The BLM And The ESA

blmandesamonitoringBLM’s Role: The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was created in 1946 as a culmination of efforts dating as far back as the Land Ordinance of 1785. The primary aims in the 18th and 19th centuries focused on the exploration and settling of the west. With the creation of national forests and parks in the late 1800s and early 1900s came a shift in focus to maintaining public lands for their valuable natural resources. The BLM is now in charge of managing 258 million acres of land in the United States under their mission “to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations”. In recent years, the BLM has come to promote conservation and a stewardship ethic in light of our dwindling national wild land. In western Oregon alone, BLM is responsible for the management of two million acres of forest that are home to numerous threatened and endangered species.

The Endangered Species Act: Under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), government agencies including the BLM are required to protect species and preserve their habitats. The ESA was passed in 1973 to “conserve ‘the ecosystems upon which endangered and threatened species depend’ and to conserve and recover listed species”. Species can be listed as endangered if they are in imminent danger of becoming extinct, or threatened if they are in imminent danger of becoming endangered. Candidate species are those that have been proposed and warrant listing, but have been precluded due to higher priority for other species. Species can be deemed not warranted for listing if research does not show them to be in significant danger. Conservation efforts are still encouraged for “not warranted” species to prevent them from needing to be listed. The western pond turtle is not listed under the Endangered Species Act due to what the United States Fish and Wildlife Service determined to be insufficient scientific evidence, but it is a critical sensitive species according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The Oregon sensitive species system is used to caution against potential population collapses before the species is entirely wiped out. This turtle habitat-monitoring project is coordinated by the BLM to determine potential for the WPT on their land so as to secure the tenuous future of the WPT in Oregon.

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