Re: [Talk-us] US Bureau of Land Management Boundaries
On Tue, Jan 8, 2019, 11:48 brad I'm going to start close to home, extend that to the state of CO, & see > how it goes. > I've done quite a bit of recreating and boondock camping on BLM land and > I've never come across any that are leased exclusively, altho I'm sure > there are some.It's more of a rarity, than 'most of'. Ok. I knew exclusive leases exist, not how usual they are. I've other correspondents who've complained about what they see as a trend toward such arrangements. I personally have the good fortune to live in New York, which has very little Federal land, but a wealth of state-protected land whose protection is enshrined in the state constitution. Politically, your comment that the inhabitants resent BLM ownership is a > gross generalization. I'd say that the majority of western inhabitants > do not resent it. > Careless editing! I even thought while typing that message that I needed to go back and change 'the' to 'some' - but clearly didn't do it! Sorry! Still, one of our political parties has latched onto the issue. (Obviously, not all members of any party share all its leaders' opinions.) In any case, it's undeniable that a political controversy exists and has garnered media attention. In any case, in general we map land use, land cover and land access, not land ownership. Of course, those attributes often follow property lines, so cadastre has a way of coming along for the ride, but the focus should not be on the ownership. There's no consensus about whether cadastre should be in OSM at all, but boundaries for public-access facilities such as parks are widely tolerated. (Hardliners would exclude all cadastral data, including boundary=administrative, but they appear to be a relatively small minority.) Tagging with landuse=farmland/meadow/forest/..., with or without natural=wood/grassland/heath/scrub/moor/... would be appropriate (assuming that either the use or the cover is coterminous with the parcel), as would leisure=nature_reserve if passive recreation in nature is the parcel's purpose. Boundary=protected_area is appropriate if and only if the protection status is known. For at least some BLM lands, there is not significant protection; it's 'working land' that happens to be government-owned. (alaskadave's comments notwithstanding, this last sentence is not intended to be a comment, for well or ill, on BLM's stewardship.) Hey, whad'ya know... I even wikified something about that... https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Parcel#Parcel_data_as_a_secondary_source . I don't remember writing that, but I still agree with it. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] US Bureau of Land Management Boundaries
I'm going to start close to home, extend that to the state of CO, & see how it goes. I've done quite a bit of recreating and boondock camping on BLM land and I've never come across any that are leased exclusively, altho I'm sure there are some. It's more of a rarity, than 'most of'. Politically, your comment that the inhabitants resent BLM ownership is a gross generalization. I'd say that the majority of western inhabitants do not resent it. On 1/8/19 9:15 AM, Kevin Kenny wrote: On Mon, Jan 7, 2019 at 10:05 PM Michael Patrick wrote: "Multiple uses under BLM management include renewable energy development (solar, wind, other); conventional energy development (oil and gas, coal); livestock grazing; hardrock mining (gold, silver, other), timber harvesting; and outdoor recreation (such as camping, hunting, rafting, and off-highway vehicle driving). ... 36 million-acre system of National Conservation Lands (including wilderness areas, wilderness study areas, national monuments, national conservation areas, historic trails, and wild and scenic rivers); protecting wild horse and burro rangeland; conserving wildlife, fish, and plant habitat" Also agriculture. Burning Man's Black Rock City is leased from BLM under an Special Recreation Permit (SRP). ... " crop harvesting, residential occupancy, recreation facilities, construction equipment storage, assembly yards, well pumps, and other uses." So, even though it might be BLM, it could also be under a 50 year lease to a commercial entity, so for all intents and purposes be regarded as private property - like massive solar ( 19 million acres ) and wind ( 20 million acres ) energy farms. I seem to recall a Nevada brothel was at one time operating on BLM land with a lease and permit - pretty much, as long as you don't leave the land damaged and it doesn't interfere with other planned uses, you can get a lease. Just saying, one class isn't going to do it. Mostly, 'exploited', not 'protected'. All that 'BLM land' says is 'this land is owned by the US Government' - generally because it was Government-owned at the time that a state was admitted to the Union and hasn't been sold since. Some