Surveys of significant plant resources in southeast and south-central Montana on the Billings and Miles City field offices of the Bureau of Land Management /

Abstract

Lands managed by the Billings and Miles City Field Offices of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) cover large areas of southcentral and eastern Montana. However, for purposes of this report, the project area is limited to BLM lands in Big Horn, Carbon, Carter, Custer, Fallon, Powder River, Prairie and Rosebud Counties, and excludes the northeast portion of the Miles City Field Office as well as Billings Field Office lands outside of Big Horn and Carbon Counties. The distribution of BLM lands in this area varies from large tracts of land covering areas of tens of thousands of acres to very small isolated tracts less than a square mile in size. Surface acres managed by the Billings Field Office were listed at 454,859 acres in 2003 and 245,742 acres in the two target counties (Big Horn and Carbon). BLM lands in Carbon County alone account for over 200,000 acres. In the Miles City Field Office, 2.7 million acres are under BLM management, with almost 1.9 million acres of that total in the seven targeted counties, bringing the total potential survey acreage in the project area to approximately 2.1 million acres. v