Download or read book Who Controls Public Lands written by Christopher McGrory Klyza and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Federal Land Ownership written by Congressional Research Congressional Research Service and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-12-29 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal government owns roughly 640 million acres, about 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States. Four agencies administer 608.9 million acres of this land: the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and National Park Service (NPS) in the Department of the Interior (DOI), and the Forest Service (FS) in the Department of Agriculture. Most of these lands are in the West and Alaska. In addition, the Department of Defense administers 14.4 million acres in the United States consisting of military bases, training ranges, and more. Numerous other agencies administer the remaining federal acreage. The lands administered by the four land agencies are managed for many purposes, primarily related to preservation, recreation, and development of natural resources. Yet each of these agencies has distinct responsibilities. The BLM manages 247.3 million acres of public land and administers about 700 million acres of federal subsurface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM has a multiple-use, sustained-yield mandate that supports a variety of uses and programs, including energy development, recreation, grazing, wild horses and burros, and conservation. The FS manages 192.9 million acres also for multiple uses and sustained yields of various products and services, including timber harvesting, recreation, grazing, watershed protection, and fish and wildlife habitats. Most of the FS lands are designated national forests. Wildfire protection is increasingly important for both agencies. The FWS manages 89.1 million acres of the total, primarily to conserve and protect animals and plants. The National Wildlife Refuge System includes wildlife refuges, waterfowl production areas, and wildlife coordination units. The NPS manages 79.6 million acres in 401 diverse units to conserve lands and resources and make them available for public use. Activities that harvest or remove resources generally are prohibited. Federal land ownership is concentrated in the West. Specifically, 61.2% of Alaska is federally owned, as is 46.9% of the 11 coterminous western states. By contrast, the federal government owns 4.0% of lands in the other states. This western concentration has contributed to a higher degree of controversy over land ownership and use in that part of the country. Throughout America's history, federal land laws have reflected two visions: keeping some lands in federal ownership while disposing of others. From the earliest days, there has been conflict between these two visions. During the 19th century, many laws encouraged settlement of the West through federal land disposal. Mostly in the 20th century, emphasis shifted to retention of federal lands. Congress has provided varying land acquisition and disposal authorities to the agencies, ranging from restricted to broad. As a result of acquisitions and disposals, federal land ownership by the five agencies has declined by 23.5 million acres since 1990, from 646.9 million acres to 623.3 million acres. Much of the decline is attributable to BLM land disposals in Alaska and also reductions in DOD land. Numerous issues affecting federal land management are before Congress. They include the extent of federal ownership, and whether to decrease, maintain, or increase the amount of federal holdings; the condition of currently owned federal infrastructure and lands, and the priority of their maintenance versus new acquisitions; the optimal balance between land use and protection, and whether federal lands should be managed primarily to benefit the nation as a whole or instead to benefit the localities and states; and border control on federal lands along the southwest border.
Download or read book This Land written by Christopher Ketcham and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains. It's an American commons, and it is under assault as never before. Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the reader on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons. Ketcham begins in Utah, revealing the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, and exposing rampant malfeasance in the federal land management agencies, who have been compromised by the profit-driven livestock and energy interests they are supposed to regulate. He then turns to the broad effects of those corrupt politics on wildlife. He tracks the Department of Interior's failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act--including its stark betrayal of protections for the grizzly bear and the sage grouse--and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry. Along the way, Ketcham talks with ecologists, biologists, botanists, former government employees, whistleblowers, grassroots environmentalists and other citizens who are fighting to protect the public domain for future generations. This Land is a colorful muckraking journey--part Edward Abbey, part Upton Sinclair--exposing the rot in American politics that is rapidly leading to the sell-out of our national heritage"--
Download or read book Downsizing the Federal Government written by Chris Edwards and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2005-11-25 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal government is running huge budget deficits, spending too much, and heading toward a financial crisis. Federal spending soared under President George W. Bush, and the costs of programs for the elderly are set to balloon in coming years. Hurricane Katrina has made the federal budget situation even more desperate. In Downsizing the Federal Government Cato Institute budget expert Chris Edwards provides policymakers with solutions to the growing federal budget mess. Edwards identifies more than 100 federal programs that should be terminated, transferred to the states, or privatized in order to balance the budget and save hundreds of billions of dollars. Edwards proposes a balanced reform package of cuts to entitlements, domestic programs, and excess defense spending. He argues that these cuts would not only eliminate the deficit, but also strengthen the economy, enlarge personal freedom, and leave a positive fiscal legacy for the next generation. Downsizing the Federal Government discusses the systematic causes of wasteful spending, and it overflows with examples of federal programs that are obsolete and mismanaged. The book examines the budget process and shows how policymakers act contrary to the interests of average Americans by favoring special interests.
