Understanding of them. Here at the national archives. We preserve the records of the four federal agencies most involved in the management of our nations public lands the bureau of Land Management the Us Forest Service the us fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park service. The written records photographs and Motion Pictures contain the stories of the beginnings of federal stewardship. In his book making americas public lands, adam swords takes us through the history of these lands and examines the changing priorities and challenges concerning them. Adam m. Swords is professor of history at the university of idaho. Hes the author of United States west coast and environmental history. The Environmental Justice will the mo douglas and american conservation in an open pit visible from the moon michelle. Niehaus is project editor at the atlantic where she at its features for the planet section in a series called life up close her writing has appeared in publications, including the nations geographic and the New York Times magazine, and shes the author of beloved beasts fighting for life in an age of extinction now, lets hear from adam swords and michelle nighouse. Thank you for joining us today. Hi everyone. Its such a pleasure to be with you today. Im michelle niehaus, and im here with adam sowards to talk about his wonderful new book making americas public lands if you are tuning in today, i its your its likely that youve spent at least some time in what adam calls the publics lands our National Parks wildlife refuges National Forests or anyone of the other landscapes that make up our public lands system. And adams history one of the many things i appreciate about appreciate about adams book is that its both very nuanced but also wonderfully accessible and it is in addition very alert to the role of the public lands today. Not only as valuable conservation lands, but as a source of some very deeprooted. Myths and concepts and traditions in our in our National Politics not only our environmental politics, but our National Politics so adam adam begins the book in a way you you might not expect he invokes both Henry David Thoreau and the political philosopher Hannah Arendt and i know if i it were possible to eavesdrop on a conversation between those two human beings, i would give up a lot in order to do so adam and folks thoreau because the row had a very precient idea that that forest could be held in in common for the public good and then he invokes hannah or rents idea her metaphor of a table as a place as as a metaphor for the the public sphere a table being a place where citizens can gather and and find thing approaching Common Ground and i think adam will start with a short reading from the introduction that on that second metaphor. Thank you, michelle. This will be a fairly short reading. This table metaphor works to guide us through the history of American Public lands. And it helps us think about the public lands as part of the democratic experiment. That is the United States. It takes no great leap of insight to find faults and failures in meeting the promises of democracy for the nation is rooted in the dispossession of indigenous land and the enslavement of africans. The history of public lands include democratic shortcomings and exclusions just like every other part of us political history. That is partly why thinking about public lands as an element in the democratic experiment is helpful. Because we can see who defined the nations land. And for what purposes how new ideas of planted old ones and how novel understandings complicated traditional views. With the lands themselves as the common object that focuses peoples attention. We learn that this quintessentially american system like the nation itself is full of experiments successes and failures and promises made broken and redefined. Throughout this history the table and those gathered around it changed and multiplied guided by evolving laws and science not to mention shifting political interests. Like a growing family at a holiday dinner incorporating new entrees the more interest at the table the more cacophonous and unfamiliar it appeared to those who had been gathering there for generations. This book is an account of how the table changed which is to say it is a history and not a philosophical treatise or a polemic. The book attempts to explain how the system came to be and why as well as how and why it changed over time. The consequences of this system on the land itself and for the people who relied on it for whatever purpose remains central to the account that follows it draws special attention to where constraints and boundaries were redrawn and new political and legal traditions initiated these moments of transition draw attention to novel arrangements of power and to the land. Frequently. If not always they were contested demonstrating that these lands and the processes that govern them mattered to americans who relied on them. Such disagreements are inevitable and healthy in a democracy when participants were allowed to be involved. This involvement has not always been the case with some participants directly excluded and some merely perceived their exclusion at other times. Thank you, adam. Thank you for setting the cacophonous table for us. Things about this book you have studied the history of public lands for a long time. I have reported on public land politics for a long time as a journalist. We both know that this history is is very complicated with countless characters and its also very long. Its prehistory is is as long or longer than its then its written history. But youve managed to fit a lot of complexity into a graceful volume. That is let me make sure i get it in the screen that is just a little over 200 pages so i know also from experience having just written a history of the Conservation Movement that writing efficiently and writing short is much more difficult than writing along. How did you find a path through the history of public