Land Exchange Opportunities and Objectives

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
12:00 pm - 1:15 pm, Fir/Pines Room

Jim Caswell
Director, Bureau of Land Management

Jim CaswellJim Caswell was nominated by President Bush to serve as Director of the BLM and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on August 3, 2007. He is the 16th person to hold the title of Director in the agency's history.

As Director of the BLM, Mr. Caswell is responsible for the agency's stewardship of 258 million acres of public lands, located primarily in the West, and more than 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate across the Nation.

During his confirmation hearings before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Caswell pledged to maintain an even-handed balance between development and conservation of public lands, winning praise from senators of both parties.

"I passionately believe in multiple-use management and conservation of our public resources with a commitment to balance, cooperation, collaboration and sharing," Caswell testified. "In my view, achievement of this commitment requires scientific information, and listening to, learning about, and collaborating with the owners of our public lands – the American people."

Achieving the multiple-use mission is "critically dependent upon enhanced community relations and being a good neighbor and a citizen of the community," Caswell said. Resource management plans "must be adaptive, dynamic, and rely on 'place based' ecosystem principles and landscape assessments," he emphasized.

Caswell has headed Idaho’s state Office of Species Conservation, which provided a policy focus for endangered species issues and coordinated state and federal efforts on endangered species management in Idaho. Under Caswell’s leadership, the office won the state legislature’s approval in 2001 for two emotionally and politically-charged issues -- a Wolf Management Plan and a Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Management Plan.

Before that Caswell spent 33 years in various positions with the Bureau of Land Management, Bonneville Power Administration, and the U.S. Forest Service. For 16 of those years, he served as forest supervisor on the Clearwater and Targhee National Forests. Caswell was also deputy forest supervisor at Boise National Forest, and acting deputy regional forester in Missoula, Montana.

A Vietnam War veteran, Caswell is a 1967 graduate of Michigan State University, where he received a bachelor of science degree in forestry. He is married and has three grown children – two daughters and a son – as well as four grandchildren. He and his wife Susan have been married for 42 years.