The Federal Lands Revisited

Public land management and ownership came under increasing scrutiny in the 1980s, partly because of the increased value of federal lands; prized for their timber, minerals, energy, and amenity outputs. The personal touch and wisdom of one of these prolific and thoughtful writers on land use issues ensure that this book is a valuable addition to a literature to which Dr. Clawson already has made enormous contributions. For its readers, this book provides fresh insights and suggests new approaches to a problem that has been heavily discussed.

Livestock grazing is the most widespread commercial use of federal public lands. The image of a herd grazing on Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Forest Service lands is so traditional that many view this use as central to the history and culture of the West. Yet the grazing program costs far more to administer than it generates in revenues, and grazing affects all other uses of public lands, causing potentially irreversible damage to native wildlife and vegetation. The Western Range Revisited proposes a landscape-level strategy for conserving native biological diversity on federal rangelands, a strategy based chiefly on removing livestock from large tracts of arid BLM lands in ten western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming. Drawing from range ecology, conservation biology, law, and economics, Debra L. Donahue examines the history of federal grazing policy and the current debate on federal multiple-use, sustained-yield policies and changing priorities for our public lands. Donahue, a lawyer and wildlife biologist, uses existing laws and regulations, historical documents, economic statistics, and current scientific thinking to make a strong case for a land-management strategy that has been, until now, "unthinkable." A groundbreaking interdisciplinary work, The Western Range Revisited demonstrates that conserving biodiversity by eliminating or reducing livestock grazing makes economic sense, is ecologically expedient, and can be achieved under current law.

How it is that the United States—the country that cherishes the ideal of private property more than any other in the world—has chosen to set aside nearly one-third of its land area as public lands? Now in a fully revised and updated edition covering the first years of the Trump administration, Randall Wilson considers this intriguing question, tracing the often-forgotten ideas of nature that have shaped the evolution of America’s public land system. The result is a fresh and probing account of the most pressing policy and management challenges facing national parks, forests, rangelands, and wildlife refuges today. The author explores the dramatic story of the origins of the public domain, including the century-long effort to sell off land and the subsequent emergence of a national conservation ideal. Arguing that we cannot fully understand one type of public land without understanding its relation to the rest of the system, he provides in-depth accounts of the different types of public lands. With chapters on national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, Bureau of Land Management lands, and wilderness areas, Wilson examines key turning points and major policy debates for each land type, including recent Trump Administration efforts to roll back environmental protections. He considers debates ranging from national monument designations and bison management to gas and oil drilling, wildfire policy, the bark beetle epidemic, and the future of roadless and wilderness conservation areas. His comprehensive overview offers a chance to rethink our relationship with America’s public lands, including what it says about the way we relate to, and value, nature in the United States.

This innovative book provides a dynamic—and often surprising—view of the range of environmental issues facing the United States today. A distinguished group of scholars examines the growing temporal, spatial, and thematic breadth of topics historical geographers are now exploring. Seventeen original chapters examine topics such as forest conservation, mining landscapes, urban environment justice, solid waste, exotic species, environmental photography, national and state park management, recreation and tourism, and pest control. Commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the seminal work The American Environment: Interpretations of Past Geographies, the book clearly shows much has changed since 1992. Indeed, not only has the range of issues expanded, but an increasing number of geographers are forging links with environmental historians, promoting a level of intellectual cross-fertilization that benefits both disciplines. As a result, environmental historical geographies today are richer and more diverse than ever. The American Environment Revisited offers a comprehensive overview that gives both specialist and general readers a fascinating look at our changing relationships with nature over time.

Reconstructing the increasingly contested interpretations of the meaning of public land administration, this book traces the history of the political dynamics between ranchers and federal land agencies.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

In this historical and comparative study, Christopher McGrory Klyza explores why land-management policies in mining, forestry, and grazing have followed different paths and explains why public-lands policy in general has remained virtually static over time. According to Klyza, understanding the different philosophies that gave rise to each policy regime is crucial to reforming public-lands policy in the future. Klyza begins by delineating how prevailing policy philosophies over the course of the last century have shaped each of the three land-use patterns he discusses. In mining, the model was economic liberalism, which mandated privatization of public lands; in forestry, it was technocratic utilitarianism, which called for government ownership and management of land; and in grazing, it was interest-group liberalism, in which private interests determined government policy. Each of these philosophies held sway in the years during which policy for that particular resource was formed, says Klyza, and continues to animate it even today.