lands that managed to capture nuance as well as as well as tell the story at a manageable length. Well, thank you for saying this kind words about the book. Im glad that it reads that way to you as you know when you tackle the big project you cant use every example in every story that you uncover and i think about the book a little bit like a key that it unlocks the larger history so that if youre reading it and it doesnt include your favorite park or your favorite forest or the range land thats in your state that you go to youll be able to read it and understand the larger context in which those things exist. One thing i try to do in the book that i dont know that its unique, but i tried to write it of the systems at large many writers and historians have taken on a single park or taken on the Forest Service and what i tried to or in in there some that look at all of the public lands, but when you look at those many of them are organized heres a section on the park service and heres a section on bureau of Land Management, and i wanted to try to see if i could tell it as a history in more of a stream of time. So looking for trends that cross all the agencies in the same sort of decades and maybe that allowed me to use examples that type multiple things together and where if i had gone a bit by bit agency by agency parked by park i would have would have been a much much longer book. Yeah, i i can see that. I i think that you you brought out some themes that that were maybe not new to me, but i hadnt quite grappled with directly. They were they were so big that i couldnt see them because i was down in the weeds of of individual agencies or individual places. So i found those those big themes to be especially fascinating now you make clear that the history of the public lands doesnt of course begin with the founding of the Forest Service doesnt begin with the signing of the constitution as i mentioned the pre history of the public lands is longer than the written history of the public lands. Where does the history of the public lands truly begin . Thats a great question and as with so many things sadly in american history. I think the history of the public lands begins with the dispossession of Indigenous People who lived on this continent since time immemorial the forces of colonization that depopulated much of the continent and and change the political military economic dynamics here sets the stage for all that comes after and so its that its that clash of colonization that i think really helps precipitate what leads to this public land system that we see emerging a little bit later. And i do want to return to that. Later in our discussion because that history is of course still very much with us and and there are some. There are some some modern responses to it that i think are very interesting in sources of hope for all of us, but let me move forward in in time a little bit in the context of that dispossession. There was a very interesting and complementary role played by Founding Fathers jefferson and madison and i actually wasnt aware of of madisons role in. Which his vision was mostly ignored i should say but but his his it was influential in in the in the formation of the public lands. Can you say a little bit about the their complementary visions and and their effect . On the public land system. Id be glad to its the effect is somewhat indirect but jefferson is sometimes been called the agrarian philosopher and sort of famously sees virtue embedded in farming in the practices of of that sort of labor in the land and that in part explains why he was enthusiastic to gain the Louisiana Purchase to increase the size of the nation expecting that independent yeoman farmers could move and move west. Of course this land is this is a process of dispossession thats happening with that westward movement and independently with their labor transform the raw earth as they imagined it into good productive labor are good productive products that we might sell and have sustenance for the challenge with this is theres a lot of land in north america and it be very easy to just sort of to mix my metaphors here cut and run as you would imagine in a forest and madison along with others in the early part of the republic fought. Theres a need to slow down and theres a need to improve our land and not use it. So extensively so stay rather than move and treat the land better and more sustainably which was in some ways in antislavery position as well and idea not to keep moving west and moving the the slave system west to of course, theres so many paradoxes like we could spend the rest of the hour talking about them for both of these men who who did not so much live their ideals as right about them know, ill stop with with that. Yes, i both were slave owners. We should acknowledge. That so and and so really for a long time that the vision the the vision that led to the public lands was was a commercial vision. I mean conservation didnt come in until much later and and its interesting to me the what comes out very clearly in your book is that it was a commercial vision very divorced from the reality of the land itself and that the reality of the the western climate. And and the the public lands system. I i think it could be said that that in a very broad sense it resulted from a collision between this this jeffersonian vision of an agrarian republic and then the the harsh reality of of the western climate. Can you tell us tell us what happened when those two visions met or those are realities met. Yeah, so even before the constitution was signed this the system that was in place. Was that all land held in common by the by the state the ultimate goal was for that to become privately owned and the government under the articles of confederation and under the constitution developed various means to get that land into private hands and the most famous example, of course is the homestead active the 1860s, but there were predecessors to that. And that worked