[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 14404-14405]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




TRIBUTE TO ANN MORGAN, U.S. BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT'S COLORADO STATE 
                                DIRECTOR

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MARK UDALL

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 23, 2002

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to 
Ann Morgan, the State Director of the Colorado Office of the U.S. 
Bureau of Land Management--the BLM. Ann will be leaving this position 
this week, after nearly five years of distinguished service in that 
demanding job.
  Ann started as Colorado State Director of the BLM in October 1997. In 
our state, the BLM manages 8.4 million acres that include the full 
range of Colorado's diverse land forms, from forested areas, to river 
corridors, to red rock plateaus and open range expanses along the 
western slope. Managing these varied landscapes presents many 
challenges. Important balances must be struck between those that wish 
to use these lands for wildlife protection, open space, recreation, 
mineral development, grazing, timbering and oil and gas extraction.
  As State Director, Ann had to work with the diverse interests to 
strike that balance. Her approach was to work for the kind of 
community-based partnerships that are so important for true multiple-
use management. An example of this is the Colorado Outdoor Recreation 
Roundtable, where Ann was an active member. She also served as a co-
chair of the Colorado Environmental Partnership, and has been an 
advisor to the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center. She 
also encouraged BLM to work across jurisdictional lines with the U.S. 
Forest Service and Colorado State Parks to better manage these lands 
and serve the public.
  Ann recognized the value in conserving landscapes so that today's and 
future generations of visitors can enjoy the beauty and recreational 
potential of these public lands. To that end, she has helped build 
support for and increased the size of National Landscape Conservation 
System units. Working with the Colorado Congressional delegation, she 
was instrumental in the designation of the Gunnison Gorge and Colorado 
Canyons National Conservation Areas and the designation of wilderness 
areas within those NCAs.
  Through her leadership and the good work of the BLM employees, 
important guidelines are in place to make sure that recreation, grazing 
and other uses do not negatively impact our public lands. These 
guidelines help underscore that the environment can be protected in 
concert with economic benefits that inure to communities by these 
resources and activities.
  She also helped BLM make important strides toward integrating fire 
into overall land management. Today, the Colorado BLM has in place 
state-of-the-art Fire Management Plans, which utilizes naturally 
ignited fires to meet resource objectives. She has also helped create 
local community support for the BLM's fire program, and helped local 
communities develop fire management plans.
  She has also been helpful on wilderness protection. She demonstrated 
strong leadership when she agreed to re-evaluate areas that contained 
wilderness characteristics to determine if the management of these 
areas should be revised to protect their wilderness values. She also 
was a supporter of the BLM's Colorado policy of providing interim 
protection of areas that have been proposed for wilderness in order to 
give Congress the flexibility to determine this ultimate disposition of 
these lands.
  Before coming to Colorado, Ann served three years as BLM's State 
Director in Nevada, where she concentrated on developing standards and 
guidelines for rangeland health, improving the quality and timeliness 
of hardrock mining environmental analysis, and securing strong working 
relationships with local governments in a state where the BLM manages 
67 percent of the land.
  Before embarking on her BLM career, Ann was manager of the Washington 
State Department of Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Lands. There 
she was responsible for the multiple use management of more than 2 
million acres of state public lands. She directed leasing, resource 
inventories and harvesting, public access and recreation, habitat 
protection and restoration, and statewide aquatic lands enhancement 
programs. Prior to that she managed engineering and construction 
projects for geothermal power plants for the Pacific Gas and Electric 
Company.
  Ann will be moving on to work on public land and environmental issues 
with, the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado 
Law School in Boulder, Colorado. She also will be working with the U.S. 
Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution on special projects. At 
these positions, I know that she will have an opportunity to continue 
to

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make important contributions to public lands management. Her experience 
and expertise will help these organizations better understand and 
respond to natural resource issues.
  I wish her well in these endeavors and ask my colleagues to join me 
in thanking her for her dedicated public service to Colorado and the 
nation.

                          ____________________