Download or read book The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands written by Erika Allen Wolters and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The management of public lands in the West is a matter of long-standing and oft-contentious debates. The government must balance the interests of a variety of stakeholders, including extractive industries like oil and timber; farmers, ranchers, and fishers; Native Americans; tourists; and environmentalists. Local, state, and government policies and approaches change according to the vagaries of scientific knowledge, the American and global economies, and political administrations. Occasionally, debates over public land usage erupt into major incidents, as with the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. While a number of scholars work on the politics and policy of public land management, there has been no central book on the topic since the publication of Charles Davis's Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics (Westview, 2001). In The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to consider long-standing issues and topics such as endangered species, land use, and water management while addressing more recent challenges to western public lands like renewable energy siting, fracking, Native American sovereignty, and land use rebellions. Chapters also address the impact of climate change on policy dimensions and scope. The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands is co-published with Oregon State University Open Educational Resources, who will release an open access edition alongside this print edition"--
Download or read book Granting Remaining Unreserved Public Lands to the States written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Public Lands and published by . This book was released on 1932 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Lands and Political Meaning written by Karen R. Merrill and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-07-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book This Sovereign Land written by Daniel Kemmis and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-03-22 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eight states of the interior West (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming), 260 million acres -- more than 48 percent of the land base -- are owned by the federal government and managed by its Washington, D.C.-based agencies. Like many other peoples throughout history who have bristled under the controlling hand of a remote government, westerners have long nursed a deep resentment toward our nation's capital. Rumblings of revolution have stirred for decades, bolstered in recent years by increasing evidence of the impossibility of a distant, centralized government successfully managing the West's widespread and far-flung lands. In This Sovereign Land, Daniel Kemmis offers a radical new proposal for giving the West control over its land. Unlike those who wish to privatize the public lands and let market forces decide their fate, Kemmis, a leading western Democrat and committed environmentalist, argues for keeping the public lands public, but for shifting jurisdiction over them from nation to region. In place of the current centralized management, he offers a regional approach that takes into account natural topographical and ecological features, and brings together local residents with a vested interest in ensuring the sustainability of their communities. In effect, Kemmis carries to their logical conclusion the recommendations about how the West should be governed made by John Wesley Powell more than a century ago. Throughout, Kemmis argues that the West no longer needs to be protected against itself by a paternalistic system and makes a compelling case that the time has come for the region to claim sovereignty over its own landscape. This Sovereign Land provides a provocative opening to a much-needed discussion about how democracy and ecological sustainability can go hand in hand, and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the West and western issues, as well as for all those concerned with place-based conservation, public lands management, bioregionalism, or related topics.