reasonably. Well 168 acres you could make a selfsufficient farm in lots of places like that. But as more white farmers moved to the west they found that 160 acres was way too little or way too much. So it was too dry or also two mountainous. That was an also a something. That was the homestead act was not sustainable for and so congress. Try it out adapting these laws. They said gosh well if you plan some trees you can have more land or if you bring irrigation you can have more land and these just kept not working and 16 acres on a steep slope in the Rocky Mountains isnt gonna lead you to a very selfsufficient sort of livelihood and many places in the west were too high or too cold to to have really an agricultural economy as these founders had expected. No matter how many trees you plant. All right, exactly. Yeah, and so in the 1870s and 1880s and sort of increasing in that area. You have a number of people saying well we need to do things differently and some of that was maybe the land needed to be the land given away taken away would need to be smaller and we bring irrigation and manage a smaller amount of land or maybe it needed to be bigger. You need a lot of acreage to run cattle in different parts of say colorado as an example so we can make some adjustments there and within those conversations one of the ideas that emerges is maybe these big mountain ranges with all these trees shouldnt be owned by individuals because 168 acres of trees is not going to last very long. So maybe they should be controlled by the federal government. So these eyes start or these ideas start percolating in the 1860s 1870s, but Congress Moves slowly. Then and it took a while before congress decided that in 1891 that the president could have the right to reserve some of those lands so that they would not be cut they would not be owned by individual people or companies, but they would be kept in trust by the federal government and then that evolves in a variety of different ways around that turn of the 20th century. Right into what we think of as conservation. Yeah, and i mean and just to emphasize these these lands that that couldnt be homesteaded. Were still being exploited both by individual landowners and by corporations who saw them as oh well, you know free trees or free pasture. Tell us a little bit about what was happening. Just what was happening on the landscape. Right. So before these measures go into effect. Its its free and open for whoever can get to it and there are large herds of cattle or sheep that are moving up the mountains and sometimes theyre competing with the other cattle and sheep operators in the in the valley. And so that led to pretty bad over grazing in lots of cases. Theres a lot of concern about timber being stolen from these federal lands as well when the first forest reserves as they were initially called were created there were relatively few regulations. And so then the concern was about timber trespass people stealing and i guess to back up one bit of context is theres a great fear at this time in American Life that were gonna run out of trees and were gonna run out of lumber. This is the age of wood and which provided fuel as well as Building Material and timber corporations had denuded the upper midwest very very quickly in the last part of the 19th century, and theres a great learn that that cant be allowed to happen in the sierras in the cascades in the rockies or we wouldnt have enough wood to fuel our nation in their nations economy. So that is all sort of creates some of the urgency around us. But to use any of that wood or to use any of that pasture. No one paid anything. So theyre taking from the public lands valuable resources and turning a profit from it and thats also part of the concern that develops around these conservationists who want to Institute Summary forms as we move into the 20th century. Mmhmm. So this was in part this these were people who are incense echoing madisons warning about soil, you know, were going to use up the soil. They were saying were going to use up these trees this week these were, you know, early conservation sentiments, but there was also a commercial interest here the federal government. Is is losing money by giving away . Or passively giving away these resources. Right um, so the federal governments assertion of control over the publics lands did create enormous bitterness. I know ive read some stories about what it was like to be in early one of the first forest rangers and to ride into town as a representative of this newly created Forest Service and be confronted by a bunch of unhappy ranchers who for the first time were going to have to pay grazing fees or were going to have to manage their cattle in certain ways and generations later. I know from from reporting and living in the rural west its not unusual to hear the federal governments presence in the west, and im sure in other parts of the country as well refer to as as a land grab so set the record straight for us. I know its it wasnt a land grab but what was it . Now, well, it wasnt a gland grab. Ill have to think about what it was as so theres the vast unclaimed once the land had been dispossessed by native from native peoples. Those all the unclaimed land was part of what was known as the Public Domain and as territories, utah, wyoming, idaho, whatever as they be entered into the union almost everyone. Theres just a couple exceptions explicitly gave up claim to all of those Public Domain lands that those are the federal governments. So youll often hear in well throughout the 20th century and the 21st century talking about the state should get their land back. It was never theirs to have so it couldnt have been it couldnt be taken back. And when the Forest Service is probably the best example of this when it is finally created in 1905. So just a quick note you can reserve for us in 1891, but theres no agency in charge of them until 1905. So theres a little gap there in how things are going to be managed. Real quickly some