Randall K. Wilson

America's Public Lands (eBook, ePUB)

From Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and Beyond

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 396
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. Februar 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781538126400
• Artikelnr.: 58657431

Autorenporträt

Randall K. Wilson is Thompson Professor of Environmental Studies, Gettysburg College. His books include the award-winning America's Public Lands.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction: Why Public Lands?
Rethinking Old Stories
Setting the Stage
Part I: ORIGINS OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
1 Building the National Commons
Colonial Antecedents
The National Commons Expands
The Federal Indian Reserved Lands
Summing Up
2 Disposing of the Public Domain: From Commons to
Commodity
Privatizing the Commons: Two Visions
The Homestead Acts, Land Grants, and Railroads
Logging, Ranching, and Mining
Federal Indian Reserved Lands Revisited
The First Public Land Policy?
3 A Public Land System Emerges
Tragedy of the National Commons
From Crisis to Conservation
Building the Public Land System
Part II: AMERICA'S PUBLIC LAND SYSTEM
4 National Parks
The Story of Yellowstone
John Muir and Yosemite
Teddy Roosevelt and the Antiquities Act
The Fight for Hetch Hetchy
Stephen Mather and the National Park Service
The Jackson Hole Conflict and Postwar Expansion
Stewart Udall, Jimmy Carter, and Alaska
From Deregulation to Collaboration . . . and Back Again
Parks in the Twenty-First Century
The 2016 Park Service Centennial and Beyond
Cases
5 National Forests
The First Forest Reserves
The 1897 Forest Organic Act
Gifford Pinchot and the USDA Forest Service
A Burning Issue: Fire Policy
The Idea of Multiple Use
Clear-Cutting, NFMA, and Below-Cost Timber Sales
Conflict Soars to New Heights: The Northern Spotted Owl
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003
The Twenty-First Century and the Triple Threat
Coming Full Circle
Cases
6 National Wildlife Refuges
Who Owns Wildlife? State Rights and the Separation of Land and Life
Sport Hunting and Conservation, or When a Refuge Is Not a Refuge
The First (Actual) National Wildlife Refuge
Going International to Save the National Commons
Building a Federal Wildlife Agency
But What Are Refuges For?
Turning the Corner to Conservation
The 2000s: From Deregulation to Historic Expansion
Refuges under Siege
Cases
7 Bureau of Land Management Lands
Rethinking the Unwanted Lands: John Wesley Powell
Tragedies of the (Rangeland) Commons
The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934
Creating the BLM
The BLM Organic Act
1980s and 1990s: From Sagebrush Rebellion to Rangeland Reform
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
The National Landscape Conservation System
The New Century: To Drill or Not to Drill?
What Will the BLM Stand For?
Cases
8 National Wilderness Preservation System
Origins: The Wilderness Idea
Aldo Leopold and the First Wilderness
Bob Marshall and the Wilderness Society
Howard Zahniser and the Wilderness Act of 1964
The Wilderness Act in Practice
Wilderness and the National Forests
Expanding the Wilderness System
The Next Fifty Years
Cases
9 National Wild and Scenic Rivers and Trails
Wild and Scenic Rivers
Case: The Klamath River
National Scenic and Historic Trails
Case: The North Country Trail
10 Parting Thoughts
Mapping Conceptual Continuities
Diversity within the Public Land System
The Promise of Collaborative Conservation
Appendix A: Major U.S. Public Land Laws and Other Key Turning Points
Appendix B: Units within the National Park System
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author