Nature’s Burdens: Conservation and American Politics, the Reagan Era to the Present. By Daniel Nelson

Abstract

Daniel Nelson’s new book is an excellent survey of conservation policy in the United States since 1980. Two aspects of the book are of central significance. First, as the title indicates, Nelson focuses on conservation, encompassing land and resources management, wild animals and plants, and biodiversity more broadly. He does not address issues of pollution and human health. Second, the book is deeply influenced by the rise of conservation biology and how that discipline has shaped the thinking about biodiversity and land management policy. The book is chronologically organized, beginning with an overview of the national agencies and laws focused on conservation in place by 1980. Here and throughout the book, Nelson focuses on the most important federal laws for conservation: the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The chapters that follow trace conservation policy and politics largely by presidential administrations. The increasing partisanship over conservation policy (and environmental policy more generally) during this period led to less action in Congress and more action on other pathways, especially those undertaken in the executive agencies at the behest of the president and his advisors.