i would say fairly light regulations get imposed and some very fairly small grazing fees get imposed. But if youre a rancher who had grown accustomed over a decade or two decades or three decades of running cattle and not paying anything those grazing fees seemed like they were taking money from you. They were taking your rights away. So there was a great deal of controversy around that and a desire to push back against it Supreme Court by 1911 said absolutely the Forest Service has the right to do that and to administer these sorts of fees in many places, i think. A record shows that the initial creation of these sorts of places generated a lot of resentment and a lot of uncertainty and then in a little bit of time. It became okay that say the fact that the Forest Service was going to help put out fires. Made in an okay thing for them to be around now and many of the restrictions were in the larger context of all the changes happening in the first part of the 20th 20th century. Not that big a deal and so theres a settling in process. I think were locals get accustomed to. What these public land agencies are doing . Because quite frankly theyre not doing a lot theyre doing more than what it existed before but not real restrictive measures quite yet. Mmhmm. So the agency as the Agency Settles into its place that youre at your metaphorical table the people who are already sitting at the table or who had had sat themselves at the table get used to their presence. Yeah. I think that thats a good way to describe it. Yeah, and and theyre so it wasnt just that the conflicts did continue there was acceptance of the the presence of the Forest Service, but but of course arguments continued between the agency in between land universe users and they were all so arguments among between land users themselves, right . I think people may have heard of the conflicts between the cattle ranchers and the sheep grazers, which actually got quite well, theyre theyre legendary and a negative sense in the region. Can you tell me a little bit about why why that was so passionately fought. Yeah, its thats a real complicated story and it depends on the location where you are a part of it has to do with scarce resources when when the forage declines and there are a lot of animals trying to eat that scarcity generates conflict. If you are a pastoralist and you have animals you move them and you move them across land and so that system of its called transhumans is not doesnt work super well with private property and that could generate some challenges as well the labor that ran many of these animals across the mountain ranges and across valleys in wyoming or in the southwest. Were not always white and that could be associated with conflict as well and associations regarding who is a legitimate home builder, which was a term that was used often at the turn of the 20th century. So many of those sorts of um economic conflicts sort of emerge and theres also the conflict between someone who runs thousands of cattle and someone thats just got a small little homestead is just trying to make it work and those bigger more full Political Economic interests can really run what you might call a little guy out and and there were in fact there was violence people were killed over these sorts of issues. Theyre not divorced from the land. Theyre not divorced from larger political questions. Theyre not divorced from cultural preferences and issues like that either. Yeah, you sometimes hear them referred to as the cattle and sheep wars and they might not have been on the scale that we usually think of as wars, but they did as you say sometimes result in violence and but thats thats a good point. Its not simply a conflict between two ways of of using the publics lands, but its an economic perhaps racial and cultural conflict as well. Yes. So as this is happening as as the the i suppose we can call them customary users of the public land are are grappling with the presence of newly created federal agency. There is also in the nation as a whole theres a growing interest in conservation. Weve mentioned this briefly. But but how was that affecting the the work of these agencies . And how is it affecting what was happening to the landscape itself . Thats a great great question, and theres lots of elements of conservation and so for example one element that is involved is recreation. So we want to protect beautiful places that people could visit and enjoy as a tourist and that this this comes to be seen as you know, americas equivalent of visiting the alps for example in europe. So we protect these these unusual. Usually theyre unusual landscape. So the grand canyon yellowstone and these get protected because it would be a place to recreate and really recreate ourselves and to think about ourselves as americans as something distinct in the world. So thats thats one element of this. So thats thats different at this point from lets protect the trees from getting all cut down. There are other elements of the Conservation Movement that are interested in making sure theres water to be either irrigated or to to go to cities and that relates very closely to the National Forests, which are almost always the early ones are almost always in urban watersheds. We dont normally think about it this way, but thats what many of those first National Forests are all about is to protect the watershed of seattle or the watershed about becomes phoenix. Now and so these things start to work together, i think at this time as well. Um, there are other concerns about say wildlife which you know more about than i do of course where certain animals are are either going extinct or very nearly so and theres the the necessity to protect some habitat where these animals might be able to survive or to have places where they wouldnt be hunted. This was a sort of simplistic notion that it was just hunting and if we could stop hunting all the animals would come back, but that was how managers were starting to think about this in