Finding Lands to Avoid

The citizens of this country own millions of acres of land that are managed on our behalf by federal agencies.  Millions of other publicly-owned acres are managed by state agencies. The federal lands in particular include places that are world famous - like Yosemite, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks. Other places are lesser known but equally spectacular like the California Desert Conservation Area and Anza-Borrego State Park, also in California.  Many of these lands and still others are of tremendous ecological significance, including the lands that are key to the survival of innumerable plant and wildlife species. 

These unique and sensitive areas have been allocated to a variety of different land systems, each with its own managing agency. At the federal level these systems include, in addition to national parks and national forests, national wildlife refuges and lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, an agency in the Department of the Interior. The acronyms of the management agencies would make a dizzying alphabet soup. And, to make things even more complicated, all of these land systems are subject to different management prescriptions which impose different levels of protection. Under the circumstances, it's probably not that surprising that lots of energy projects, including renewable energy projects, and transmission lines, including lines purportedly for renewable energy, have been proposed for some wildly inappropriate places.

NRDC's brand new interactive mapping tool brings together for the first time ever the federal lands and some state lands in Google Earth format so that anyone and everyone can see where they are.  What's more, we've simplified the complex statutory and regulatory schemes that apply to these lands into three categories - lands that are protected from energy development of all kinds, including renewable energy, lands on which energy development will be subject to strict limits, and lands that should be avoided to minimize controversy and speed development of renewables project. Our maps are not complete yet and we are not saying that lands outside these categories are appropriate for development (more about these topics in other posts). Nonetheless, we hope our maps will go a long way toward our goal of helping generation projects and lines get properly sited and impacts to sensitive wildlife and their habitats, vulnerable ecosystems and other unique and sensitive resources minimized.