This #Blue Bulls tagged image is courtesy of Flickr. Click on the Flickr account holder below the photograph to see more.<\/p>\n
Image by mypubliclands<\/a><\/i> 1. BLM\u2019s nearly 8.8 million acres of federally designated wilderness account for about 3.5 percent of the Bureau\u2019s total acreage in the United States.<\/p>\n 2. BLM\u2019s newest wilderness is the Jim McClure-Jerry Peak Wilderness in Idaho, designated on August 7, 2015. BLM\u2019s oldest wilderness areas are the 1,807-acre Santa Lucia Wilderness in California and Oregon\u2019s 8,604-acre Wild Rogue Wilderness, designated in 1978.<\/p>\n 3. The BLM\u2019s largest wilderness is the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. At nearly 315,000 acres, the wilderness is about half the size of Rhode Island. <\/p>\n 4. Just five acres, the Rocks and Islands Wilderness off the coast of California is BLM\u2019s smallest.<\/p>\n 5. At 260,000 acres, Alaska\u2019s Central Arctic Management Area is BLM\u2019s largest wilderness study area.<\/p>\n 6. The smallest wilderness study area is 10-acre Hack Lake WSA in Colorado.<\/p>\n 7. BLM manages nearly two-thirds of the 5.5 million acres Congress has designated as wilderness in the past 15 years.<\/p>\n 8. Alaska\u2019s Central Arctic Management Area Wilderness Study Area contains the first well-documented Paleo-Indian site discovered in the North American Arctic. Excavations there have revealed stone tools and hearths dating to 7,700 \u2013 9,700 BC. <\/p>\n 9. The Bisti\/De-Na-Zin Wilderness in New Mexico preserves a record of biotic change that occurred across the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event of 66 million years ago, including the best record of mammalian succession and post-extinction re-diversification.<\/p>\n 10. BLM manages more desert wilderness units than any of the wilderness-managing agencies (National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service). Most of BLM\u2019s wilderness areas are located in the Southwest; 80 percent are in Arizona, California, and Nevada. <\/p>\n 11. Archaeological sites in New Mexico\u2019s Pe\u00f1a Blanca Wilderness Study Area contain remains of the oldest cultivated corn in the U.S. <\/p>\n 12. The highest BLM-managed land is 14,048-foot Handies Peak in the Handies Peak Wilderness Study Area in Colorado.<\/p>\n 13. Jaguars, a species rarely seen in the U.S., have occasionally been seen in Guadalupe Canyon Wilderness Study Area in New Mexico. Located on the U.S.-Mexico border, the unit is the farthest south of the BLM\u2019s 517 WSAs. <\/p>\n 14. The King Range Wilderness includes approximately 25 miles of Pacific coastline\u2014part of California\u2019s \u201cLost Coast\u201d\u2014one of the few oceanfront wilderness areas in the Lower 48.<\/p>\n 15. The BLM manages five wilderness study areas in Utah\u2019s Henry Mountains, a place so remote it was the last mountain range in the Lower 48 to be mapped and named (Mt. Hillers, Little Rockies, Mt. Pennell, Bull Mountain, and Mt. Ellen-Blue Hills WSAs).<\/p>\n Note: The #conservationlands15 Social Media Takeover is a 2015 monthly celebration of the 15th anniversary of the BLM\u2019s National Conservation Lands.<\/p>\n More Pretoria Images<\/a><\/p>\n This Blue Bulls<\/em> image was automatically curated and published with WP Robot<\/a> plugin \u2013 CLICK HERE<\/a> to learn more about WP Robot for WordPress<\/a> \u2013 a massive time and money saver.<\/small><\/p>\n
\nCheck Out the Top 15 \u201cWild Facts\u201d about BLM Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas on This Month\u2019s #conservationlands15 Social Media Takeover.<\/p>\n