About Prineville

The Prineville District consists of over 1.65 million acres of public lands. These lands are scattered throughout central Oregon, south from The Dalles to the high desert, west to Sisters, and east to the Grant/Harney County line. The Crooked, Deschutes, White, and John Day Rivers make up over 385 miles of wild and scenic river in the District. Riparian improvement, grazing management, and steelhead and salmon habitat improvement are some of the primary management emphases.

District Programs

Fisheries

The rivers, streams, and lakes of Oregon and Washington are home to a diverse array of fish species and BLM is committed to the restoration and protection of the aquatic habitat the fish are dependant on. Salmon and trout species found on BLM-administered lands include bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout, Yellowstone cutthroat trout, Lahontan cutthroat trout, redband trout, steelhead trout, and chinook and sockeye salmon. Five of these species (bull trout, Lahontan cutthroat trout, steelhead trout, chinook salmon, and sockeye salmon) are on the Endangered Species Act list in all or portions of their distribution.

Weeds

The Prineville District's efforts in control of noxious weeds use an Integrated Weed Management (IWM) approach. The District's IWM specific control practices which include cultural (prevention), physical (prescribed fire, seeding, mechanical, and manual control), biological agent releases, chemical, and mitigation measures are explained in detail in the Prineville District's two major weed control Environmental Assessments.

Education about weed control and prevention is becoming an increasing focus of the Prineville District. Prevention and initial weed control can be likened to a wildfire, if this "Biological Wildfire" is attacked as single plants, the total cost of control is much less than if the weeds were let to spread to large populations. The District IWM Coordinator as well as the other weed control specialist in the Prineville District office are available for presentations about Noxious Weeds upon request.

Lands

Oregon/Washington BLM is responsible for managing the Lands and Mineral estate for about 16 million acres of public lands as well as another 24.7 million acres of mineral estate where the surface is managed by the USFS. Management responsibilties include: land acquisitions and disposals, land exchanges, rights of way and easements; land withdrawals; hard rock minerals under the Mining Law of 1872, leasable minerals (oil, gas, coal and geothermal) common variety minerals (e.g., aggregates), mineral resources on tribal lands, and maintaining the Public Land Tenure Records for all lands in Oregon and Washington.