Jurisdiction over Mining Claims

The Bureau of Land Management is an agency of the United Sates Department of the Interior that has the main responsibility for overseeing the laws and regulations that govern the disposal of almost all the minerals that are located on public lands. One of the goals and objectives that the United States Bureau of Land Management does is take care of developing the mining resources that are in the United States. There is what is known as a Memorandum of Understanding that was made in April 1957, as amended, between the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service that takes care of providing supportive procedures when it comes to the administration of the mining laws that are in the National Forest System lands, as well as including the examining of mining claims in the National Forests with the support of Forest Service inspectors. There was a bill that was signed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1971 that recognized as an ongoing national policy which said “ the need to foster and encourage private enterprise in a) the development of economically sound and stable domestic mining, minerals, metals and mineral reclamation industries; b) the orderly and economic development of domestic mineral resources, reserves and reclamation of metals and minerals to help assure satisfaction of industrial and security needs; c) mining, mineral and metallurgical research, including the use and recycling of scrap; d) and the study of development methods for the disposal, control and reclamation of mineral waste products, and the reclamation of mined land, so as to lessen any adverse impact of mineral extraction and processing upon the physical environment that might result from mining or mineral activities.”

The lands available
The Federal Government owns all of the Federal lands and these lands are administered by the agencies of the Federal Government. Included in these are in addition the public domain lands as well as the acquired lands. The public domain lands are the lands that the United States obtained from Great Britain, Russia, Spain, as well as other countries when it expanded towards the west. Those lands are administered by the Bureau of Land Management and remain to be in Federal ownership and are not reserved for precise purposes. Acquired lands include areas that are in Federal ownership that were secured by the Government through buying, condemnation or through gifts. These properties are not open to position according to the mining laws. The National Forest lands are Federal lands that are managed by the Forest Service United States Department of Agriculture, and take account of the lands that are reserved form the public domain for National Forests as well as the areas that have been acquired.

Administration
There is a great amount Public Land Laws for the 420 million acres of public land that is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. These are used through a great number of principles that make sure they’re being taken care of for mining, grazing, production of timber, wildlife, recreation, as well as additional uses. The basic idea is to make sure there are most advantageous benefits for the public in general by managing and utilizing all the resources that are in the public areas for the best achievable arrangement of resource compensation. Under the Organic Act of 1897 as well as the principles of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960, the Forest Service administers the 187 million acres of National Forest System lands, and these also take in 27 million acres that have been acquired. The Use Sustained Yield Act has need of maintenance of recreation, range, timber, watersheds, and wildlife on a continual yield origin without damaging the productivity of the property.