
in the \'80s, it Seemed Like from the Washington Office We Were Given
\$300,000 Initially And That Was What it Was Supposed to Cost to Do a
Plan And Most of Them Ended up Costing at Least Half a Million Or More.
Many, Much More than Half a Million Dollars. And Then as Funding and the
Program Began to Dwindle, They Were Giving Us \$200,000 to Complete an
Rmp, and it Was Just Really Pretty Absurd. I Think That the Way the
Funding Strategy Is Laid out Now, We\'re Asking for Funding in a Variety
Of Programs, Not Just in Planning and the Trick Is Going To Be Ensure
That That Funding Is Maintained as a Bundle to Complete the Appropriate
Planning Whatever the Issues Are. I Mean, We\'re Not Going to Use Oil
and Gas Money on the California Desert to Do Amendments in California,
but We Will Use Oil and Gas Money to Do A Planning Amendment or an
Updated Land Use Plan in Wyoming Should One Be Necessary.

N. Hatfield: and I Think the 2001 Budget Certainly Has Some Estimates in
it That We Think May Be Needed for the Specific Planning Amendments That
Are Laid out for 2001 and as We Go Through That, I Agree with You,
Henri, That We Will Gather the Cost Data Through Our A‑b‑c System and
Have a Better Idea For Subsequent Ones. I Would Also like to Mention as
We Look at How We Do It, We Need To Be Aggressive in Terms of ‑‑ We Need
to Be Aggressive in Terms of Leveraging Internal Resources We Have and
Look at New Ways to Use the Money but Recognizing We Need an Influx of
Money to Make this Work.

H. Bisson: I Think If There Is Anything the Bureau Is Good At, It\'s
Squeezing Blood out of A Turnip. We Have to Stop Doing to That Some
Extent. Some of These Processes Take a Long Time. A Land Use Plan Can
Take Three To Five Years to Complete, Sometimes Longer, Depending on The
Complexity, and They\'re Very Expensive Projects and We Can\'t Go into
this with Our Eyes Closed. Money We\'re Getting Is a Good Start, but
We\'re Going to Have To Convince People to Help Us Get the Money That We
Need and Primarily the Congress And, You Know ‑‑ and That We\'re Going
to Have to Follow Through and Complete the Plans.

N. Hatfield: and Do Them Right. There\'s No Need to Start Without Doing
Them Right.

H. Bisson: That\'s Exactly Right.

J. Juen: One of the Benefits That Happens Is You Go Through a
Multi‑jurisdictional Process, People Start to Buy in and Say We Need to
Contribute, Participate That this They Can Provide Technical Data,
Bucks, People Resources and Data Resources. I Think it Becomes a
Valuable Partnership.

H. Bisson: I Think That\'s Key, Jesse, That this Not Be a BLM Cash Cow
to Complete a Land Use Plan, That, in Fact, If We\'re Doing
Multi‑jurisdictional Planning, That Everybody Is Helping to Pay the Way.
We Have Many Rural Communities That Don\'t Have Much Money, and In Some
Cases it May to Be Our Benefit to Help Support Some of Their Costs and I
Think We\'ve Got the Flexibility to Do That If It\'s Required. But We
Also Have, Particularly In the Multi‑jurisdictional Plans, We Have Some
Communities That Have a Lot of Money and They Have a Lot of Expertise,
More Expertise than We Do in Planning, That We Should Be Trying to Take
Advantage Of.

A. Aldrich: I\'d Also like to Toss In, Henri, I Think You Brought it up
in Your Introduction Remarks, That One Of the Things That We Have
Pledged to Congress Is That We\'ll Valuate All the Land Use Plans by
2002, and These Evaluations Are Absolutely Critical to Us in Laying the
Groundwork in Seeking Funding Necessary to Update Not Only Mfp But Rmps
but Develop the New Plans for the Monuments and the Ncas. So It\'s a
Plug for That Work That\'s out There, and If You Need Help, Call
Washington, Right?

