The Gov Agency That Manages America's Worst Land

Writing by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation led by Max Moser
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster

References

[nokia]

Saw the title and immediately knew what was up lol.

I work for the BLM for the moment and while I can say that a lot of the land is pretty barren, some of it is absolutely gorgeous and highly underrated. But because of land status shenanigans, the best bits are often impossible for the public to access which is a real shame.

A fun note about the rock collecting part is that when I asked our geologist if I could collect stuff, he answered in measurements quantified in buckets

[ty]

A couple years ago I drove from the Salt Lake City area to Reno NV via highway 50, which is nicknamed "The loneliest road in America", and it was a surreal experience. I loved every minute of it. Throughout the trip we would sometimes drive 20-30 minute stretches (at 80 mph mind you) without seeing another car. Whenever we would occasionally stop to stretch, the silence was incredible. The landscape, although quite barren, was beautiful.

We drove the same route back, but this time we drove through the night. The stars that you could see way out there in the middle of nowhere were something else. The moon hadn't risen yet, and at one point I pulled over and turned off our lights just to look at the starts and it literally made me gasp. It was almost scary to see the vastness of the milky way stretching across the whole sky so brightly. The feeling of isolation and solitude was unlike anything I've ever experienced.

I plan to recreate the trip sometime and I would highly recommend visiting the more desolate parts of the country if you get the chance.

[mr.logic]

ah yes that agency has so much land but the smallest office possible

[EyeMWing]

Note on the wild horses and burros: The absolutely hilarious implication here is that you can, in fact, get a free government horse.
After the prison labor breaks them, they're then available *for free* to go home with any rando that signs up. You have to take care of it for a year, and then the government will hand over legal ownership of your new communism horse.

[HunterSeim]

29 year BLM employee here. Excellent job.

[Tarkov.]

Finding footage of Burning Man where nobody has their boobies out was probably tough.

[austinthrowsstuff]

Here in Nevada, I feel like we love the BLM. I always hear it talked about in a proud way. We have like 50 million acres of blm land and it’s like we have the biggest back yard of any state

[prokjohnny]

Nah this is actually one of the coolest things I’ve learned about the government in soooo fucking long. Thank god stuff like this still exists in America.

[TechnoOlive]

As a person who has worked for the BLM for 3 years now, it’s great to see my work be recognized! I’m a seasonal who repairs trails, and does some other small projects on BLM and forest service land.

[Fulano]

The tragedy of the commons was less of a "not enough forage to sustain them" problem and more a "new climate that nobody has experience with" problem. The western US is what range scientist Allan Savory calls a Brittle Environment. The US settlers were used to Europe and the Eastern US where it rains regularly and you just graze then give it a break and it grows right back.
In brittle environments, being grazed is important or the vegetation will die off, but since the growing season is so short it needs grazed quickly, then left to rest until next year when it's had time to re-grow. This is basically mimicking the huge buffalo herd migration that used to happen before the US settlers arrived.

[saablazer]

I grew up out west and love BLM land. I used it all the time. Hiking, off-roading, target practice, and many other outdoor activities were all easily accessible to everyone. I now live in Virginia and there is no public land, at all. It’s all private property. There’s no exploring. There’s no off-roading. There’s no hiking. If you want to do anything, you have to either own the land or pay the owner to use it.

[joshuan.]

I think more videos like this would be beneficial to most people who don't actually understand the federal land management agencies. USFS, NPS, BLM, FWS, etc. most people know but have no idea of what they do outside of recreation and maybe grazing.

Great video that does not take one side of the argument for/against the agency.

[sulljason]

Some nerd: the climates changing and its dry could you not collapse the local biosphere?
Rancher: HALP IM BEING OPPRESSED BY THE WEATHER.

[gnarlynachoosrs]

"many of these pastures are near prisons" - me thinking that its a comparison and not a location description: :O

"inmates train and work with them to eventually be adopted".... :D

[picksey]

18:29 the sign says "Marshall Law" like it's a law named after a guy named marshall, and it's endlessly amusing to me that they put that on a sign and nobody corrected them.

[IronmanV]

I love how those self proclaimed "strong independent" ranchers tend to end up being the biggest moochers, whining if they don't get the subsidies they need to survive and claiming land that isn't theirs.

Fun Fact: The patriarch of the Bundy clan, Cliven, claimed that their land had been in their family for several generations. It turned out that Cliven's parents bought the land several years after he was born.

[raymondjlawsoniii]

I grew up in the "rural" west and spent much of my childhood exploring on the BLM and Forest Service roads in the area. Imagine my confusion when I read that a group had painted "BLM" on the street in front of the White House... and literally my first thought was, "What does the Bureau of Land Management have to do with that?" 😆

[jackguest]

So this is that BLM everybody is always talking about?

[chaosfenix]

Fun fact. If the land operated by BLM were its own country it would be about the size of Egypt.

[lexorchid]

around here, the Bureau of Land Management works with the Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife, Parks and Recreation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (for the Colville Confederated Tribes specifically), and the myriad of volunteer Fire Departments to manage the land, so it doesn't go completely untended, but it's still by far not enough people to manage the sheer quantity of barely-useable scrubland that surrounds us out here.