BLM land - about 145,000 km² - is 'conservation land' in some way, and some small sliver is special recreation land. But large amounts are simply leased, to mining and drilling companies, cattle ranchers and farmers, solar and wind energy companies, private residences, basically, any land use that the Government agrees to. Some, if not most of these leaseholds are exclusive, so that a ranch can run barbed wire, put up posters, and treat it as private property for as long as the lease runs and it pays the rent. (Some timber leases explicitly require public access in areas that are not actively being logged.) Given the political controversy surrounding the BLM (in some Western states, the BLM owns a majority of the land and the inhabitants resent it), I'd tend to steer away from a wholesale import. I would think that a pilot project could start with an import of land in one specific, limited category of particular public interest (such as wilderness areas or recreation areas) and use that to study issues of integration and conflation. Restricting to wilderness or recreation areas is also safer since these are relatively stable, rather than other land uses that could change entirely with the next leaseholder. Most other BLM land designations could be used only to inform landuse=*. The land in many cases does not enjoy any form of legal protection. It is simply owned by the government, and any protection is simply by the policy of the agency that manages a particular parcel and could change with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, no land use is 100% guaranteed stable, and the fact that something might change tomorrow is ordinarily not a reason to refrain from mapping it today. Nevertheless, given that the justification for an import is usually that the project lacks sufficient staff to map the features being imported, importing features that are known to be volatile seems imprudent. I say this as someone who has done imports from databases of government-owned land. In both the rework of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation lands, and the import _de novo_ of the New York City watershed lands, I restricted the import to particular categories. I specifically excluded New York City lands that are closed to the public (I could have mapped them as boundary=protected_area protect_class=12 access=private, but decided that they simply were neither sufficiently verifiable nor of sufficient public interest to pursue.) Similarly, I excluded several classes of New York State lands such as private conservation easements and the bizarre category of "Forest Preserve land underwater". It's much easier to go back later and import more than it is to recover from a botched import. ___ Talk-us mailing list
Re: [Talk-us] US Bureau of Land Management Boundaries
On Mon, Jan 7, 2019 at 10:05 PM Michael Patrick wrote: > "Multiple uses under BLM management include renewable energy development > (solar, wind, other); conventional energy development (oil and gas, coal); > livestock grazing; hardrock mining (gold, silver, other), timber harvesting; > and outdoor recreation (such as camping, hunting, rafting, and off-highway > vehicle driving). ... 36 million-acre system of National Conservation Lands > (including wilderness areas, wilderness study areas, national monuments, > national conservation areas, historic trails, and wild and scenic rivers); > protecting wild horse and burro rangeland; conserving wildlife, fish, and > plant habitat" > > Also agriculture. Burning Man's Black Rock City is leased from BLM under an > Special Recreation Permit (SRP). ... " crop harvesting, residential > occupancy, recreation facilities, construction equipment storage, assembly > yards, well pumps, and other uses." So, even though it might be BLM, it could > also be under a 50 year lease to a commercial entity, so for all intents and > purposes be regarded as private property - like massive solar ( 19 million > acres ) and wind ( 20 million acres ) energy farms. I seem to recall a > Nevada brothel was at one time operating on BLM land with a lease and permit > - pretty much, as long as you don't leave the land damaged and it doesn't > interfere with other planned uses, you can get a lease. > > Just saying, one class isn't going to do it. Mostly, 'exploited', not > 'protected'. All that 'BLM land' says is 'this land is owned by the US Government' - generally because it was Government-owned at the time that a state was admitted to the Union and hasn't been sold since. Some BLM land - about 145,000 km² - is 'conservation land' in some way, and some small sliver is special recreation land. But large amounts are simply leased, to mining and drilling companies, cattle ranchers and farmers, solar and wind energy companies, private residences, basically, any land use that the Government agrees to. Some, if not most of these leaseholds