H. Bisson: I Want to Perhaps Add Another Thought to the Process Here,
and Having Worked In Planning at Different Levels, Right Now I Don\'t
Know this for A Fact, but I Suspect That Many Of Our Field Managers Have
Not Actually Led Completion of a Major Land Use Plan, and Those That
Have Recall the Amount of Commitment That\'s Required to Get One of
These Things Done and They May Be Somewhat Apprehensive to Begin Another
Planning Process. But, You Know, Frankly, Planning Can Be Some of the
Most Interesting, Challenging and Rewarding Work That We Do. I Can\'t
Think of Anything That\'s More Rewarding than Rolling up Your Sleeves
and Sitting down With Your Constituents and Developing a Strategy to How
We\'re Going to Manage These Lands for the next 10 to 15 Years. We Have
Right Now, I Think, Nina, Two State Directors and an A.d. Sitting at the
Table Who Have Been Planners in the Past. We Have Associate State
Directors Who Have Been Heavily Involved in Planning. We Have Field
Managers, Group Managers in Washington Who Have Been Planners. And I
Think That Through Getting Engaged in the Planning Process, You Have an
Opportunity to Learn About What Makes Us Resource Programs Work, What\'s
Required To Make Decisions in Those Areas, and It\'s a Real Growth
Opportunity, Particularly for New Employees or Employees Who Want to
Make a Career Change. Planning Is Something You Want To Get Involved In,
If You Really Want to Move on with Your Career.

N. Hatfield: as I Said Before, It\'s a Process That Cross Cuts
Everything That We Do In the Bureau, and So You Really Do Get a
Tremendous Experience From It.

A. Aldrich: Well, We Have an Additional Fax That Has Come in From the
Phoenix Field Office, And They Want to Know ‑‑ Does The New Guidance
Recognize Open Space as a Valid Use?

T. Milesnick: it Doesn\'t Specifically Address, I Guess, Open Space as
Being a Valid Use. I Think the Guidance Looks At, You Know, All the
Resources That We Have and Leaves it to the Discretion of the Manager
That If Maintaining Open Space Is the Appropriate Decision for an Area,
Then That Would Be What The Decision Would Come out of The Process. But
I\'m Not Necessarily Sure That We Identify That as a Specific
Requirement in the Guidance.

J. Juen: I Think There Are Some Specific Sections That Go Into That, and
One Is Desired Outcomes, under Decision Categories and as You Work That
Process, the Decision Outcomes May Be That Open Space Is a Critical
Element to That Planning Effort. The Other One Is the Social and
Economic Category. Socially That May Be Something That Is Imperative for
a Particular Area That That Falls Under, But, Again, You Have in
Guidance That You\'ve Laid out There, it Gives Us That Ability To Plug
Those in Where We Need It.

H. Bisson: Frequently When You\'re Dealing in a Multi‑jurisdictional
Plan, Particularly When You\'re Working On Habitat Conservation Issues,
Which for Some Reason Tend to Focus on Developing Communities Where
You\'ve Got a Lot of Growth Occurring, You Know, Endangered Species Is
Only One of the Values That People Are Concerned About. Open Space, for
the Average Person Who Lives in Those Communities, Open Space Is What
It\'s About. It\'s about Having Places Where They Can Go after Work and
Walk Their Dog and Look at Wildlife And Take Their Kids out and Feel
Safe There. It Just Happens That There Are Also Endangered Species That
Live There That Are Being Protected at the Same Time. So I Think the
Bureau, Because Of Our Land Pattern in These Communities, Is Uniquely
Positioned, More So than Any Other Federal Agency, to Contribute to the
Open Space Values in Our Counties and Communities in the West.

A. Aldrich: They\'re Certainly Growing to Be Huge Requirements, I Think,
for Some of Our Lands Near the Expanding Communities In the West. Ted,
Were You Going to Add Something Else?

T. Milesnick: I Had a Thought When Henri Was Talking, but I No Longer
Have That Thought. So ‑‑

A. Aldrich: We Have a Phone Call from Horace in Washington, D.c.. Well
Come, Horace.

Caller: How You Doing?

