Public Lands Interpretive Association

Plia is invited to operate bookstores by land management agencies to help fulfill their mandate to educate the public about the lands managed by these agencies. All items sold by plia in these site specific sales areas are selected for their interpretive and educational value, are reviewed and approved by the appropriate land management agency, fall within select categories of subject matter related to and appropriate for each individual area and differ from area to area.in addition to operating sales areas in federal visitor centers and providing staffing necessary to operate the store and giving information to the public on the agencies behalf, plia provides additional services such as:1. Selling annual agency and public lands passes2. Training agency front desk personnel in customer service and public lands information resources3. Funding appropriate agency educational and interpretive projects including: a. Providing buses to get mid-school and high school students onto public lands for a variety of educational programing b. Funding stipends for an educational lecture series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the wild and scenic rivers act and the national trails system act c. Supplying materials for classroom programs on the leave no trace land use program d. Supporting the recognition of volunteers assisting in various visitor centers.

Publicationsplia's publishing program focuses on publications that are important to the public understanding and use of public lands and that area not available through other sources. Plia's most significant book in terms of numbers published is ducks at a distance: a water fowl identification guide, which was originally published by the us fish and wildlife service the publication of this valuable resource, for water fowl identification, was taken over by plia, at the request of the us fish and wildlife service, in 1985.plia has published guides to the rio grande, dolores and chama rivers, guides to bosque del apache and wichita mountains wildlife refuges, the lincoln, coconino, kaibab national forests and the santa fe national forest and pecos wilderness.plia produced a series of six recreational maps to new mexico. The maps have proven to be very popular and confirm that there indeed is a need for maps with detailed and extensive information on public lands recreational opportunities available in the state both by location on the map as well as through the interpretive information included in the narrative.websitethe website www.publiclands.org was designed and is maintained by plia and is a repository of useful information on public lands recreation that was developed specifically to focus on getting information to the public from the users' point of view. This "virtual visitor center" includes recreation information for every western state and it can be searched in a variety of ways including state, recreation opportunities, agency, resource name etc.