This section describes potential impacts to the lands and realty program from implementing the alternatives. The lands and realty program includes land tenure adjustments (e.g., sales, exchanges, acquisitions), land use authorizations (i.e., leases, permits, grants), and withdrawals, classifications, and segregations. The BLM authorizes ROWs and renewable energy through lands and realty actions (land use authorizations). Refer to Sections 4.6.2 Renewable Energy and 4.6.3 Rights-of-Way and Corridors for impacts to these resource uses. This section focuses on how management actions could impact the lands and realty program by increasing, limiting, or preventing the potential for realty actions.

The purpose of the lands and realty program is to facilitate management of BLM-administered lands and resources in the Planning Area. The program adapts according to changing land management, resource needs, demand for public land to meet expanding communities and other public purposes, and other issues. Therefore, lands and realty program actions generally result in beneficial impacts to multiple-use objectives in the Planning Area.

Adverse impacts to the lands and realty program result from management actions that reduce the available land base or make land tenure adjustments or land use authorizations more difficult to complete. Beneficial impacts to lands and realty result from land tenure adjustments that increase land management efficiency or enhance the management of resources through consolidation of public lands into more easily managed blocks. Direct impacts to lands and realty occur when other resources are present, preventing or making it more difficult to complete a transaction. Mitigating resource values required for a land disposal transaction can require additional lands and realty actions and increase processing costs and timeframes required to complete the transaction, which would temporarily delay the transaction. Indirect impacts to the lands and realty program result from management that subsequently affects realty actions, such as the development of parcels disposed out of BLM ownership, which can increase, limit, or prevent the potential for future realty actions. Most impacts to the lands and realty program are long-term and result from management that allocates land for land tenure adjustments or land use authorizations over the life of the plan.