A. Aldrich: I\'m Doing Fine.

Caller: Great. My Question Has to Do With, out Of Consideration of the
Time That it Takes to Complete a Plan And the Amount of Growth and
Change That Has Taken Place on The Landscapes out There, Has
Consideration Been Given to Approaching the Planning Process As Kind of
a Living, Ongoing Thing as Opposed to Trying to Complete a Plan?

A. Aldrich: I Am Going to Open this One up for Discussion But I Think
I\'m Going to Ask Jesse to Bring Some of His Recent Field Experience to
the Table Here.

J. Juen: Horace, I Think You Bring up an Excellent Point and It\'s One
We\'ve Wrestled with Quite a Bit. There\'s Two Things. I Think One Is
We\'ve Mentioned Here Planning, this Is a Very Long‑term Life. I Mean
You Can\'t Just Say We\'re Going to Do Planning for Three Years and Then
Pitch it out and We\'re Done with It. And That\'s Happened. We\'ve
Cycled Through That Mfps, Rmps, So on and So On. I Think You Hit the
Nail There As Well. It Is a Lifelong Process. The Reason Being Is That
Land Use Decisions Will Change Based Upon Needs That Occur Within, You
Know, the West Here and I Think That\'s Absolutely Imperative. The Other
Thing I\'ll Add Is I Think the Guidance Allows Us to Do That. I Think it
Allows Us to Look at It, but in a More Simplistic Manner That Gives Us a
Lot More Flexibility and Part of Is That When Ted Held Those Books Up,
300 Pages of Very Specific, You Know, Procedural Things and So on and So
On, Versus, You Know, a Hundred‑page Document That Says These Are
Guidance Criteria. If You Need to Change, Go Change. And If You\'re Ok
for Ten Years, You\'re Ok for Ten Years. But it Gives You That Ability
to Interface with it All the Time.

N. Hatfield: I Can Recall the Meeting in Which We Decided to Go Forward
with the Planning Guidance, and That\'s, I Think, The Major Reason That
We Saw the Need to Do the Changes in the Guidance, That We\'d Gotten to
a Point That under the Old Planning Guidance, it Did Sort Of End, You
Put it on the Shelf And it Was Very He Can Expensive To Make Some of the
Amendments And So this Is a Much More Flexible Process to Try to Keep
The Plan up to Date in Context Of the Decisions Being Made on The Land.

H. Bisson: I Think as We Do Our Planning Evaluations over The next Year
and a Half or So, We\'re Going to Find That There Are Plans out There
Where Field Offices and States Have Been Diligent about Doing Plan
Maintenance, about Doing Plan Amendments, And, You Know, One Of the
Ideas for Looking at All Of the Plans Right Now Is to See Where the
Plans Occur. We May Find Plans That Are Very Current That May ‑‑ They
May Be Older but They May Be Very Current Because the Field Offices Have
Taken the Time to Stay with It.

N. Hatfield: or Had the Resources.

H. Bisson: or Had the Resources to Stay with It, or Had the Controversy
That Forced Them to Complete Amendments That Were Required and We\'re
Going to Find Other Locations Where, You Know, the Plan Is Still Used,
It\'s the Basis for Making Decisions, but There\'s Been Very Little
Maintenance Done for Lack Of Resources, and Not Very Many Amendments.
You Know, I\'m Aware of What I Like to Call the Mother of All Resource
Management Plans, Which Was the California Desert Plan. It Was Completed
in 1980, and Then it Had a Major Amendment in 1982, Which Changed Many
Decisions, and since That Time, Molly Brea Who May Be Listening, She Was
Planning Coordinator When I First Got to the Desert, But I Believe It\'s
Well over 100, Maybe 150 Amendments That Have Completed it ‑‑ That Have
Been Done on That Plan since the \'80s and to Keep it Current, and Right
Now I Know That They\'re Going Through Three Major Multi‑jurisdictional,
Multi‑species Planning Amendments That Will Basically Take the Whole
Plan and Divide It in Three Parts to Bring it up Into Currency,
Specifically Related to Desert Tort Us and Other Endangered Species.

