The Environmental Politics & Policy of Western Public Lands

The management of public lands in the West is a matter of long-standing and often contentious debates. The government must balance the interests of a variety of stakeholders, including extractive industries like oil and timber; farmers, ranchers, and fishers; Native Americans; tourists; and environmentalists. Local, state, and government policies and approaches change according to the vagaries of scientific knowledge, the national and global economies, and political administrations. Occasionally, debates over public land usage erupt into major incidents, as with the armed occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.

While a number of scholars work on the politics and policy of public land management, there has been no central book on the topic since the publication of Charles Davis’s Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics (2001). In The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent S. Steel have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to consider long-standing issues and topics such as endangered species, land use, and water management while addressing more recent challenges to western public lands like renewable energy siting, fracking, Native American sovereignty, and land use rebellions. Chapters also address the impact of climate change on policy dimensions and scope.

The digital version of this book is free through OSU's Open Educational Resources.

Other Contributors:

• Kathleen Dean Moore, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University
• P. Casey Giordano, Oregon State University
• Hilary C Young, Senior Alberta Program Manager, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
• Mark Brunson, Professor, Utah State University
• Doug Kenney, Director, Western Water Policy Program, University of Colorado
• Eric Toman, Associate Professor, Ohio State University
• Tom Koontz, Professor of Environmental Policy, UW-Tacoma
• Dr. Donna L. Lybecker, Idaho State University
• Rebecca L Warner John Ruple, Professor of Law (Research), University of Utah
• Shane Day
• Lauren Anderson
• Anna Karmazina, Renewable Energy Development in the American West, Oregon State University
• Christean Jenkins Maya
• J Hilty Christopher A Simon, Professor, University of Utah Kim G Trotter, US Program Director, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
• Aerin L Jacob
• Robert B Keiter
• Jodi A Hilty, President and Chief Scientist, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

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