Assistance program
Cultural and Paleontological Resources Management
$26.3 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Bureau of Land Management, Interior, Department of the
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements (Discretionary Grants)
- CFDA number
- 15.224
- What it does
- The purpose of the program is to manage cultural and paleontological resources to benefit the public. BLM manages archaeological and historic sites, artifact collections, places of traditional cultural importance to American Indians and other communities, and paleontological resources that occur on millions of acres of federal lands. Collectively, these “heritage resources†represent over thousands of years of human occupation, and millions of years of the earth’s natural history. BLM Cultural Heritage and Paleontology Programs coordinate management, preservation, education and outreach efforts, economic opportunities, and public uses of a fragile, nonrenewable scientific record that represents an important component of America’s heritage. The BLM Cultural Heritage and Paleontology Resource Management Programs seek to establish partnerships that collaboratively encourage the public to learn about and engage with heritage resources on public lands, restoring trust and being a good neighbor. The Cultural Heritage and Paleontology Resource Management Programs achieve these goals by: Protecting and preserving cultural heritage and paleontological resources for the benefit of future generations; Improving professional and/or public understanding of the nation’s cultural and natural history; Providing educational, recreational, and economic opportunities for local communities and the public; Increasing American Indian access to locations and natural resources important to traditional cultural practices and beliefs; and Managing heritage resource collections and associated records to appropriate standards, and providing access to the public and American Indians. The BLM is responsible for the largest, most expansive and scientifically important aggregation of cultural, historical, and paleontological resources on the public lands, as well as the associated museum collections and data.
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, and Private institutions of higher education.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Direct payments
$150.0K
<1%
Grants
$26.2M
99%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments