Healthy Landscapes: Targeting Investments in Landscape Resiliency

The BLM is using a landscape approach to identify and prioritize focal areas for treatments that are intended to maintain, improve, or restore range, aquatic, or forest health; connectivity; or resilience to climate change, fire, and other change agents.  When allocating appropriated funds, or funds that may become available through regional mitigation projects, or other sources for project implementation and monitoring, the BLM will consider opportunities to make additional investments in previously identified focal areas.

 The BLM’s Healthy Landscapes (HL) program is the successor to the Secretary’s Healthy Lands Initiative which was launched in 2007 and is a long-term, landscape scale, collaborative effort that works to leverage cooperative solutions across ownerships and jurisdictions at a landscape (not project) level.    To ensure strategic use of funding and to make it easier for the BLM and its partners to plan and sequence treatments over multiple years and across landscapes, BLM is identifying Healthy Lands Focal Areas (HL-FA) will receive multi-year funding priority for HL funds and will receive additional consideration for Fuels Management Program (FP) funding between fiscal year FY 2016 and FY 2020.  This approach will benefit strategic implementation of landscape resilience and connectivity projects, allow the BLM to demonstrate the capacity to implement highly targeted operations in national priority areas, and position the BLM to more efficiently partner with others. A map of the potential Focal Areas will be presented.