the early part of the 20th century or to create more of this type of wildlife and less of that type of wildlife. So there would be predator control a campaigns to get rid of all the wolves or to reduce the coyotes and so that we can have the animal that we want. So theyre whats starting to emerge in that early part of the 20th century and really intensifies as we move toward the middle of it is lots of management lots of fingers trying to get into these systems and tinker with them to make them. Well, this is the place where we can have tourism. This is the place where we have this sort of animal and this is well get rid of that other kind of animal that might cause a problem there and well manage these forests for water but also for timber later down the road, so theres long term thinking but theres also a sort of a narrow range of options that are in the imagination of the people that are starting to do all the tinkering. Hmm. Yeah, that thats its such an interesting point it just as someone whos thought whos thought a lot about the rise of the Conservation Movement. There are all these all these different threads that are that are you know working on separate fronts to a large extent, you know, the sportsman who are trying to protect the animals they love to hunt the urban performers who wanted clean water in the cities people who were trying to protect scenic landscapes and people who, you know recognize that were starting to recognize the ecological importance of forests and wanted to protect them for that reason they were as i said, they were all fighting on on separate fronts, but they all converged in a sense in the public lands and they yeah, they were all either sitting at the table or trying to get a seat at the table and then as you say the managers themselves who had kind of tentatively sat down and said, oh dont worry about us. Were just going to charge modest grazing fees and perhaps limit the number of cattle that you run on the public lands and perhaps prevent timber poaching. Were now going to have a much expanded, you know move over. Were going to take up a much much more space at this table, and were going to get much more involved in in what happens on the landscape. So that brings us into a error that i know youve youve thought a lot about in particular the 50s through the 70s youve identified as an especially important chapter in the public lands and this is something that was fairly new to me as well. So so what was we have the we have the Conservation Movement. We have a pretty now professionalized. System of land managers and then we have continued use of the public lands and perhaps multiplying uses of the public land. So how did that cacophonous conversation unfold in the 50s through the 70s . Yeah, thats great a quick preface that i think important in the 1930s theres a great depression, of course and one of the most popular programs of fdrs new deal was the civilian conservation corps. And so public land agencies had at sort of their availability a bunch of unemployed men to do projects. So trails got built and roads got build and fire lookouts got built and phone wires got strung between these places in the backcountry and that helped sort of set the stage for what happens after World War Two because so much had had been built during the 1930s because of these programs. Okay, so and there was sorry just interrupt you there, but just there was an economic stimulus purpose to that not only to employ people but stimulate tourism, correct. Right on the public lands that it wasnt they dont people around. Yeah. Yeah all sorts of things. Okay. Yeah interesting. So this that infrastructure if you will is created then during that 1930s or expands what had been there before and as we move into world the post World War Two era on the one hand we have. A big chunk of American Society that has pentup demand to have fun and theyve got some money. We have surplus from the military. So people start rafting like they hadnt before and you have gear to go backpacking and there are all these new trails and the infrastructure to get these places. So theres on the public side. Theres this large and growing group of people who want to experience the outdoors want to experience the public lands and theyre going to scenic places. Just magnificent landscapes unquestionably magnificent. Im just you cant argue with that. At the same time some of the land managers are trying to trying to manage their trying theyre getting involved and their intensifying their management of these places and their intensifying everything their intensifying Recreational Use their intensifying how theyre going to manage the forage the grasses that the animals are going to eat. Theyre intensifying how theyre going to manage the forest themselves and at the same time part of that consumer demand that i mentioned just a moment ago included building a lot of new houses and a lot of private timberlands had been if not entirely exhausted before World War Two. It had been cut over pretty good and so at this point in the post World War Two era, they looked to the public forest as a source of lumber. And so timber sales on Fort National forest increased dramatically. So a bunch of stuff is happening here. There is intensifying management in the National Parks in the National Forest on the bureau of Land Management lands, heck theyre even intensifying their management abducts. We want to have more ducks that we can hunt on the what wildlife refugees so theres lots of like were gonna so, its not just managing. Its were gonna maximize the use of these places and the use of these resources and at the same time all these americans are going out and theyre driving their big cars. National parks. Theyre going camp in the National Forest, theyre starting to see stuff. Theyre starting to see overgrazed rangelands. Theyre starting to see some clear cuts and theyre starting to think maybe maybe the Forest Service is doing too much. Maybe the park service has built too many