Federal Lands

Information on the Acreage, Management, and Use of Federal and Other Lands Gao ID: T-RCED-96-104 March 21, 1996

Data from the four primary agencies managing federal lands--the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service--show that the total acreage under their control decreased from about 700 million acres to 622.8 million acres between 1964 and 1994. Nearly 44 percent of the 622.8 million acres were managed primarily for conservation and had some limitations on their use. As of September 1994, the federal government had obtained rights-of-use for about 3 million acres of nonfederal land. The federal government held about 52.3 million acres in trust for Indians in 1995. Thirteen western states owned a total of about 142 million acres. Three nonprofit organizations--the Nature Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, and The Trust for Public Land--transferred about 3.2 million acres to other public and private groups between 1964 and 1994.



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