Although the Bureau of Land Management was created more than forty years after the Forest Service, it is cast from the same Progressive mold. In the Progressive model of government, Congress sets policy and appropriates funds while agency officials manage public lands in the public interest. No one is assumed to have an incentive to do anything other than what is best for the nation.
Reality is far different.
Agency officials want bigger budgets. BLM budgets grow when Congress decides that a particular program makes good pork or lets managers keep their own receipts. Even before the salvage sale rider, many BLM districts regularly sold more than their allowable sale quantities because timber makes such good pork. Now that Congress lets the BLM keep recreation fees, many managers are eagerly charging fees that they will use to fund recreation, which they hope will become attractive pork. The fact that the vast majority of BLM districts lose money on all of the resources they manage is ignored by Congress and the agency, neither of which bother to ever compare receipts and costs by resource on a district or even a national basis.