are exclusive, so that a ranch can run barbed wire, put up posters, and treat it as private property for as long as the lease runs and it pays the rent. (Some timber leases explicitly require public access in areas that are not actively being logged.) Given the political controversy surrounding the BLM (in some Western states, the BLM owns a majority of the land and the inhabitants resent it), I'd tend to steer away from a wholesale import. I would think that a pilot project could start with an import of land in one specific, limited category of particular public interest (such as wilderness areas or recreation areas) and use that to study issues of integration and conflation. Restricting to wilderness or recreation areas is also safer since these are relatively stable, rather than other land uses that could change entirely with the next leaseholder. Most other BLM land designations could be used only to inform landuse=*. The land in many cases does not enjoy any form of legal protection. It is simply owned by the government, and any protection is simply by the policy of the agency that manages a particular parcel and could change with the stroke of a pen. Clearly, no land use is 100% guaranteed stable, and the fact that something might change tomorrow is ordinarily not a reason to refrain from mapping it today. Nevertheless, given that the justification for an import is usually that the project lacks sufficient staff to map the features being imported, importing features that are known to be volatile seems imprudent. I say this as someone who has done imports from databases of government-owned land. In both the rework of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation lands, and the import _de novo_ of the New York City watershed lands, I restricted the import to particular categories. I specifically excluded New York City lands that are closed to the public (I could have mapped them as boundary=protected_area protect_class=12 access=private, but decided that they simply were neither sufficiently verifiable nor of sufficient public interest to pursue.) Similarly, I excluded several classes of New York State lands such as private conservation easements and the bizarre category of "Forest Preserve land underwater". It's much easier to go back later and import more than it is to recover from a botched import. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] US Bureau of Land Management Boundaries
Absolutely agree with your assessment of the management style of the BLM, Michael. In Alaska, BLM land is literally crisscrossed with ATV trails. It's a travesty but there's nobody around to enforce the rules and the amount of land under BLM's "care" is truly humongous. Unmanageable, even without a government shutdown. On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 10:05 AM Michael Patrick wrote: > > > Joseph, I'm not stuck on class 27, but as you say, that fits the >> definition on the wiki. I should probably look for other specific >> protection in the attributes and translate that somehow. Mostly it's just >> grazing and recreation land. Anything such as wilderness or monument >> would definitely be tagged as such. >> > > "Multiple uses under BLM management include renewable energy development > (solar, wind, other); conventional energy development (oil and gas, coal); > livestock grazing; hardrock mining (gold, silver, other), timber > harvesting; and outdoor recreation (such as camping, hunting, rafting, and > off-highway vehicle driving). ... 36 million-acre system of National > Conservation Lands (including wilderness areas, wilderness study areas, > national monuments, national conservation areas, historic trails, and wild > and scenic rivers); protecting wild horse and burro rangeland; conserving > wildlife, fish, and plant habitat" > > Also agriculture. Burning Man's Black Rock City is leased from BLM under > an Special Recreation Permit (SRP). ... " crop harvesting, residential > occupancy, recreation facilities, construction equipment storage, assembly > yards, well pumps, and other uses." So, even though it might be BLM, it > could also be under a 50 year lease to a commercial entity, so for all > intents and purposes be regarded as private property - like massive solar ( > 19 million acres ) and wind ( 20 million acres ) energy farms. I seem to > recall a Nevada brothel was at one time operating on BLM land with a lease > and permit - pretty much, as long as you don't leave the land damaged and > it doesn't interfere with other planned uses, you can get a lease. > > Just saying, one class isn't going to do it. Mostly, 'exploited', not > 'protected'. > > Michael Patrick > Data Ferret > > > > ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > -- Dave Swarthout Homer, Alaska Chiang Mai, Thailand Travel Blog at http://dswarthout.blogspot.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
