Preserving Public Lands For The Future

Comparing national efforts to preserve public lands, William R. Lowry investigates how effectively and under what conditions governments can provide goods for future generations. Providing intergenerational goods, ranging from balanced budgets to space programs and natural environments, is particularly challenging because most political incentives reward short-term behavior. Lowry examines the effect of institutional structure on the public delivery of these goods. He offers a theoretical framework accounting for both the necessary conditions — public demand, political stability, and official commitment to long-term delivery — and constraining factors — the tensions between public agencies and politicians as well as between different levels of government — that determine the ability of a nation to achieve long-term goals. In support of this argument, Lowry evaluates data on park systems from more than one hundred countries and provides in-depth case studies of four — he United States, Australia, Canada, and Costa Rica — to show how and why the delivery of intergenerational goods can vary. For each of the cases, he reviews background information, discusses constraints on agency behavior, and assesses expansion of the park systems and restoration of natural conditions at specific locations. This extensive comparative analysis of the preservation of public lands offers new insights into the capability of nations to pursue long-term goals.

Current law requires the federal government to fulfill a broad spectrum of responsibilities in managing public lands; to protect and conserve the environment; to foster the appropriate development of marketable commodities; to preserve wilderness areas, wildlife habitats, and unique historical sites; and to encourage public participation in land-use and management decisions. There is no consensus, however, on the best ways to establish a balance among the? priorities when serious conflicts arise. This book presents a wide-ranging discussion of the means by which lands and resources administered by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management can better serve present and future needs for environmental preservation and resource development. The contributors consider public and private interests in the federal lands in light of political realities and uncertainties, giving particular: attention to efficiency-versus-equity issues, privatization fair market value, and the income-producing potential of publicly owned assets. Major sections of the book focus on timber, nonfuel minerals, rangelands, and energy resources. Based on a recent conference sponsored by The Wilderness Society, the book reflects the views of conservationists, scholars, industry representatives, and state and federal officials.

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 its key example, and using on-the-ground reporting as well as science research, the book makes plain that accelerating climate change will dislocate wildlife populations and vegetation across hundreds of thousands of square miles of the national landscape. So what’s the plan, as the next phase of our political history begins? Consolidating protected areas and prioritizing natural systems over mining, grazing, drilling and logging will be essential. But 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 would lead directly to the ruin of our national parks and forests. Grand Canyon For Sale is an excellent overview of the physical, biological, and political challenges facing our national parks and U.S. public lands today.

Excerpt from Four Hundred Million Acres: The Public Lands and Resources The Federal Government has assumed many new responsibilities since Lincoln's time, and will probably assume more in the future when the States and local communities can not alone cure abuse or bear the en tire cost of national programs, but there is an essential principle that should be maintained in these matters. I am convinced that where Federal action is essential then in most cases it should limit its responsibilities to supplement the States and local communities, and that it should not assume the major role or the entire responsibility, in replacement of the States or local government. To do otherwise threatens the whole foundation of local government, which is the very basis of self-government. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This collection of essays thoroughly discusses the controversies surrounding public land management. Leading academics and policy makers examine various uses of public lands--and the views of those who use these national resources. The articles convey the varied interests and experiences of the authors in the field of land management; yet, all convey a number of crucial themes: the impossibiblity of terminating public land use; the necessity of continuing private use and multiple use; the need for sound policies to ensure the land's productivity; and the need for public involvement in land management. This sweeping examination will interest land resource managers, academics in environmental engineering, and government policy makers.