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The public lands administered by BLM contain many outstanding scenic landscapes.

While these lands provide a place to escape and enjoy the beauty of nature, they are also used for a multitude of other activities. Any activities that occur on these lands, such as recreation, mining, timber harvesting, grazing, or road development for example, have the potential to disturb the surface of the landscape and impact scenic values. Visual resource management (VRM) is a system for minimizing the visual impacts of surface-disturbing activities and maintaining scenic values for the future.

"Everything is connected to everything else...the complex and interdependent relationships between the land, air, people, and animals." -Aldo Leopold

When visual resources are not carefully managed and the visual impacts of poorly designed surface-disturbing activities are ignored, there can be dire consequences to the scenic values of American landscapes.

The benefits to be gained by carefully designing surface-disturbing activities to minimize visual impacts are readily apparent. BLM is committed to sound management of the scenic values on public lands in order to ensure that these benefits are realized and the scenic values are protected.

"Joy comes from simple and natural things, mists over meadows, sunlight on leaves, the path of the moon over water." -Sigurd Olsen