J. Juen: One of the Other Things I Will Add Quickly, Henri, What Happens
When You Get Into Multi‑jurisdictional Planning, All of a Sudden All The
Partners Want to Have an Investment in Implementing It. It Isn\'t Just
on the Shoulders Of BLM.

A. Aldrich: Horace, Do You Have Some Thoughts You Wish to Add?

Caller: Well, I\'m Certainly Happy to Hear That Our Process Now Builds
in That Flexibility. It Just Scares Me to Death When I Look at Some of
These Plans That Are Ten Years Old. It Was Evident They Were Probably
Outdated Before the Process Ended. So I Think this Is a Much More
Forward Process and One That Is Complementary of the Challenges That We
Have to Face.

T. Milesnick: Horace, I Was Going to Interject Something for You. We
Have Two Chapters in Our Proposed Guidance. One of Them Deals with
Making Determinations of Whether or Not You Need New Decisions and How
You Address New Information and Circumstances, Which Goes into That in
Considerable Detail and Kind of Has a Screen for Things That You Look at
in Making That Determination, and Then the Other Chapter Goes into How
You Go about Either Amending or Revising the Plan to Address That. So We
Very Specifically Address That in the Guidance.

That\'s Excellent. Thanks a Lot. I Appreciate It.

A. Aldrich: Thank You, Horace. We Have a Fax from Glen in Lake Wood,
Colorado. He Has Asked Us about Draft Appendix C, the One Dealing with
The Decisions Made in the Land Use Plan. He Said, from His View Appendix
C Adds Many New Required Land Use Plan Decisions Will this Require That
We Amend the Existing Rmps That Don\'t Include These Decisions?

T. Milesnick: Well, Glen, What I Would Say Is That If Those Are Current
Issues in Your Area and If There\'s Resource Values That Tie to Those
New Requirements, and You Have Those In Place, Then I Think You Should
Be Looking at Probably Doing a Plan Amendment to Address Those, and the
Section That We Have in the Manual for Addressing Whether or Not New
Decisions Are Needed Address Some of Those Types of Factors Of Whether
or Not You Need to Make New Decisions. So I Think Just Because They\'re
In That Program Specific Appendix Doesn\'t Necessarily Mean That You
Need to Go out and Do a Plan Amendment. The Way We Structured That
Appendix Is Those Things Are Done Kind‑on‑a Program or Resource Basis If
‑‑ Kind of on A Program or Resource Basis If They Are Appropriate and an
Issue in the Area.

A. Aldrich: Would Anybody Else like to Add Thoughts on That? Well, I
Will Again Remind Those Watching That, Please Send Us Your Calls or
Faxes Here at the Training Center, and We\'ll Try To Get Your Questions
or Comments Addressed.

J. Juen: Ann, I Had a Question and I Am Not Sure Who Would Be Best to
Handle This. When We Talk about Evaluation of The Status of Our Plans,
at Least by 2002, I Think We Said, What Do We Envision That Entailing
When We Talk about an Evaluation? Do You Guys Have a Sense of What That
Means?

T. Milesnick: We\'ve Laid out Some Guidelines in Our Manual Guide Ounce
What to Look at Through a Comprehensive Evaluation, and What We\'re
Looking at Doing, and We ‑‑ What We Mean When We Say Comprehensive
Evaluation, You Would Look at the Decisions in The Plan, Determine
Whether or Not They\'re Still Valid, Whether Or Not We\'re Achieving
Those, Whether or Not the Mitigation Measures That We May Have
Identified Through the Nepa Process Are Being Followed, Whether There\'s
Current or New Issues That Need to Be Addressed In the Plan, and We
Would Go Through and Document That in Terms of Basically What\'s the
Health of That Land Use Plan.

