Acres Of Public Land Research Articles

Stranded land constrains public land management and contributes to larger fires

Wildfire activity in the western United States has been increasing since the 1970s, with many fires occurring on land managed by government agencies. Over six million acres of public lands are surrounded by private land and lack road access, making them legally inaccessible to federal and state agencies and potentially constraining management and suppression of wildfires. In this paper, we assemble data on all fires that started on public lands in the western US over the period 1992–2015 and estimate the effect of legal accessibility on fire size. We find that ignitions are 14%–23% more likely to become large (greater than one acre) if they occur on inaccessible land. We provide evidence that this effect may be driven in part by agencies’ inability to conduct fuels management and in part by slower suppression responses on legally inaccessible land. Our results suggest that wildfire prevention and suppression could be bolstered by improved access to public lands and underscore the need for ongoing research on the relationship between land ownership and wildfire.

The Wealth of Knowledge: Land-Grab Universities in a British Imperial and Global Context

The Wealth of Knowledge:Land-Grab Universities in a British Imperial and Global Context Caitlin P. A. Harvey (bio) the colonial legacy of the American land-grant university traced by the Land-Grab Universities (LGU) project, of public universities "built not just on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous land," reveals a far-reaching pattern of institutional development that relied on the leasing and selling of enormous tracts of expropriated Indigenous lands to raise universities' endowment capital.1 The mechanism effecting this tremendous land redistribution was the Morrill Act (1862). Yet while it was the largest, the Morrill Act was not the only legislative grant of Indigenous land made to fund higher education in the United States or among settler societies worldwide. Contextualizing the LGU findings within the larger history of land-grant universities in British settlement societies makes clear that the American land-grant phenomenon was just one episode in the expanding territoriality of settler-colonial universities. Particularly in Canada and New Zealand but also in Australia and South Africa, fledgling public universities received substantial blocks of unceded Indigenous territory as financing from their governments. The development of America's educational institutions, therefore, did not unfold in isolation from the trends established in other Anglo-dominant settler societies. When we consider the land-grant university in British imperial and global perspective, the full territoriality of land-grant universities comprises over 15 million acres spread over three continents (table 1). Settlers' provincial and federal governments sponsored land-grant institutions with the aim of applying scientific methods to agriculture, fostering technological innovation, and creating an internationally competitive yet civic-minded workforce.2 In New Zealand (Aotearoa) in 1869, for instance, the Province of Otago's legislators issued deeds of 100,000 acres for the University of Otago, followed by another 100,000 acres on the South Island (Te Waipounamu) in the 1870s.3 The Ngāi Tahu disputed this reallocation. But with the New Zealand Wars ongoing and swayed by the complaints of Otago University's largest land lessee, Robert Campbell, the colonial state evicted the Māori landholders.4 [End Page 97] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Aggregate Totals of University Land by Grant and Location In England, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge had long relied on the rental income generated by landholding. Even today, the Oxbridge colleges "are among the largest institutional landowners" in land-scarce England.5 Settler societies carried on this European custom on a larger and more devastating scale. Particularly where capital was lacking from benefactions, fees, or government subsidies, the resort to land-granting was continuous. As early as 1619, the British government assigned 10,000 acres to a "Henrico College" in Virginia. Warfare with the Powhatan Confederacy and chronic underpopulation ensured that this institution was short-lived.6 Reaching forward to the nineteenth century and prior to the Morrill Act, The Constitutional History of New York indicates that in 1846 the U.S. [End Page 98] government released to "Tennessee 1,300,000 acres of public land in that state for the endowment of a college."7 This land, nearly the size of Delaware, lay to the "south and west of the Congressional reservation line." Supposedly "vacant and unappropriated Lands" existed there after the violent removal of the Cherokee.8 In nearly the same moment, one of the earliest educational land grants in British North America went to King's College, a precursor to the University of Toronto, in 1828. An Anglican bishop, John Strachan, secured 225,944 acres of valuable Crown Reserves for the new college.9 It is likely that much of this property once supported the Mississaugas of New Credit (Mississauga Ojibwa). Under the strain of recurring Indigenous-settler skirmishes, the Mississaugas ceded 250,808 acres of their land—covering most of what is now the city of Toronto and region of York—first to the British Crown in 1787 and then to the Upper Canadian government in 1805. The Toronto Purchase, as these agreements became known, followed the influx of Loyalists into Upper Canada after the American Revolutionary War.10 Following Canadian Confederation in 1867, institutions of higher learning repeated Toronto's (and, by then, also...

