WILLIAMBSURG, Va. -- While the tony Kingsmill resort that House Republicans picked to hold this year's party retreat sits on some of the commonwealth's most beautiful land along the James River, land and natural resource issues weren't major topics during the party's strategy sessions here over the past three days.

And in some ways, that was OK with Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), a senior member of the House Natural Resources Committee who many GOP insiders expected would be in the mix for a possible top job in the Interior Department had Mitt Romney won the White House.

The reason, Bishop said in an interview yesterday, is that the retreat setting doesn't really lend itself to an informed discussion of the issues. And that's not just because there are so many newly elected members who are still sharpening their policy chops when it comes to public lands.

"Natural resources issues are not understood by most people," Bishop lamented.

As an example, he noted that many of his colleagues are still unclear about who controls the various types of federal lands.

"Trying to describe the difference between Forest Service land and [Bureau of Land Management] land and Park Service land is a significant difficulty," said Bishop, who leads the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation. "So people may be using the same language but they don't have the same definition of the words they're using."

According to statistics compiled by the Congressional Research Service, the federal government owns roughly 635 million to 640 million acres of land, which constitutes about 28 percent of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States. Roughly 609 million acres of that federal land is administered by four agencies.

The Forest Service, which is run out of the Department of Agriculture, manages 193 million acres. Within the Interior Department, BLM manages 248 million acres, while the Fish and Wildlife Service manages 89 million acres and the National Park Service manages 80 million acres.

Most of that land is concentrated in the West. In Alaska, 62 percent of the state is federally owned, as is 47 percent of the 11 conterminous Western states. The federal government owns 4 percent of lands in all other states.

And that geographic difference is a major cause of some of the confusion, Bishop said.

"Everyone who doesn't live in a public land state or a Western state, when they think of public land issues they think of a national park," he said. "Which is one of the reasons why ... the Park Service is something like 13 percent of the land owned but they have the bulk of the money."

Other Republican House members said this week that land and natural resource issues didn't need to be a top focus of the retreat agenda because the party already is unified on where it wants to go on those issues in the 113th Congress.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology's Subcommittee on the Environment, said the party's goals on natural resource issues -- and particularly concerns about access to those resources -- haven't changed with the seating of a new Congress.

"We want Americans to have access to cheap, affordable energy," Harris said. "We want people who are having trouble making their budget ... we don't want to impose even higher energy cost burdens on them. ... I think you're going to see the same attitude in the 113th Congress."

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said one new place where congressional Republicans will be able to emphasize their goals for energy production on public lands in the coming months will be in the transition to new leadership at the Interior Department in the wake of Secretary Ken Salazar's recently announced departure plans.

"The environmental lobby seems to have such a strong hand in the administration," Fleming said. "I don't how much was Secretary Salazar and how much was the president and how much was the environmental groups, but the point was they all worked against the interests of the American people in terms of energy, and we all had higher energy prices as a result."

Whenever members are ready to sit down and get into the specifics and subtleties of public land policy this Congress, Bishop, a former high school teacher, will be there to provide his expertise. But he said this week's retreat just wasn't really the right time or place.

"It takes a unique setting that does not lend itself well to these types of large presentations," he said. "Unless you've got a good PowerPoint to go with it."