Jeff Holdren

Lifetime Service Award

The Public Lands Foundation grants to Jeff Holdren its Lifetime Service Award for excellence in public land management.  The Foundation provides this award to deserving members who have perpetuated and enhanced the proud tradition of public service.

Jeff Holdren has dedicated his life to public land management.  He was born in Lakewood, Ohio, in 1941.  He graduated from the University of Arizona in 1962 and shortly thereafter went to work for the Bureau of Land Management in Riverside, California. He later served as an Area Manager for the Stateline/Esmeralda Resource Area in the BLM’s Las Vegas District in southern Nevada where he helped develop a timeframe for disposing of the public land in the Las Vegas Valley.  While working in the BLM’s Eastern States Office in the early 1980s, he helped reduce the backlog of oil and gas lease applications, and played a significant role in the merger of the BLM and USGS Onshore Division.

While on the BLM’s Washington, D.C. Lands and Realty Staff from 1983 until 2010, Jeff applied his knowledge to help coordinate the application of FLPMA with the Taylor Grazing Act and his hand and ideas can be seen in hundreds of Instruction Memos and BLM manual sections developed at the national level.  He also participated in many training courses and workshops held at the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, and other locations throughout the country, including the course entitled “Lands for Managers.”  For many years he both taught and facilitated this course, which was the primary lands and minerals training for BLM managers and supervisors.   He helped the Bureau and the Department of the Interior develop regulations on many subjects, such as disclaimers of interest, land withdrawals, public land sales, segregation and opening of lands, and rights-of-way.

On retirement in 2010, after 45 years of service, he was asked to stay on the BLM Lands Staff under contact.  In 2014, when money was no longer available to pay him, he began volunteering where he continues to be a volunteer source of information to the BLM for many aspects of the BLM’s lands and realty programs several days of the week at the Washington Office doing what he does best—responding to calls from the field and others at the Headquarters Office, and troubleshooting issues and challenges around all phases of the lands and realty program.  And, he has worked with the Solicitors Office in preparing Department of Justice attorneys for testimony in several Supreme Court Cases pertaining to the BLM.

Jeff also volunteers for the PLF by gathering the members, and obtaining the space at a local library in the Washington, D.C. area where members meet quarterly to distribute the Public Lands Monitor and other PLF mailings to the membership.

The Public Lands Foundation is honored to recognize Jeff Holdren with this Lifetime Service Award.

September 24, 2017