The Wealth of Knowledge: <em>Land-Grab Universities</em> in a British Imperial and Global Context

The Wealth of Knowledge:Land-Grab Universities in a British Imperial and Global Context Caitlin P. A. Harvey (bio) the colonial legacy of the American land-grant university traced by the Land-Grab Universities (LGU) project, of public universities "built not just on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous land," reveals a far-reaching pattern of institutional development that relied on the leasing and selling of enormous tracts of expropriated Indigenous lands to raise universities' endowment capital.1 The mechanism effecting this tremendous land redistribution was the Morrill Act (1862). Yet while it was the largest, the Morrill Act was not the only legislative grant of Indigenous land made to fund higher education in the United States or among settler societies worldwide. Contextualizing the LGU findings within the larger history of land-grant universities in British settlement societies makes clear that the American land-grant phenomenon was just one episode in the expanding territoriality of settler-colonial universities. Particularly in Canada and New Zealand but also in Australia and South Africa, fledgling public universities received substantial blocks of unceded Indigenous territory as financing from their governments. The development of America's educational institutions, therefore, did not unfold in isolation from the trends established in other Anglo-dominant settler societies. When we consider the land-grant university in British imperial and global perspective, the full territoriality of land-grant universities comprises over 15 million acres spread over three continents (table 1). Settlers' provincial and federal governments sponsored land-grant institutions with the aim of applying scientific methods to agriculture, fostering technological innovation, and creating an internationally competitive yet civic-minded workforce.2 In New Zealand (Aotearoa) in 1869, for instance, the Province of Otago's legislators issued deeds of 100,000 acres for the University of Otago, followed by another 100,000 acres on the South Island (Te Waipounamu) in the 1870s.3 The Ngāi Tahu disputed this reallocation. But with the New Zealand Wars ongoing and swayed by the complaints of Otago University's largest land lessee, Robert Campbell, the colonial state evicted the Māori landholders.4 [End Page 97] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Aggregate Totals of University Land by Grant and Location In England, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge had long relied on the rental income generated by landholding. Even today, the Oxbridge colleges "are among the largest institutional landowners" in land-scarce England.5 Settler societies carried on this European custom on a larger and more devastating scale. Particularly where capital was lacking from benefactions, fees, or government subsidies, the resort to land-granting was continuous. As early as 1619, the British government assigned 10,000 acres to a "Henrico College" in Virginia. Warfare with the Powhatan Confederacy and chronic underpopulation ensured that this institution was short-lived.6 Reaching forward to the nineteenth century and prior to the Morrill Act, The Constitutional History of New York indicates that in 1846 the U.S. [End Page 98] government released to "Tennessee 1,300,000 acres of public land in that state for the endowment of a college."7 This land, nearly the size of Delaware, lay to the "south and west of the Congressional reservation line." Supposedly "vacant and unappropriated Lands" existed there after the violent removal of the Cherokee.8 In nearly the same moment, one of the earliest educational land grants in British North America went to King's College, a precursor to the University of Toronto, in 1828. An Anglican bishop, John Strachan, secured 225,944 acres of valuable Crown Reserves for the new college.9 It is likely that much of this property once supported the Mississaugas of New Credit (Mississauga Ojibwa). Under the strain of recurring Indigenous-settler skirmishes, the Mississaugas ceded 250,808 acres of their land—covering most of what is now the city of Toronto and region of York—first to the British Crown in 1787 and then to the Upper Canadian government in 1805. The Toronto Purchase, as these agreements became known, followed the influx of Loyalists into Upper Canada after the American Revolutionary War.10 Following Canadian Confederation in 1867, institutions of higher learning repeated Toronto's (and, by then, also...

Resource extraction and education funding: nature and political economies of state formation in the United States

ABSTRACTThe economic and environmental significance of school land policy in the United States has yet to be imagined, let alone systematically studied, by scholars. Although the fact that Congress allocated shares of public lands to the support of schools beginning in the 1780s is well known, historians have not adequately assessed the impacts of that policy. No one has seriously posed the question of how such policies figured in the history of resource extraction, capital accumulation, and economic development. What difference did it make that federal policy tied school funding to the sale of billions of acres of public land or to the direct lease of such lands to timber, mining, and livestock interests--historical arrangements that survive today through much of the U.S. West? Drawing on state-by-state accounts of the terms of school land disposition and the record of Congressional debates over school land policies, this article advances an argument about the relationship between nature, education, and political economies of U.S. state formation, laying the groundwork for assessing more fully the consequences of that relationship.

