US federal land: the rules in one place

The Paleontological Resources Preservation Act (16 U.S.C. 470aaa) and its regulations — 43 CFR Part 49 for Interior agencies (BLM, Reclamation, NPS, FWS) and 36 CFR Part 291 for the Forest Service — divide federal land into three regimes. Casual collecting is allowed on most BLM, Reclamation and National Forest land; permitted collecting is required for vertebrates and for anything scientific or commercial on those lands; and no collecting of any kind is allowed on National Park Service and Fish & Wildlife Service land.

Casual collecting means common invertebrate and plant fossils, a reasonable amount for non-commercial personal use, with non-powered hand tools, and negligible disturbance. The Interior rule defines a reasonable amount as up to 25 pounds per day and 100 pounds per year per person, and negligible disturbance as no more than one square metre in area and a few centimetres deep, restored before leaving; the Forest Service rule uses the same 25 lb / 100 lb numbers. Petrified wood on BLM land has its own free-use rule (43 CFR 3622): 25 pounds plus one piece per day, 250 pounds per year, personal use only.

Non-commercial personal use is defined as other than for purchase, sale, financial gain or research. Material collected casually may not be sold, traded, or used to start a business, ever. That flag travels with the specimen for life and Stratum's Market gate honours it.

Vertebrate fossils — bone, teeth, scales, tracks, eggs, coprolites, and their casts — cannot be casually collected anywhere on federal land. A permit is issued to a qualified applicant affiliated with an approved repository; the fossils remain federal property. Penalties for unpermitted removal or sale are criminal and civil, with forfeiture.

Closed areas exist inside the open agencies: national monuments, wilderness study areas, research natural areas, developed recreation sites and any area posted closed. Land status is often unmarked — the checkerboard of the western states puts BLM sections inside ranches — so the collector must check the map. Tribal lands are separate and require tribal permission.

Sources

Cite this article

Stratum Study. "US federal land: the rules in one place" (Law & ethics). Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-16. https://stratum.black/study/law/us-federal-land. Accessed 2026-09-20.

BibTeX · CSL-JSON

@misc{stratum-us-federal-land,
  title        = {US federal land: the rules in one place},
  author       = {{Stratum Study}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/study/law/us-federal-land}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Law & ethics article, Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-16; sources: stratum. Accessed 2026-09-20.}
}

Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.

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