visitors centers. So emerging in the 1950s then. And i havent even mentioned the dams that are being put in every stream that is possible. It seems like at this time. There is an emergent Wilderness Movement where theres a desire to protect places from commercial development more or less entirely and that coalesces in the 1950s and pushes toward what becomes the wilderness act which passes in 1964. And thats not the very first law in this era but between 1964 and say 1976 a whole handful or a couple handfuls actually of laws past Congress Overwhelmingly bipartisan. Just some of them unanimous in the house or the senate to the endangered species act the endangered species. Act wilderness act had four votes against i mean just its overwhelming by partisanship at this time to totally change what happens on the public lands and what some of the purposes are and not only that so the wilderness is a different purpose that gets really codified for the first time through congress, but the other thing that emerges during this era that is so important is the processes of management change. So that when changes to wilderness areas. Or when a timber sale is going to go up there will now be beginning in the 1970s. A place for the public to not only object but just to weigh in. And the Forest Service would have to say were planning a timber sale. Here are the options for the proposals that we have. And the public could i have a lawsuit this created opportunities for that and so to get back to the table metaphor all of us sudden. Theres a lot more people sitting at the table. There are people there who are going to represent salmon and there are people there who are going to represent rafters and there are people there who are going to say we shouldnt be cutting trees in this place for these purposes. And so if youre someone that sat at the table when there are only 10 people and now there are 20 you have less power and that becomes. Concerning you used people used to listen to you and now you have to wait longer to speak and youre not the only voice and so that really changes how this system has been functioning right . And what used to look like a full table is starting to look a little thin. People all reach out to get what they want. Yeah. Yeah, maybe this is a good time to take a breath and and just look back at how far weve comment during our discussion in the last few minutes, and im just struck by the the contrast between what was happening just a century earlier that the federal government had these lands that that were almost in some sense is a burden to the federal government. They couldnt give them away because they were not suitable for homesteading they had some commercial value. But but really they were they were kind of you know un it lands and then and now, you know as were the period were discussing in the 70s. These lands are expected to you know provide. Timber provide clean water provide pasture provide, you know water in through reservoirs and then provide all sorts of recreation motorized and nonmotorized and then provide all the values that we attribute to capital w wilderness the Legal Definition of wilderness. This is just a huge. Its a huge shift in our perception of of these of these land and and we expect from them. Absolutely, and i mean if within the career of one person in one of those agencies, they would have seen just a radical change in what was being asked of them. And i think that thats an important way to think about it. Like if youre a young person born in say that youre the Forest Service was created in 1905 and you start working for the Forest Service when youre 25 and 1930 and you spend 30 or 40 years in that Forest Service. Its gonna look pretty radically different by the time that you retire. Right that i mean the landscape probably looks very different and then and the processes as youre saying, you know, all of a sudden theres a there where you used to as a as a forest ranger, you might have gone out and talked with a few people about what was going to happen next year on the forest you now have a formal system of public consultations that are participated in by people from all over the country. There are a number of federal laws that that need to be it as your as youre planning for the forest and you know, these were all these are all what we consider today great conservation victories, but they certainly changed the conversation about the public lands in in quite ways. Absolutely. Yeah. So so this and you talk about how this this in a lot of ways. This shall we say crowding of the table . I dont mean to make it sound negative this this inclusion of more people at the table without necessarily making the table bigger that led to that in in some ways led into the Political Polarization that we saw during the reagan years. Can you talk a little bit about the connection there and and im interested in the polarization not just in environmental politics, which you and i are both familiar with but but in to some extent the public lands started to become. Started to play a significant role in National Politics. Yeah, i think that thats right part of it is again about sharing power, which ive already mentioned but in 1979 the assembly of nevada declared that the public lands within nevada were there said that Congress Never had the right to take them and that really starts what we call the sagebrush rebellion, and weve seen various forms of it sort of pop up every every half decade or so since it seems like and when Ronald Reagan did run for president in 1980 the first time he declared im a count me in as a rebel. He was trying to associate himself with the sagebrush rebellion. Because it it what it does at. This time is its one more representation of the federal government and federal overreach and too much all of our problems or most of our problems are being caused by government from from that perspective in the 1980s and if you look back the previous couple of decades you do see increased responsibilities for the