http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2005...news/news05.txt

BLM restores Web site

Monday, June 20, 2005 2:38 PM PDT

STAFF REPORT

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced it has restored public access to its national Web site (www.blm.gov), which the agency had taken down for several weeks while it resolved issues relating to Internet security.


Although the BLM's state-specific Web sites are not yet reconnected to the World Wide Web, the bureau is working to get those up and running in the near future.

"We would like to thank the public for their patience during the outage," BLM Director Kathleen Clarke said in a press release. "Because electronic communication is so crucial to our contact with the public, the BLM made restoration of its national Web site an urgent priority. A terrific team of skilled people worked long hours and weekends to address issues and get the site reconnected, and I thank them for their dedication."


Clarke added, "Our agency's state office Web sites, and certain other BLM sites, are still down, and we recognize how vital these are to our customers and stakeholders. … Whenever possible, we will be posting critical information for these sites on our national Web site — www.blm.gov — while our restoration work continues."


The BLM manages more land — 261 million surface acres — than any other federal agency. Most of this public land is in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The bureau, with a budget of about $1.8 billion, also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation.


The BLM's multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical and cultural resources on public lands.

Sounds like the eco-nazis may have had a hand in taking them off the wire.

I just tried it and got the same message I've been getting:

Not the enviros this time...it was the Indian tribes. Well, actually the Indian tribes had a legitimate complaint...and it wasn't just against the BLM it was against the entire DOI (the agency that the BLM is a part of.)

Originally the DOI pulled a classic BLM move when caught red-handed with their pants down and said "we're taking our toys and going home" and pulled the plug on ALL of their sites rather than fix the problems that they denied existed even after they were proven to exist in court.

The BLM is just doing the same thing on a smaller scale. Supposedly they're actually fixing things this time but I'm not holding my breath - these are lifetime government employees we're talking about after all. If they actually did their job they may no longer have jobs

As for it not coming up...the release did say that the state sites weren't back up yet...