OUR PROJECTS / SPOTLIGHT
Booz Allen Hamilton Biological Support to Southeastern States RMP/EIS
Government, Federal
The Challenge
Booz Allen Hamilton was contracted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to assist in the preparation of the Southeastern States Resource Management Plan (RMP). The Southeastern States RMP is being developed in order to help streamline the mineral leasing process for the federal mineral resources and split mineral estate within the six states identified as having a potential for mineral development. The RMP decision area includes over 1,000 acres of BLM-administered surface land and subsurface mineral estate, several hundred thousand acres of split estate minerals (non-Federal surface over Federal minerals), and some of the approximately 20 million acres of Federal mineral estate underlying other Federal Surface Management Agencies. TBS was contracted by Booz Allen Hamilton to assist in preparation of the biological portions of the RMP.
The Solution
TBS provided biological expertise and assistance in collecting baseline data, identifying potential habitats, compiling species descriptions and analyzing potential impacts for BLM public land and mineral interests in the states of Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia. TBS provided a species write-up for each special status species within the six states. Special status species include species that are federally listed as threatened, endangered, or candidate. TBS also assisted in documenting the current vegetation communities and wildlife found throughout the six states. In addition to documenting the affected environment, TBS provided write-ups for potential impacts for all listed, proposed or candidate species, proposed or designated critical habitat, and potentially affected state listed species and state watch species. Based on the GIS data provided by BLM and TBS’s knowledge of species habitat preferences, TBS determined the acreage of known and potential habitat for species and the identified the total area for desirable habitat.