Download or read book Our Public Lands written by and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Lands and Political Meaning written by Karen R. Merrill and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-07-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the American West is a history of struggles over land, and none has inspired so much passion and misunderstanding as the conflict between ranchers and the federal government over public grazing lands. Drawing upon neglected sources from organized ranchers, this is the first book to provide a historically based explanation for why the relationship between ranchers and the federal government became so embattled long before modern environmentalists became involved in the issue. Reconstructing the increasingly contested interpretations of the meaning of public land administration, Public Lands and Political Meaning traces the history of the political dynamics between ranchers and federal land agencies, giving us a new look at the relations of power that made the modern West. Although a majority of organized ranchers supported government control of the range at the turn of the century, by midcentury these same organizations often used a virulently antifederal discourse that fueled many a political fight in Washington and that still runs deep in American politics today. In analyzing this shift, Merrill shows how profoundly people's ideas about property wove their way into the political language of the debates surrounding public range policy. As she unravels the meaning of this language, Merrill demonstrates that different ideas about property played a crucial role in perpetuating antagonism on both sides of the fence. In addition to illuminating the origins of the "sagebrush rebellions" in the American West, this book also persuasively argues that political historians must pay more attention to public land management issues as a way of understanding tensions in American state-building.
Download or read book Grand Canyon For Sale written by Stephen Nash and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grand Canyon For Sale is a carefully researched investigation of the precarious future of America’s public lands: our national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, monuments, and wildernesses. Taking the Grand Canyon as his key example, and using on-the-ground reporting as well as scientific research, Stephen Nash shows how accelerating climate change will dislocate wildlife populations and vegetation across hundreds of thousands of square miles of the national landscape. In addition, a growing political movement, well financed and occasionally violent, is fighting to break up these federal lands and return them to state, local, and private control. That scheme would foreclose the future for many wild species, which are part of our irreplaceable natural heritage, and also would devastate our national parks, forests, and other public lands. To safeguard wildlife and their habitats, it is essential to consolidate protected areas and prioritize natural systems over mining, grazing, drilling, and logging. Grand Canyon For Sale provides an excellent overview of the physical and biological challenges facing public lands. The book also exposes and shows how to combat the political activity that threatens these places in the U.S. today.
Download or read book Current Public Lands and Forests Legislation written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Our Common Ground written by John D. Leshy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-03 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The little-known story of how the U.S. government came to hold nearly one-third of the nation's land primarily for recreation and conservation.
Download or read book U S Forest Service Grazing and Rangelands written by William D. Rowley and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early luxury of free forage on unclaimed western public domain allowed the building of fortunes in cattle and sheep and offered opportunities to successive waves of settlement. But the western public lands could not last. The range became overgrazed, overstocked, overcrowded. Animals were lost, much range was irreversible damaged, and even violence occurred as cowmen, sheepmen, and settlers competed for the best forage. Congress intervened by designating the U.S. Forest Service as the pioneer grazing control agency. The Forest Service's controls represent not only attempts to protect a resource but also a social experiment designed to prevent the monopolization of rangelands by large outfits and to encourage small enterprises. The Forest Service has become the undisputed leader in bringing order, rationality, and economic use to the range resources under government supervision. The problems and continuing challenges of the task emerge in these pages.
Download or read book One Third of the Nation s Land written by United States. Public Land Law Review Commission and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book This Land Is Our Land written by Ken Ilgunas and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private property is everywhere. Almost anywhere you walk in the United States, you will spot “No Trespassing” and “Private Property” signs on trees and fence posts. In America, there are more than a billion acres of grassland pasture, cropland, and forest, and miles and miles of coastlines that are mostly closed off to the public. Meanwhile, America’s public lands are threatened by extremist groups and right-wing think tanks who call for our public lands to be sold to the highest bidder and closed off to everyone else. If these groups get their way, public property may become private, precious green spaces may be developed, and the common good may be sacrificed for the benefit of the wealthy few. Ken Ilgunas, lifelong traveler, hitchhiker, and roamer, takes readers back to the nineteenth century, when Americans were allowed to journey undisturbed across the country. Today, though, America finds itself as an outlier in the Western world as a number of European countries have created sophisticated legal systems that protect landowners and give citizens generous roaming rights to their countries' green spaces. Inspired by the United States' history of roaming, and taking guidance from present-day Europe, Ilgunas calls into question our entrenched understanding of private property and provocatively proposes something unheard of: opening up American private property for public recreation. He imagines a future in which folks everywhere will have the right to walk safely, explore freely, and roam boldly—from California to the New York island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters.
Download or read book Land Use Planning Management and Control written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
