CBI improves the way leaders, advocates, experts and communities make public and organizational decisions.

The Bureau of Land Management is one of the largest landholders in the western United States. It manages 262 million acres of lands, almost solely west of the Mississippi. Though once rural, many western states now face tremendous population growth. As these urban areas push up against BLM boundaries, there is tremendous pressure upon the federal government to turn abutting public land over to the private sector for development and inclusion within city boundaries. CBI hoped to convene a dialogue among interested stakeholders (BLM, cities, states, private sector developers, environmental NGOs) on the national policy implications of these major urban-BLM land exchanges.

HNCMP was asked to develop the guidelines for this stakeholder dialogue.

Our work

Step 1: Research and review the land issues in the Western United States and identify any existing dialogue efforts, reports, pending legislative proposals, or other initiatives related to this topic.

Step 2: Interview key stakeholders via phone to explore the policy implications of potential land swaps by the federal government and the interest in convening some kind of federal policy dialogue.

Step 3: Analyze the interviews.

Final Product

A report outlining the results of the interviews, the results of the research, and, based on this data, a recommendation on whether to hold a policy dialogue, and if so, how it would be scoped, structured, and possibly funded.