J. Juen: and Nina, in Regards To That, as That Evaluation Process Is
Completed and We Get To 2002, I\'m Assuming That We\'re Going to Try to
Put Forth a Strategy to Go Back to Congress To Say, We\'ve Done this
Evaluation, Here\'s the Needs as We See Them as We Move Forward Into the
Future?

N. Hatfield: Well, Absolutely. We Have to Substantiate for Congress the
Need for Funds and So this Is the Way We\'re Going To Go Through the
Process of Trying to Prioritize What We Need to Do, Which Ones Are the
Ones That We Need to Address First, and That Gives Us a Basis For Going
Back and Asking for The Resources. So It\'s a Very, Very Important
Process in Terms of Sustaining This as Being a Long‑term Effort And Just
Not a One‑year Shot.

A. Aldrich: And, Again, If You Get a Chance to Look at the Report to
Congress, it Does Lay Out Sort of the Initial Review Of the Plans, but
We Do Need to Go Back in and Look at Decisions, and One That Wasn\'t
Mentioned That We Really Need to Look at Is, Are We in Compliance On
Consultation for Newly Listed Species? That\'s a Big Issue for Some of
The Plans.

H. Bisson: the Endangered Species Issue Is a Huge Issue Because of a
Lawsuit We Lost in Oregon, I Believe. We Now Have a Court Decision That
Says We Have to Go Consult With the Fish and Wildlife Service When a New
Species Gets Listed, Even If We Are Talking About Existing Land Use
Planning. I Think this past Winter the Canada Links ‑‑ Canada Lynx Got
Listed and It\'s Requiring an Effort for Those States and Field Offices
That Have Lynx Habitat It\'s Requiring Them to Amend Their Plan to
Specifically Address Canada Lynx. So We\'re Going to See More and More
and More of That Issue as The West Continues to Grow.

T. Milesnick: Ann, I Would Like to Make One Quick Comment, And That\'s
That Our Goal at the Washington Level Is to Issue Some Additional
Guidance to the Field on How They Go Through That Evaluation Process,
since It\'s a Major Workload and Coming Up on Us Quickly and We May Want
To Expand a Bit What We Have in The Manual Guidance.

A. Aldrich: Thank You for Bringing That Up. That Was a Pledge We Made to
the Dsds.

H. Bisson: I Want to Add One Other Thing That I Don\'t Think Has Been
Mentioned Today and That Is on the House Markup for Our Appropriations,
the House Included Language Basically Asking BLM to Prepare a Report
Similar to the Planning Reporting to in with the President\'s Budget
Detailing the Impact on Our Programs, Particularly on Our Planning, of
All of the New Listed Species That Are ‑‑ That Have Happened In the Last
Few Years and That Are Coming and So in the Wildlife Program, Endangered
Species Program, We\'re Going to Be Looking at Plays like the Pacific
Northwest and the Great Basin and the Short and Tall Grass Prairie and
Looking at the Impacts of Listing a Species From Everything From, You
Know, Fish Species in the Pacific Northwest to What Happens If the Black
Tail Prairie Dog Gets Listed, Which it Likely Will. It\'s Not Listed
Now. They Made a Decision That Said The Listed Was Warranted but
Precluded Because of Other Priorities. But Within the next Year and a
Half We Could See a Prairie Dog Listed as an Endangered Species. I Think
Our Plans Are Going to Get More Complex as We Have to Take These New
Factors into Consideration.

N. Hatfield: but as You Point Out, That Language in the House Markup Is
Really an Opportunity For Us To, You Know, Lay out the Kinds of Needs We
Have to Get to Real Resources.

H. Bisson: Exactly, Nina. It\'s an Invitation for Us to Identify Our
Funding Needs to Meet These New Challenges.

A. Aldrich: I Think Those Are Important Thoughts, but I\'d like To Go to
Our Caller from St. George. Welcome, Tim.

Caller: Hey, Jesse, Hey, Henri. Good Morning. Ted, One of the Problems
That a Lot of the Field Staff Have Is The Amount of Planning and Nepa,
The Hurdles That We Have to Jump Through They Have to Jump Through to
Get Projects Done. We Have to Do a Land Use Plan And in the past That\'s
Taken Several Years and a Lot of Effort and Then We Do an Implementation
Plan or What We\'ve Done Is Activity Level Plans and Then Unless a
Project Has Been Adequately Covered, or If There\'s Some Controversy or
Concern, We Wind up Doing Site Specific Nepa Analysis. How Does the
Draft Help Us Do More Programmatic Decision Making So That We Don\'t
Have to Analyze a Project Three Times?

