BLM director Tom Fry to leave agency

Bureau of Land Management Director Tom Fry announced that he will be departing from the agency later this month.

Fry, who has been BLM director since his confirmation by the U.S. Senate last May, is leaving to become president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a trade association in Washington, D.C.

Fry was named deputy director in January 1997 and served as the BLM's acting director from November 1998 until his Senate confirmation. Before coming to the BLM, Fry was chief of staff for then-Interior Deputy Secretary John Garamendi, a position in which he provided leadership and policy oversight for special Interior Department initiatives.

The BLM, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, manages more land-264 million surface acres-then any other federal agency. Most of this public land is located in 12 Western states including Alaska. The bureau, which has a budget of more than $1.5 billion and about 8,700 employees, also administers more than 700 million acres of subsurface minerals throughout the nation.