The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oversees more than 247.3 million acres (1,001,000 km2) of public lands in the United States. Some critics have said that the bureau sells out to livestock and mining interests, and the BLM has been nicknamed the “Bureau of Livestock and Mines” or the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining” since at least 1977.
 
Other Bureau of Land Management nicknames include “Bureau of Land Mismanagement” and “Bureau of Large Mistakes.”
   
 
Wikipedia: Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior that administers more than 247.3 million acres (1,001,000 km2) of public lands in the United States which constitutes one-eighth of the landmass of the country. President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies: the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. The agency manages the federal government’s nearly 700 million acres (2,800,000 km2) of subsurface mineral estate located beneath federal, state and private lands severed from their surface rights by the Homestead Act of 1862. Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
 
This map shows land owned by different federal government agencies. The yellow represents the Bureau of Land Management’s holdings.
The mission of the BLM is “to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.”
       
27 March 1977, The Sunday Repubican (Springfield, MA), “Andrus pledges to end special interests’ rule,” pg. 5, cols. 1-2:
WASHINGTON (AP)—Interior Secretary Cecil D. Andrus said Saturday his own department has been dominated in the past by “mining, oil and other special interests” and he intends to put a stop to it.
(...)
“The initials BLM (the Bureau of Land Management) do not stand for the Bureau of Livestock and Mining,” Andrus snapped, drawing an outburst of applause from the well-known environmental organization (National Wildlife Federation—ed.).
 
Google News Archive
30 July 1977, The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA), “Bureau loses sight of primary mission” by Edward Flattau, Town & Country Magazine, pg. 17, col. 1:
But critics of this government agency dub the “Bureau of Livestock and Mines” on account of its priorities in overseeing a wilderness area that comprises almost one-fifth of our country’s land mass.
   
Google Books
Opportunity and Challenge:
The Story of BLM
By James Muhn, Hanson R. Stuart and Peter D. Doran
Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management
1988
Pg. 226:
The BLM is frequently lampooned as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining while the Forest Service, for all its recent embattlement continues to enjoy public esteem symbolized by Smokey Bear’s avuncular embrace.
 
Google News Archive
8 March 1994, The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR, “Baca’s ouster leaves dissenters unprotected” by Jeff DeBonis, pg. 9A, col. 1:
The first, faint glimmers of change within this hidebound, industry-dominated bureaucracy known, only halt-jokingly, as “The Bureau of Livestock and Mining” are being snuffed out in the vacuum created in the wake of Baca’s deacpitation.
     
AndyKerr.com 
A New Mission and name for the Bureau of Land Management
Suggested Citation: Kerr, Andy. 2000. Oregon Desert Guide: 70 Hikes. Seattle: The Mountaineers Books. pp. 82-85.
The Bureau of Land Management doesn’t get much respect.
 
BLM wasn’t nicknamed the Bureau of Large Mistakes, Bureau of Livestock and Mining, Bureau of Lumbering and Mining, or Bureau of Land Mismanagement without justification.
 
Born in 1947, out of a merger of the General Land Office and the Grazing Service, the BLM still shows its parentage. Knowingly or unknowingly BLM officials have often served as a handmaiden to exploiter interests.
 
Google Books
Landscape of Desire:
Identity and Nature in Utah’s Canyon Country
By Greg Gordon
Logan, UT: Utah State University Press
2003
Pg. 25:
This is public land we are hiking through, owned by every citizen of the U.S. and managed by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), sometimes jokingly referred to as the Bureau of Large Mistakes or the Bureau of Livestock and Mining since the historical emphasis of the BLM has been to provide and manage rangeland.
 
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Denver Talk
‏@denvertalk
Comment: Finally, decision is near for Roan: Well, they don’t call it the Bureau of Livestock and .. http://tinyurl.com/3t2cy9
7:06 PM - 25 May 2008
 
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Ellis Wyatt
‏@EllisWyatt1
@Judgenap @RonPaulInstitut “Bureau of Livestock and Mining” as a jibe, is even older. Remember hearing it in 87.
8:05 AM - 28 Apr 2014