federal lands, but also a variety of other things that are being done in American Society at this time. And as i was speaking of in the last few minutes, its a bewildering change to a whole lot of people and one way to resist change is to say well, lets go back to the way things were and not have it or lets go back to the way we imagine things were only and well states will take over now states, you know, most state lands are required by statute to maximize resource potential and thats not consistent with the wilderness act and other such things so calls by western states to return the land to the states was a way of saying we want to have more control we want washington dc to have less. Role and what the ramifications of that might be . Um, i guess we never found out because most of those things did not actually go into effect and one of the things that did go into effect is that ramped up the environmental movement. So what one of the things you see happening in the 1980s is a shifting radicalism from the environmental side and a shifting radicalism from the anticonservation side if you will need their label is exactly correct, but it can get my sense here. And so theres spectacles that both sides participate in theres protests that both sides participate in civil disobedience that both sides participate in and over the next 40 years. I guess those things wax and wayne violence is involved as we move into the 1990s the day after the Oklahoma City bombing. Local Forest Office was was told if you come take my cattle youre gonna be greeted with with a hundred men with guns, which is something that we saw again in the 21st century as well. So yeah, this is an accelerating trend that happens out of a reaction to those changes that that happened in the middle part of the 20th century. Yeah. And as you say just to to emphasize that point there there is a perhaps on both sides. Theres a nostalgia for a past that never quite was because the public lands were never envisioned the public lands system. Was never envisioned as as a place that was purely to protect land undisturbed and it was never envisioned as a purely commercial enterprise. There was always an element of sustainability. From the beginning and there was always an element of commercialism. Yeah, i think that thats right. Yeah, i think thats true. Yeah. And there was never a time where everyone was getting along and getting exactly what they wanted. Yes. Right. Yes there but there were times when people perhaps were. Had more of a voice because other people were being left out and that that is a real change though. Perhaps not not quite the the change that perhaps the the way its characterized by people doesnt often acknowledge that that the reason why they felt like they had more why they had more of a voice was because other people didnt have a voice. Yeah. Um, and now of course the the polarization were talking about does continue today, you know, i remember quite clearly when i was a itinerant wildlife field researcher in the mid 1990s hearing some of these conflicts over the management of endangered species on public lands that got quite heated and you know violent as you say with with threats and and actual violence to word for a service and bureau of Land Management employees and and that has continued some of the same people in fact or the descendants of some of the same people have continued that kind of rhetoric into into the modern era. So perhaps you could you could talk a little bit about what weve what weve seen just in the past few years and and how and the the connection you see back to the origins of public land system. Yeah, so there have been anticonservationists. From the beginning of the of these public lands being reserved and retained by the federal government and i think that theyre again they sort of pop up during different times. There was a big movement right after World War Two there was a hope that a bunch of the land could be returned returned again to the states and most people most the critics of that movements that this isnt about that. Its about not supporting the Conservation Movement at all, and so was under trying to undermine that with the idea less of an idea of sustainability and more maximization of private profit to make it easier. Um and the the polarization that were all living through if were adults weve seen this and we see it play on on conservation. Issues where wildlife refuges are taking over by protesters or wilderness study areas are have roads carved into them to try to prevent them from becoming wilderness areas. And so it italy i think ones ones set of radicalism leads to another set of radicalism and these things sort of ratchet up and the i think the antidote to that. Is hard work . Its sitting down at the table and and like i sort of imagine this table most of the time in this book being round where we can all sit at this round table and we can see each other where were all in a different position and all have different values, but we can all see each other but as we move into this the period closest to us, it feels much more like a long skinny table where we cant see everybody anymore, and we just continue to face off rather than share and i think that thats one of the challenges because i think the soul one of the solutions is a lot of hard work getting to know what you want what i want where we might be able to compromise and collaborate. There are examples of this in a variety of locations, but theres not a lot of examples of it and its time consuming and its costly and the conservation challenges that were faced with are expensive and their interconnected because these lands are connected with one agencies and another agencies plus private land. So all of this is it takes so much time and so many resources. And its a lot easier to just yell at each other. Right . I like that. I like that metaphor of the right dont like it. But its a its a very appropriate metaphor of a long table where we cant quite see each other or i cant