Western Public Lands: The Management of Natural Resources in a Time of Declining Federalism, John G. Francis and Richard Ganzel, (eds), (New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984), 306 pp.
Understanding environmental problems; making effective use of technical information; justifying aspirations; litigation; politics; applicable to land use and growth issues; written for the first party participant.
Western Public Lands: The Management of Natural Resources in a Time of Declining Federalism is an examination of the current policies for the management of public lands in the Western United States. This is followed by consideration of selected natural resource issues.
Western Public Lands: The Management of Natural Resources in a Time of Declining Federalism will be of interest to those who seek a multidisciplinary view of the management of public lands. The work is a collection of the work of multiple authors divided between two parts. The first of these addresses the public lands, the second offers selected natural resource issues. The first part is comprised by seven essays which follow an introduction by the editors in which they offer: a brief history of Federal public lands, the values conflict and natural resource policy and the public-private debate over natural resource use. The first essay addresses environmental values, intergovernmental politics, and the Sagebrush Rebellion. The author examines the rebellion and offers three hypotheses, based on the percentage of Federal land in a legislative district, regarding the relative support for states' claims to Federal lands. The author then supports these hypotheses with the presentation of statistical data.
The second chapter is an economic analysis in public rangeland management in which the author criticizes scientific management as inadequate to meet a biological objective. The author examines, in some detail, range investments which leads to consideration of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Sally K. Fairfax continues this focus on the BLM in chapter three when she considers the bureau as a neighbor and manager in the Western States. Charles F. Wilkinson offers an analysis of legitimate state interests on Federal and Indian lands which result in cross-jurisdictional conflicts. Wilkinson closes the chapter with an evaluation of current policy.
Chritopher K Leman asserts that the privatization revolution failed, but, public land management still requires reform. He considers: the benefits and costs of ideology, the misreading of American traditions, the loss of political support, the over-extension of economic theory, and the need for research and reform to revitalize public land management. Chapter six addresses the maximization of public landresource values. The author offers: principles of resource maximization, evaluation of Reagan's efforts, and another approach to maximization. Francis examines the possibility of realizing public purposes without public ownership, with a strategy for reducing intergovernmental conflict in public land regulation. The closing of this chapter proposes a strategy for selective disposition of the public lands.
Part two offers the consideration of selected natural resource issues. The first of these examines the institutional impacts of technology development as exemplified in the Federal system's handling of nuclear wastes. Chapter nine addresses state budgetary commitments to environmental quality under a program of austerity. The text is amply supported with statistical data. Henry P. Caulfield, Jr. examines US water resources development policy and intergovernmental relations. This is followed by a categorization of state models of water management. Chapter twelve considers the Pacific Northwest as a regional experiment in land management. The penultimate chapter examines the case of the Allen/Warner Valley Energy system as an example of regulatory management of multi-state energy projects. James J. Lopach examines the Supreme Court's treatment of resource federalism as evidenced in the Commonwealth Edison Co. vs Montana case.
Western Public Lands: The Management of Natural Resources in a Time of Declining Federalism is a careful examination of the title topic which offers several perspectives and proposals.
T. A. O'Lonergan
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