- Click here for the article.
Federal lands are lands in the United States owned by the federal government. Pursuant to the Property Clause of the United States Constitution (Article 4, section 3, clause 2), the Congress has the power to retain, buy, sell, and regulate federal lands, such as by limiting cattle grazing on them. These powers have been recognized in a long line of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
The federal government owns about 640 million acres of land in the United States, about 28% of the total land area of 2.27 billion acres. The majority of federal lands (610.1 million acres in 2015) are administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), National Park Service (NPS), or U.S. Forest Service (FS). BLM, FWS, and NPS are part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, while the Forest Service is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An additional 11.4 million acres of land (about 2% of all federal land) is owned by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). The majority of federal lands are located in Alaska and the Western states