see each other fully and and are just i often feel that way when i report on these kinds of conflicts that people are just, you know, standing up and and pontificating from from a great distance to the other people who have a stake in these public lands, and theres very little listening going on. But as you say there are some examples of perhaps, you know, these these round tables still exist at the local and regional level. Were getting close to the end of our time. So maybe you could leave us with some some inspiration because i know some of these stories especially that involve indigenous lead conservation our our very heartening and and our examples things that that we could follow in the future yeah, um there arent we dont know these stories well yet, i think. But i know that there are in the in the american southwest there have been examples for decades now of environmentalists working with Traditional Land users to figure out better ways. Theres a high desert partnership. I believe is what its called in Eastern Oregon worked really hard to because this is in the same neighborhood where the now here wildlife refuge was taken over in 2016 in. In the 1990s tensions, there were really really at a high point and kind of not, you know, hot and violent and there was a determination in this community to like lets solve this and make it, you know, less less tense and theres been some Research Done that suggested the reason that the wildlife refuge take over didnt have a greater local effect is because there had been long hours of neighbors getting to know neighbors and trying to solve these sorts of problems and i look to things like the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition that come together to try to protect bears ears and southern utah and eventually get it turned into a National Monument where they will be comanagers with the federal government involved in this and this feels like some sort of whole circle something happening here where we have Indigenous People reaching out and being part of this rather than being left out deliberately or having. Land taken deliberately. So im hopeful where that might go. Um as as it moves forward and develops management plans there. Yeah, i mean we we started this conversation talking about the that the history of public lands is rooted. In dispossession and a story like bears ears. Gives me hope that there is there certainly that that history cant be reversed or and cant be made up for but that there is a way forward from it and and the high desert partnership. I mean we should say for those of you who dont remember the mal here. National wildlife refuge to take over was it was an armed takeover by by extremists antigovernment extremists and it lasted 40 days and i think that as you say the reason why the community was not was not more supportive of the ideals of these these interlopers. Was that unbeknownst to these extremists who were from out of state that the local people and and local public land managers had done decades of work to to find their places at the table and to have a conversation with one another. Exactly yeah, so i think we can we can all take heart that those those conversations are not easy, but they are are possible. Exactly i know you wanted to end with just a very short reading and i think that that reflects the spirit of what were just just talking about so sure you take us out with that the last paragraph in the book and i just get done talking about some people coming to tables to find Common Ground. You see this point is not meant to suggest that using and governing public lands in the future will be can be or should be easy. It never has been. The work of living within Environmental Constraints is among world historys most complicated and important tasks. And the exercise of democracy and a diverse and complicated society like the United States challenges citizens and their elected Decision Makers to set aside narrow interests and seek a broader public interest. To make matters even harder the 21st century includes global problems of Climate Change biodiversity crashes and political corruption. Moving toward the future public lands can and should play a central role in combating these compounding crises. Recall Terry Tempest Williams words quoted in the books introduction the integrity of our public lands depends on the integrity of our public process within the open space of democracy. Promoting and maintaining that integrity demands and honest reckoning with history. The past that includes the exploitation of people and the land as well as the protection of places and democracy. Robin wall kimmerer stated the very land on which we stand is our foundation and can be a source of shared identity and common cause the task before us then is to ensure that our common forests parks rangelands and refuges scattered across the nation function as the publics land and not to preserve of one group or another for that undermines the promise of a democratic and ecological citizenship that might bind the nation together. One way we might begin to repair the earth and our politics is with the public lands. Thank you so much, adam, and thanks for this conversation today. Its great to hear your insights. Again. Adams book is called making americas public lands, and its out now. I hope youll all pick it up and read it. Its its really full of. Full of just very thoughtful commentary on these on a very complicated story that that affects all of our lives and affects them landscapes that i know all of us love. So thank you for joining us today. And i hope youll join the next event at the national archives. The presiding officer the senate will come to order. The chaplain, dr. Barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. Our father in heaven, weve seen of your steadfast love and proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. Lord, make us one nation, truly wise with righteousness, exalting us i
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