scholarly journals Open for All: How Are Federal and Municipal Land Management Agencies Adapting to the COVID-19 Pandemic Alongside Increased Societal Recognition of Racial Injustice

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika S. Svendsen ◽  
Lindsay K. Campbell ◽  
Sophie Plitt ◽  
Michelle L. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Open Space ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Collaborative Partnerships ◽  
Organizational Settings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rural Settings ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
And Shifts

In addition to impacts on human health and the economy, COVID-19 is changing the way humans interact with open space. Across urban to rural settings, public lands–including forests and parks – experienced increases and shifts in recreational use. At the same time, certain public lands have become protest spaces as part of the public uprisings around racial injustice throughout the country. Land managers are adapting in real-time to compound disturbances. In this study, we explore the role of the public land manager during this time across municipal and federal lands and an urban-rural gradient. We ask: How adaptable are public land managers and agencies in their recreation management, collaborative partnerships, and public engagement to social disturbances such as COVID-19 and the co-occurring crisis of systemic racial injustice brought to light by the BLM uprisings and protests? This paper applies qualitative data drawn from a sample of land managers across the northeastern United States. We explore management in terms of partnership arrangements, recreational and educational programs, and stakeholder engagement practices and refine an existing model of organizational resilience. The study finds abiding: reports of increased public lands usership; calls for investment in maintenance; and need for diversity, equity, and inclusion in both organizational settings and landscapes themselves; and the need for workforce capacity. We discover effective ways to respond to compound disturbances that include open and reflective communication, transforming organizational cultures, and transboundary partnerships that are valued as critical assets.

The cartographic dispossession of Bears Ears: Confronting settler colonialism in contemporary struggles over “public land”

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110453
Author(s):  
Tai Kondo Koester ◽  
Joseph Bryan
Keyword(s):  
Public Lands ◽  
Army Corps ◽  
Us Army ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Monument ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
History Of ◽  
One Year ◽  
And Shifts

This paper relates the cartographic construction of public lands by topographic surveys of the Colorado Plateau in the 19th Century to contemporary debates over the management of public lands. We focus our attention on the Bears Ears National Monument that was established by President Barack Obama via Executive Order in 2016, only to be significantly reduced in size by President Donald Trump one year later. Debates over the Monument hinged on competing notions of the public interest, where the public was conceived as a singular entity in ways that marginalized the leading role played by the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute tribes in securing designation of the Monument. These debates featured competing claims of “federal overreach” and theft that glossed over the Tribes’ role in creating the Monument, let alone how the land became public in the first place. This paper considers the role that surveys by the US Army Corps of Topographic Engineers, John Wesley Powell, Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, and others played in papering over the theft of Indigenous lands. Their cartographic depictions of the region underpin current debates over management of public lands. They also shape the terrain on which the five tribes in the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition have worked to protect the area through designation of the Bears Ears National Monument. Framing struggles over Bears Ears as a public lands issue embraces a history of erasure and dispossession and shifts focus from returning land to tribal control.

Charts of Public Land Sales and Entries

1964 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-28
Author(s):  
Paul W. Gates
Keyword(s):  
Public Lands ◽  
Annual Reports ◽  
Fiscal Year ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Published Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Land Office ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Government

Critical readers of The Public Lands. Studies in the History of the Public Domain, edited by Vernon Carstensen, whatever the merits of its other features, cannot but be struck by the fact that separate charts showing interest in the public lands—as evidenced first by income from sales and second by the total of land entries in acreage—differ so widely. One explanation for some of the difference is that Arthur H. Cole, in compiling the data for the charts showing income from sales, seems to have used the calendar year, whereas the chart showing original land entries is based on the data for the government fiscal year. Another difficulty is that the Cole chart is prepared from manuscript schedules in the old General Land Office and they do not coincide with the published data in the Annual Reports of that office.

scholarly journals Failed Collaborative Efforts Relating to Public Lands Use in Idaho’s Boulder-White Cloud Mountains Area

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 250 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Scott Lee
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Collaborative Decision Making ◽  
The Public ◽  
Collaborative Efforts ◽  
Collaborative Decision ◽  
Central Idaho

U.S. Representative Mike Simpson touted his collaboration efforts regarding the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act (CIEDRA). He stated he had worked hard to bring together different stakeholders representing local ranchers, local, state, and federal government officials, recreationists, wilderness proponents, and other interested groups and individuals to work toward resolving the public land use issues facing the Boulder-White Clouds area in Central Idaho. On its face it appeared to be a perfect example of collaborative decision making. Yet, CIEDRA failed every time it was introduced in Congress. Analysis of the process utilized by Simpson reveals that the CIEDRA collaboration was unsuccessful because there was, in fact, no collaboration. The necessary steps for collaborative decision making were not followed and ultimately, when resistance to the collaborative efforts was encountered early on in the process, a conscious switch was made to “shuttle diplomacy” which was ultimately unsuccessful.

The impact of land reform on the development of united territorial communities

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Tamara Smovzhenko ◽  
Oryslava Korkuna ◽  
Ivan Korkuna ◽  
Ulyana Khromyak
Keyword(s):  
Land Reform ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Practical Research ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Land Code

Nowadays, according to decentralization and current legislation (Land Code of Ukraine, Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine «On Self-Governance»), the public lands have been transferred to the CTCs since 1 February 2018. In 2018/2019, 788 CTCs received communal ownership of 1.68 ha of public lands. According to the Draft Law «On Amendments to Several Legal Documents of Ukraine on Agricultural Lands Turnover», the consolidated territorial communities become the legal entities and can acquire property rights to agricultural land plots. Therefore, transferring the lands to be used by the newly created CTCs is currently an urgent issue that requires extended scientific and practical research. The paper aims to research the role of land reform in Ukraine and its impact on increase of CTCs’ budget revenues. The stages of land reform and the development of the land reform in Ukraine as well as its implementation strategy are outlined. The disparities of the integrated satellite map and the data of the Land Cadaster of Ukraine in terms of unregistered lands are defined. The amount of a CTC budget’s increased revenues due to the reform is estimated. Statistical data on small, medium, and large farmers and their interest in the land reform are analyzed. The terms of selling the land to foreign investors and conditions of participation in land auctions are examined. The mechanisms of land purchase, selling, and lease in line with the land reform are suggested. Generalizing the presented aspects of the land reform in Ukraine and their impact on economic activity of the newly created CTCs, it can be argued that the process is quite positive and necessary for both communities and businesses in order to get additional budget revenues for CTCs. The land reform improves the living standards of Ukrainian people through the disclosure of the country’s agricultural capacity.

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