T. Milesnick: I Think One of The Things the Guidance Does Is Recognize
the Planning Process Tiers to the Nepa Process and That You Can, as
You\'re Going Into More Detail, Either Through Implementation Planning
or Site Specific Project Planning, That The Nepa Analysis That You Do
Can Use the Nepa Analysis That You Did at the Implementation Plan Level
or the Land Use Plan Level, and Hopefully That Should Make it Easier for
You to Issue The Decisions in the Future That You Wouldn\'t Have to Go
Back and Redo That Analysis. Now, You Need to Consider Whether or Not
There\'s New Circumstances That Come up and Whether or Not You Need to
Revisit Those Decisions or the Nepa Analysis. But I Think the Guidance
in Terms of the Land Use Plan Is Looking to Provide the Overall Guidance
and Direction That You Would Need to Take on the Public Lands. I\'m Not
Sure, Tim, If That Answered Your Question. It Probably Didn\'t Because I
Know ‑‑ I Know the Field Is Frustrated With, You Know, Kind Of Continual
Planning and Nepa, But We Do Need to Make Sure That We Dot the Is and
Cross the Ts, But Not, You Know ‑‑ but Not Go To the Detail in Doing
That, but We Need to Be Adequate in Doing That.

N. Hatfield: They Have to Realize If We Don\'t Do That Well, We Don\'t
Get to the Uses On the Land. So It\'s a Necessary First Step.

T. Milesnick: Does That Answer Your Question, Tim, or Not?

Caller: Well, Yeah, It\'s ‑‑ I Think It\'s as Close as We\'re Going to
Get. Under the Current System, If You Do the Activity Level Planning
Right, You Can Just Tier to It. You Can Write a Dna If It\'s Done Very,
Very Well. But If There\'s a Little Bit of a Change or If There\'s Some
Controversy, We Wind up Analyzing the Project for the Third Time. If You
Guys ‑‑ When I Review This Stuff and Send You My Comments, That\'s What
I\'m Going To Focus on and Hopefully We Can Find Someway to Expedite the
Process but Still Do a Good Clean Job.

T. Milesnick: I Appreciate That, Tim, and That\'s Basically What We\'re
Trying to Do, So I Appreciate the Comment.

J. Juen: Tim, I Think You Made a Good Point. It\'s Absolutely Critical
That The Field Get Involved in Looking at the Guidance in Trying to Lend
Whatever Solutions to Help Us, You Know, Meet the Needs out on the
Ground. And Also Help the Constituents Understand and Meet Their Needs
As Well on the Ground.

Caller: We\'ll Have to Live With It, So I\'m Sure You\'ll Get Some it ‑‑

A. Aldrich: Thank You Very Much, Tim. Unless You Have Another Question,
I Think We\'re Going to Move on to Wrapping up the ‑‑ Our Discussion
Here Today.

N. Hatfield: I Would like to Go Back and Get Your Thoughts on What I
Think May Be a Concern That Will Come Through in Terms Of Responses to
the Draft and That Is the Balance That I Think We\'ve Tried to Go Toward
Flexibility as Opposed to Being More Prescriptive in the Existing
Guidance in Terms of Planning.

T. Milesnick: I Would like to Make One Comment. I Think Even Though We
Have Taken out Some of the Prescriptive Processes, We\'re Still Required
to Balance the Uses and Values on the Public Land Through a Decision
Process That Results in Considering Feedback from the Public and Also
the Uses and Needs of the Public Lands in Reaching Those Decisions. So I
Don\'t Know That Process and Prescriptive Requirements We\'ve Taken out
Will Change Kind of Our Need to Do That. So I Think it Still Provides
the Sideboards and We Have the Regulatory Requirements to Do That, Nina.

