The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) have digitized right-of-way easements that will help hunters and recreationists access public lands across the Dakotas, Montana and Idaho.
Working with onX maps, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), BLM and USFS converted paper documents and deeds to digital records available on the apps offered by onX.
This data is especially useful for finding new access opportunities in remote public lands areas. TRCP and onX published a report on landlocked (inaccessible) federally managed lands, which found a total of 1.8 million acres in the Dakotas and Montana. Currently, public access is available for Montana and Idaho on the onX apps, but coverage will continue to expand as additional data is sourced.
Adam Carr, public access project manager for BLM’s Montana-Dakotas State Office, told the Billings Gazette they are working on expanding the project, but they estimated there are 5,000 easements and 12,000 patent reservations stored in BLM file cabinets awaiting digitization, many dating back to the 1960s.
Congress is working on the Modernizing Access to Our Public Land Act (MAP Land), which aims to make federal easement records, along with other land and water access data, more accessible by requiring all easements be digitized and made available to the public in a digital format within three years of its passage.
