Lanata Land Management Solutions was founded to support efforts to improve public land management, from policy and strategy to implementation, and from national-scale issues to local projects.
​
Founding member Melanie Barnes has worked in the realm of land management since 2003.  Melanie began her career with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2007 at the Rio Puerco Field Office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She served in the field office and the New Mexico State Office in Santa Fe, and did a temporary assignment for the BLM Headquarters office. Melanie was the State Director for BLM New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas from 2022 to 2026.Â
​
During her career with BLM, she developed expertise in a variety of programs:
-
Environmental inspection and enforcement of oil and gas and rights-of-ways;
-
Oil and gas leasing and permitting
-
NEPA compliance, including drafting of environmental assessments, categorical exclusions, determinations of NEPA adequacy, and environmental impact statements.
-
Land use planning, including resource management plan development and amendment.
-
Compliance with, and implementation of, NHPA.
-
Tribal consultation.
-
Tribal trust responsibilities of federal agencies.
-
Land exchanges and acquisitions
-
Policy development and implementation
-
Rule-making
-
Land and mineral withdrawals
-
Rights-of-way, such as electric transmission/distribution, broadband, roads, etc.
-
Air quality and greenhouse gas emissions
-
Water quality and produced water policy
-
Hazardous materials management
-
Abandoned mine land reclamation, including abandoned uranium mines.
-
and more.Â
About - Experience
Why Lanata?
How research led to land management
Beginning her career as a plant population biologist working on rare plant conservation, she learned that habitat loss is the primary contributor to plants becoming threatened or endangered. This led Melanie to redirect her energy to restoration ecology and her dissertation research at the University of New Mexico on the impact of seed source location on revegation success.Â
​
The plant species she studied was winterfat, or Krascheninnikovia lanata, a widespread shrub palatable to wildlife and livestock that grows throughout western North America. In late fall winterfat plants are topped with white fuzzy seeds, warranting the species name and company moniker ‘lanata,’ which means fuzzy or wooly in Latin.
​
To complete her research, Melanie approached the Bureau of Land Management Rio Puerco Field Office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2005 to seek permission to set up research plots on BLM-managed land. With the support of the BLM staff, Melanie quickly learned that she would need to navigate land ownership, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), Tribal consultation, and coordination with grazing permittees to complete her project. She also worked with the New Mexico State Land Office. Eventually, Melanie chose a career with the BLM to pragmatically apply scientific principles to public land management.
Services
Land management
law expertise
Collaboration and Coordination
Experience and knowledge with laws and policies relevant to public land management, providing awareness of both potential challenges and opportunities for land use or conservation proposals.Â
Issue tracking
and insight
Factual, unbiased tracking of policy, legislation, and administrative issues or projects across state, local, and federal government.Â
Building relationships with government officials, communities, tribes, non-profit organizations, and industry to support policy development and implementation.Â
project
implementation
Translating policy for specific projects, and assisting with implementation of existing projects.Â