N. Hatfield: and We Didn\'t Change the Regs. We Made a Very Deliberate
Decision Not to Change the Regs, But Just to Make the Guidance Reflect
the Best Practices like In Tucson That We\'ve Experienced.

A. Aldrich: and it Really Is The Minimum Requirements. If Some of Our
Areas Need More Prescription, I Am Sure That Will Show up in Our
Assessment And Decision Making Process. I Think Jesse\'s Example Really
Illustrates That Very Well. Before We Close Things Out, I\'d Again like
to Remind You That We Will Accept Comments on the Guidance until July
10th. Comments from BLM, Constituents, Governments and Tribes Are
Necessary to Help Us Finalize The Guidance and Make it as Useful as We
Can to the Field And the Public. Nina, How Would You like to Close out
the Section?

N. Hatfield: First of All, I\'d Really like to Thank a Few Folks Who
Have Really Been Working Late and over Long Weekends a Lot in Order to
Get This Draft Guidance to You. Ted, Especially, You Know, Ted Has Had
More Meetings with Me in The Last Two Years about the Schedule for
Getting the Draft Guidance out and I Know That Ted Is Relieved We\'re at
this Point Because We Won\'t Be Meeting So Often about the Schedule. But
He Really Has Worked Hard, And I Appreciate That, Ted. I Think That the
Product Is an Excellent One for Us to Start Talking about a New Way of
Looking at Planning. And, Henri and Ann, Certainly, I Think Also Have
Been Instrumental in Terms of Providing Leadership and Moving Forward.
And I\'d Also like to Thank Kris Clark and Her Staff, Particularly
Veronica Larvie out Of the Solicitor\'s Office, Has Really Been Helpful
in Providing BLM Guidance to Insure That We\'re Consistent with the Laws
And Regulations, and They, Too, Have Put in a Lot of Long Hours And
Recently and Throughout this Process to Make Sure We Could Get to this
Point. And I Certainly Think this Is an Important Point Because this
Guidance Will Support and Guide Us Through the next Phase of Plan
Development and Amendment. It\'s Imperative That We Hear What Will Work
and What Needs Additional Guidance. Because of the Heavy Emphasis on
Collaboration and Multi‑jurisdictional Planning, It\'s Very Important
That All of Us Reach out and Share this Guidance with Our Constituents
And Other Interested Folks. After All, the BLM Lands Belong To the
Entire American Public, And It\'s Important That They Identify Areas
Where this Draft Guidance Can Be Improved, and So We Look Forward to
Hearing from You and Hearing from Our Publics About this Draft Guidance.

A. Aldrich: That\'s a Good Summary of Where We Are, Where We\'re Going
and That I, Too, Add My Thanks to All the Folks That You Listed. Henri?

H. Bisson: I Guess, First of All, I\'d like to Say That I\'m Really
Excited at the Fact That We Finally Have this Out. It\'s Something That
We\'ve Been Working on for a Long Time. You Know, I\'d Also like to
Thank Kris Clark and Veronica Larvie, But Kris Also Had a Number of
Other Staff People over the past Few Years Who Have Worked on it And
They Have Made Significant Contributions to Getting Us to Where We Are.
I Look Forward to the Dialogue Concerning the Planning over the Next
Month or So and I Think One Of the Things We\'re Probably Going to See
Are Comparisons Made Between the Forest Service\'s Efforts to Change the
Regulations Versus What We\'re Doing by Adjusting Our Planning Manual to
Reflect Ongoing Field Practices and I Think That it Will Be Interesting
to See How That Discussion Occurs, and I ‑‑ I\'m Just Happy We\'re Here
and We Have this out Now. Thanks, Ann.

