Tragedy of the Playground

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard G. Wilshire ◽  
Richard W. Hazlett ◽  
Jane E. Nielson
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
Bureau Of Land Management ◽  
Mass Gatherings ◽  
Erosion Rates ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
Desert Areas ◽  
Natural Settings ◽  
Federal Land Management ◽  
Grazing Pressures

“Recreation” connotes revitalization, the re-creation of spirit. In an increasingly urbanized culture, people recreate in natural settings to lift their spirits and revitalize their outlook and motivation. Public lands in the western United States, which embrace much of the nation’s remaining natural and wild areas, are especially attractive—and most are open for recreation. We authors certainly have found solace from camping, hiking, climbing, and skiing in backcountry areas. But latetwentieth- century American affluence has created a massive and unprecedented invasion of these lands, and particularly an invasion of motorized recreation. All human uses of natural areas can, and generally do, degrade soils, kill plants, and increase erosion rates, with resultant water pollution and ecosystem damage. In small numbers, and spread out widely, recreational disturbances can be minor, but millions of people regularly play on western public lands in mass gatherings that have large cumulative impacts. More now drive vehicles across forested or desert areas than pursue the less-damaging activities of hiking and small-group camping. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service (USFS) oversee the largest amount of western land available for recreation. By law, the agencies must manage public lands for multiple uses and “sustained yield.” Instead, federal land-management agencies are partitioning them to separate incompatible pursuits, including many that consume land. For example, as logging, mining, and grazing pressures ease, recreational pressures are exploding in Colorado’s White River National Forest, a short 50 miles west of Denver on Interstate Highway 70. Along with Denver’s increasing population, snowmobile registrations jumped 70% in Colorado since 1985. Off-road vehicles (ORVs) are everywhere, and mountain bike use has jumped more than 200%. Between 1990 and 2004, all ORV registrations in Colorado increased more than 650%. Ski facilities also burgeoned, along with hiker and equestrian demands for greater backcountry access. The USFS’s efforts to bring the conflicting uses under control is losing ground rapidly.

Agency Legitimacy: A Reputational Power Analysis of the Bureau of Land Management

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-374
Author(s):  
Joshua Malay ◽  
Mathew Fairholm
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Legal Aspect ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
Bureau Of Land Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
Large Scope ◽  
Federal Land

This article examines the organizational reputation of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) using Daniel Carpenter’s reputation and power theory as a theoretical and methodological base. Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) is utilized to guide and organize case selection, as it is the legal mandate behind BLM authority and represents the fullest extent of the agency’s activities. The findings of this case study indicate that the BLM has a negative reputation in all but the legal-procedural dimension. Three implications are identified: (a) FLPMA serves only to define the procedural-legal aspect of public planning process, (b) the inability of FLPMA to define a purpose to public lands management has its root in the large scope of activity required of the BLM by FLPMA, and (c) finally, retention has placed the BLM and the federal government in a precarious position of an owner rather than custodian of the public lands.

The Productivity of Privatization

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Lehmann
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
P Value ◽  
P Values ◽  
Indirect Approach ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
Federal Land Management

If we agree that resources should be employed as efficiently as possible, then the case for privatizing public lands can be reduced to two issues: (1) Would privatization make resources more productive? (2) If so, is it worth the trouble? None of the improvement standards that give definite content to (1) appear to advance the argument for it. Judged by the Pareto standard, it’s clearly false: someone is going to prefer what federal land management delivers. Understood in terms of one of the net-gain standards, (1) may be true, but these standards are so hard to apply that we’re going to have trouble justifying a belief that it is. They are too closely tied to facts about individuals (or what we hope are facts) that are inaccessible to the analyst. So we must either find a way to apply them indirectly or develop some other standard. The indirect approach involves seeking to correlate productivity with some measurable feature of allocation systems. Were such a feature P to be identified, we could determine whether II was more productive than I simply by comparing their P-values. Unfortunately, if there’s something about an improvement standard that makes it hard to decide whether II is productively superior to I, then it’s also going to be hard to establish that systems with higher P-values are more productive, at least for any measure P we can easily ascribe to them. Now we could propose replacing the problematic standard with whatever index is developed: “II uses resources more productively than I” just means that II has a higher P-value than I. The problem here is arguing that systems with higher P-values direct resources to uses that better satisfy the desires of consumers. The net-gain standards derive from analyses of this notion. If we abandon them because they are difficult to apply, we may at the same time break the connection between greater productivity and better satisfying desires. Some of the arguments of privatization advocates can, I think, be construed as appealing indirectly to net-gain standards or directly to other notions of productivity.

scholarly journals The Use of Citizen Science to Achieve Multivariate Management Goals on Public Lands

Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 293
Author(s):  
Sara Souther ◽  
Vincent Randall ◽  
Nanebah Lyndon
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Ecological Integrity ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Suitable Habitat ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Public Land Management ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
Botanical Research ◽  
Federal Land Management

Federal land management agencies in the US are tasked with maintaining the ecological integrity of over 2 million km2 of land for myriad public uses. Citizen science, operating at the nexus of science, education, and outreach, offers unique benefits to address socio-ecological questions and problems, and thus may offer novel opportunities to support the complex mission of public land managers. Here, we use a case study of an iNaturalist program, the Tribal Nations Botanical Research Collaborative (TNBRC), to examine the use of citizen science programs in public land management. The TNBRC collected 2030 observations of 34 plant species across the project area, while offering learning opportunities for participants. Using occurrence data, we examined observational trends through time and identified five species with 50 or fewer digital observations to investigate as species of possible conservation concern. We compared predictive outcomes of habitat suitability models built using citizen science data and Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data. Models exhibited high agreement, identifying the same underlying predictors of species occurrence and, 95% of the time, identifying the same pixels as suitable habitat. Actions such as staff training on data use and interpretation could enhance integration of citizen science in Federal land management.

The public's last chance—protests and appeals to federal land management plans

1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-386
Author(s):  
Ann A. Loose ◽  
David C. Williams ◽  
Dennis L. Schweitzer
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
Management Plans ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
Federal Land Management

Use of Public Rangelands in the American West

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-62
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Vale
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
American West ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
Multiple Use ◽  
Bureau Of Land Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
Poor Condition ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
Land Policies

The Bureau of Land Management, the land agency that administers much of the federal rangeland in the American West, has frequently been characterized as excessively responsive to the desires of ranchers, with resulting land deterioration and loss of resource values. Both the generally poor condition of the public domain, and the Bureau's attempt to maintain stocking levels while improving the range, support this characterization.Several policies and programmes over the last decade, however, suggest that the Bureau today is less strongly tied to the livestock industry, and certainly its lands are being increasingly coveted by groups other than grazers. This recent trend towards a more ‘multiple use’ agency has been strengthened by Congressional passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976. Whether or not diversification of land policies will continue into the future is, however, at present unclear.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document