OpenInterior Browse Popular ideas

Unlike other federal departments such as the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior (DOI) currently lacks a strong policy governing how agency scientists and experts can interact with the public and the media. As a result, the ability of DOI scientists to speak freely about their research is not uniformly protected and varies from agency to agency within DOI.

Placing data sets on the website only gets... more »

Despite a public mandate for meaningful change in the 2008 election, there remains a prevalent unwritten "culture of secrecy" in many Bureau of Land Management (BLM) offices. This culture grew strong and deep-rooted during the eight Bush years, and there is no sign that it has weakened in the past year. BLM employees are strongly discouraged from sending any E-mails or preparing anything else in writing that describes... more »

Let's say 40 people agree and 41 disagree. The way this site is set up, it would only show 1 vote for "disagree", yet a total of 81 people would have expressed their opinions.

I believe it is important to show the number of votes for both sides. Thank you.

I want the BLM to run live webcams 24/7 at ALL round-ups and during all activities with the mustangs such as Vetting, sorting, loading/unloading trailers.

 

I want the helicoptors to have live cams on them aswell.

 

I want 24/7 live streaming webcams on all short and long-term holding facilities for mustangs.

 

The live cams will be on the BLM main website.

I request that the BLM and USFS issue ongoing updates on gathered wild horses. There is no other way to gauge the full impact of gathers on the continuing health and welfare of the animals in the BLM pipeline.

Currently, the BLM does not provide any information on horses and burros once a gather has been completed. These animals literally disappear from the public record except for their aggregate numbers and maintenance... more »

If the Obama administration wants to encourage more effective two-way communications with the public, then it should establish a hotline where people can report allegations of violations of federal laws, including by federal employees. For example, I'm aware of a chronic pattern of trespass livestock grazing on BLM lands in apparent violation of the Endangered Species Act and Federal Land Policy and Management Act.... more »

"Under Bush, the Interior Department became a lawless bureaucracy that actively worked to enrich the nation's most powerful energy interests. Top-level officials secretly allowed oil companies to keep billions in royalties owed to taxpayers, opened up 26 million acres of federal land to oil and gas drilling, denied wilderness protection to another 220 million acres, rewrote scientific reports to eliminate safeguards... more »

The Department of Interior should live webcast all meetings for proposed rule making and regulations where the public comment should take place. They should make these meetings available for on demand viewing and have the ability to have that content be indexed for video search. By doing this the public and stakeholders will be able to see the inner workings of the rule making process and make the content and proceedings... more »

I have attended a BLM Advisory Board Meeting in the past. It is time for the Advisory Board to have representation from wild horse experts and advocates as well as bona fide Humane representation. I was amazed at the meeting to find that many of the members of the Advisory Board showed an negative regard for the animals in question. It is also apparent that the Board does not respond to any concerned public comment,... more »

The process for choosing the members of this Advisory panel should be more transparent. There should be a process whereby the nominees could be voted on by the public. The current board has members on it that have been on it for over a decade. The board consists mostly of industry people from the states that have the largest amount of Public Land, which is like letting the fox guard the henhouse. The WH&B Advisory... more »

The DOI should solicit public nominations for "treasured landscapes" discussed below by Spotts. They are the public's lands; let the public help inform which portions of its lands are most treasured. This need not replace more traditional executive branch designations, but it can help democratize and engage and invest the public in the discussion of public land protection.

The DOI should enact a monitoring and reporting system to demonstrate in clear terms how administrative units within its agencies are complying with President Obama's Freedom of Information Act memo.

Metrics for demonstrating "a presumption of disclosure" and cooperation sought by that memo could be as simple as the number of annual FOIA appeals or lawsuits lost.

Let's see some accountability and measurable progress... more »

As a former Federal Employee with the National Health Service Corps I am very aware of the responsibilities and value of the Board to an Agency. Having attended a BLM Advisory Board Meeting I have these suggestions:We the public are guests with important information and observations to share with this Board of Advisors to the Agency,(1) please allow us at least 5 to 10 min. speaking time(2) Provide a table and chair and... more »

The DOI should create a uniform web-based system for managing NEPA processes across its public agencies. It should include:

1. DOCUMENTS: The system should house NEPA notices, documents, supporting analyses, and decisions in formats easily accessible by the public;

2. SEARCHING FUNCTION: The system should categorize each NEPA event by attribute, like administrative unit, date, species, state, land use, etc., to... more »

I was involved with the previous financial management system implementation at Interior that resulted in sunk and operation and maintenance costs of several hundred million dollars over the life cycle of the system (without reducing normal operational costs, implementing a highly complex and inefficient system, adding bureaucracy, and resulting in minimal, if any, improvements to financial integrity, FACT!). Currently,... more »