A. Aldrich: Thanks, Henri. Jesse?

J. Juen: I\'d Also like to Echo Henri\'s Statement of Being Excited. The
Challenges That Face Us Every Day Are Going to Tine Grow And It\'s Going
to Lend Itself to A Very Exciting Time for the Bureau. Henri Made a
Statement Earlier That Talked about We\'re the Best Agency in the Best
Position to Do the Most Good for the Country At this Point in Time as a
Resource Agency and I Think That\'s Absolutely Correct. The Neat Thing
That I Think Has Happened with this Program Guidance Is It\'s Really
Facilitated a New Way of Doing Business for Us, One That Will Take Us
Right into the Future to Face Those Challenges, and I\'ll Echo What Tim
Mentioned Earlier, And That the Field must Get Involved. It\'s
Imperative That Managers And Field Personnel at All ‑‑ Well, Personnel
at All Levels of The Organization, We All Deal With on it a Daily Basis
Whether We Want to or Not, It\'s There and Part of What We Do and How We
Do Business and I Think It\'s Really Important to Get the Word Out. We
Need to Get That Feedback and Make it the Best Document Possible.

A. Aldrich: Thank You. And, Ted, I Think You Deserve The Last Word.

T. Milesnick: Thank You, Ann. I Guess What I\'d Say Is I Really Have
Appreciated All the Involvement from Everyone Who Has Contributed to
this Point in Getting the Document to Where We\'ve Gotten To, and I
Recognize It Is Still and Draft and it Can Be Improved upon and I\'m
Really Interested in Hearing Back from You on Whether it Meets Your
Needs. Are There Sections That We Need To Clarify? Or Are There Also
Sections We Need to Expand or New Sections We Need to Add to Address
Concerns You Have That Will Help You Duty Job? And We Need to Hear Back
from You. And My Goal Is That the Guidance Needs to Meet the Needs of
the People Opinion the Field Planners Who Are Actually Preparing the
Plans and Nepa Documents. And We Also Need to Hear Whether Or Not this
Guidance Is Meeting The Needs Of, You Know, Our Publics and Constituents
That We Work With. So with That, Ann, I Think I\'ll Turn it Back to You,
and I Have Enjoyed Working on the Guidance And It\'s Been Great and I\'m
Excited That We\'re Here at this Stage.

A. Aldrich: Thanks, Ted, for Being with Us this Morning. Thanks for Your
Efforts in Getting Us Here this Morning. I\'d Also like to Thank Nina
Rose For Joining Us, Henri, and Jesse, for Their Time and Efforts in
Helping Us Get the Word out on the New Guidance. I\'d Also like to Thank
All of Those in the Viewing Audience Who Took Time out of Their Busy
Schedules and Participated in The Discussion Through Calls and Faxes,
and Also for Those of You Who Just Listened In. We Do Hope That You\'ll
Take Time To Review the Manual and Handbook. Again, You Can Find Those
at Www.BLM.gov. Please Share That Information With Your Interest Groups.
We\'d Also like to Remind All BLM Satellite Downlink Coordinators To Let
Us Know How Many People From Your Office Watched Our Program and How We
Did. You Can Use NTC\'s Automated Viewer Reporting and Evaluation System
on the NTC Homepage at Www.NTC.BLM.gov/satnet. Or You Can Complete the
Standard Broadcast Viewer Roster and Fax It to the NTC Immediately
Following the Show. We Hope Our Program Has Given You a Better
Understanding of The Changes We Will See as the New Planning Guidance Is
Implemented Across the Bureau. Thanks for Watching. So Long from the
National Training Center in Phoenix.

Announcer: to Help Your Office Participate in Future Telecasts, See the
BLM Satellite Downlink Guide and Visit the NTC Homepage on the World
Wide Web. NTC\'s Internet Address Is Www.NTC.BLM.gov. Transcripts of
this Broad Program and Other NTC Broadcasts Are Available on the
Homepage. For More Information on Upcoming Distance Learning Events, as
Well as Traditional Courses, Call the Training Center at 602‑906‑5500.
Or Visit the Homepage. This Broadcast Has Been a Production of the BLM
National Training Center.