Public Land Management Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Public lands are those lands formally owned by the modern state and subject to the management authority of local, state, or federal/national institutions. In the United States, this status sets them apart from private property and commons-based regimes of land tenure in which individuals or nongovernmental stakeholder groups effectively determine the access, use, and management of land-based resources. Questions of setting and implementing public land management priorities, therefore, are inextricably linked to modern state politics and capitalist economic development.

There are two key seams in public land management debates. First, in terms of management outcomes, debates center on the extent to which lands should be managed for the purposes of environmental preservation, human recreation, or economic development. The second seam addresses questions of governance, such as how and to what extent citizens or interest groups should have a voice in public land management decisions, how those with livelihood, cultural, or other preexisting claims to the land should be integrated into the management process, and whether or not local residents or governments still have a unique or necessary role to play in the crafting or the implementation of public land management plans.

This last point underscores the broad issue of jurisdictional versus ecological demarcations of public land boundaries. If managing lands on an ecosystem level is required to achieve ecological restoration goals, to what extent do current public land boundaries align with the appropriate boundaries, and if they do not, how might diverse jurisdictional forms be meaningfully integrated?

The institutional structures within which most public land management agencies operate are rooted in the progressive-era politics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were a response to ecological and socioeconomic crises resulting from a century of relatively unfettered industrial development of lands and resources. According to early proponent Gifford Pinchot, progressive conservation stood first and foremost for development, but sought to replace short-term profit motives with rational scientific decision making. By retaining lands in the public domain and managing them with college-educated, disinterested technocrats, the resources could be developed in the most efficient manner and in so doing, best serve the public interest.

While the ideals of scientific management underpin all state and federal management agencies, in practice, they are applied sporadically. Economic development as an explicit priority is perhaps best reflected in the timber production, mining, and livestock grazing programs that dominated the management of national forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands for much of the 20th century. In 1960 the multiple use mandate was introduced, in which recreation and ecological preservation became equal priorities, though critics note that this led to little actual change. Nonetheless, the decade signaled the emergence of competing constituencies and values that began to challenge the dominance of resource extraction activities.

The passage of environmental protection laws such as the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act and the 1973 Endangered Species Act forced federal agencies to bring noncommodity species and ecological health issues more directly into land management plans and protocols. The general decline in timber production on national forests in the 1990s is demonstrative of this broadening of management priorities (in addition to overlogging in preceding decades, and historical fire suppression policies). However, recent laws, such as the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act, may be tipping the balance back toward timber production in the name of wildfire prevention.

Recreation Versus Preservation

Recreational development and environmental preservation figure more prominently in national parks, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas. In 1872 Yellowstone became the first national park withheld from settlement as a public pleasuring ground. Congressional approval for the park hinged on the argument that it was unsuitable for settlement or resource extraction development. The creation of other national parks followed a similar logic. Despite the lack of traditional resource development, the burgeoning potential of these lands as hubs for tourism and recreation led to industrial support for the passage of the 1916 National Park Service Act. This act established the national park service and delineated the dual mandate for the management of national parks: “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same and in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” The promotion of visitation and recreation helped build a constituency in support of the national park system, but modifications such as roads, campgrounds, hotels, and restaurants, and the visitors posed a challenge to ecological preservation efforts. In recent decades, debates over the use of snowmobiles and other forms of mechanized transportation represent the legacy of these early managerial contradictions. Questions over the idea of increasing entrance fees have also been raised, as park visitation and maintenance costs have continually outpaced agency budgets.

Wildlife Refuges

The tension between recreation and ecological preservation is also found in wildlife refuges. Managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, priorities include the preservation and restoration of endangered species and migratory bird populations, the preservation of biodiversity within the refuges, and educational outreach. Historically, most support for the refuges derived from recreational hunting and fishing interest groups. However, these management goals are complicated by competing allowable land uses, which may include livestock grazing, motorized recreational activity, logging, or mining. The most famous example of these tensions in recent years is the debate over oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

Wilderness Areas

The management of wilderness areas offers the closest approximation to an environmental preservation priority achieved through a hands-off management strategy. They are administered by various public land agencies, but in all cases prohibit resource extraction, the use of motorized or mechanized forms of transportation, and the construction of any permanent human-made structures. However, like the early national parks, most wilderness areas are located in high elevation areas devoid of economic development potential.

Management challenges include overuse by visitors, controlling invasive species and diseases, and attempting to coordinate management programs on lands that border wilderness areas, where land uses and permitted management actions may lead to unintended outcomes.

New Approaches

In the 1990s two new approaches to public land management emerged. First, ecosystem management addresses public land management, whether resource development, recreation, or ecological restoration, in a holistic, system-based manner. This entails looking at entire ecosystems in crafting management programs. For example, efforts to restore endangered species populations, such as the bison and timber wolves in Yellowstone National Park, meant coordinating efforts beyond the boundaries of the park, following the historic range of these species. It also means considering the impacts of management activities on all aspects of the ecological system. Because of the incongruence of agency jurisdictions and ecological boundaries, this often means coordinating management between different federal and state agencies, and increasingly, with local governments and private property owners.

The second new approach, collaborative resource management, refers to efforts to integrate diverse interests into the information gathering, decision making, and implementation processes of public land management. Some efforts are organized around large-scale ecosystems, such as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem or the Great Lakes. Many more efforts focus on watershed scale management programs. In sum, each of these newer approaches to public land management represent challenges to progressive era assumptions of state or federal scientific authority as new voices and institutions become integrated into the governance of public lands. They also reflect new ways in which economic, recreational, and ecological management priorities are being reworked within the context of public land use in the United States.

Bibliography:

W. Behan, Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands (Island Press, 2001);
Marion Clawson, The Federal Lands Revisited (Resources for the Future, 1983);
J. Cortner and M.A. Moore, The Politics of Ecosystem Management (Island Press, 1999);
P. Dombeck, C.A. Wood, and J.E. Williams, From Conquest to Conservation (Island Press, 2003); Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (Harcourt Brace, 1910);
Charles Wilkinson, Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West (Island Press, 1992);
Dylan Zaslowsky and T.H. Watkins, These American Lands (Island Press, 1994).