America's Public Lands

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