Conservation of Aquatic Biodiversity in the Context of Multiple‐Use Management on National Forest System Lands

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) manages 193 million acres of public lands across 43 states and Puerto Rico. The original intent behind reserving lands managed by the USFS was to improve and protect forests, secure favorable conditions for water flows, and furnish a continuous supply of timber for the nation. Through time national forests have evolved, so they are managed for a broad array of uses. Differing expectations have led to conflicts between aquatic conservation and other aspects of the USFS’ mandate. In the 1990s, these conflicting goals came to a head with the listing of the northern spotted owl Strix occidentalis caurina and the need to better protect streams that fostered populations of anadromous salmonids. To better balance these conflicting uses, the agency placed additional emphasis on conserving and restoring aquatic systems by integrating conservation concepts into the forest planning process. If the USFS is to succeed in protecting and restoring aquatic biodiversity, it must continue to address traditional challenges such as minimizing the effects of timber harvest, roads, grazing, and mining on aquatic systems while improving policies and practices regarding contemporary challenges such as climate change and invasive species.

The Founding of Alabama’s Land Grant College at Auburn

The Founding of Alabama’s Land Grant College at Auburn William Warren Rogers Correction: This digital version of volume 69, issue no. 1 of the Alabama Review differs from the print edition. Pages 34, 50, 63, 65, and 67 in this digital version reflect corrections made to the previously-distributed print edition. In 1857 Justin S. Morrill, a congressman from Vermont, introduced a bill that became known as the “land grant” act. President James Buchanan vetoed the bill, but his successor, Abraham Lincoln, proved more sympathetic, signing it into law on July 2, 1862.1 The act provided that for each U.S. senator and representative a state would receive 30,000 acres of public land or land scrip to be used to establish a college to offer courses in agriculture, engineering, and military training. The individual college would determine other courses to be offered. Applications had to be made within five years.2 The 1862 act excluded the Confederate states, but subsequent acts in 1864 and 1866 removed that restriction and extended the application time.3 According to the provisions of the acts, Alabama was entitled to 240,000 acres of land. In February 1867 the legislature authorized Governor Robert M. Patton to move to secure the benefits of the law and appropriated $500 to aid him.4 The 1867 constitutional convention was also interested in a land grant college in Alabama. Unionist Daniel H. Bingham from Limestone County offered an amendment to the constitutional section on education, calling upon the state to secure the benefits of the Morrill Act, noting that the proposed college might be made “a branch” [End Page 54] of The University of Alabama.5 The location of the college became a vital issue in its creation, and although the convention adopted his amendment, it was not included in the final draft of the constitution. Despite eloquent entreaties there were no tangible steps to take advantage of the Morrill Act until 1869. The act of 1868 had empowered the governor to employ an agent to help implement the law, and Republican Governor William Hugh Smith selected C. D. Hudson. Presenting himself to the U.S. secretary of interior in May 1869, Hudson filed the necessary papers. In turn, the documentation was forwarded to the commissioner of the general land office, and certificates representing 240,000 acres of agricultural college scrip were delivered to Alabama.6 Yet, the question of where the school would be located and under what conditions still remained unsolved. In 1869 the state board of education requested Congress to place the grant of 240,000 acres of land at the disposal of the board, explaining that the Morrill Act specified that no Federal monies be spent on construction of buildings. The board noted that The University of Alabama, which it supervised, already had a campus. Having asked Congress [End Page 55] for control of the land, the board also requested that the Alabama legislature make the proposed land grant college a branch of the state university.7 Unfortunately, the political wars of 1870 saw educational concerns pushed into the background after the election of Democrat Robert B. Lindsay as governor. Finally, in 1871 the legislature authorized the governor to dispose of the scrip and appointed a board of commissioners to aid him.8 Lindsay sold the scrip at ninety cents an acre, and thereafter the board of commissioners directed the state auditor to invest the money in 8 percent bonds of the state of Alabama.9 If Alabama expected to enjoy the benefits of the Morrill Act, the November 1871 legislature had to act before the deadline for participation expired. The Montgomery Alabama State Journal, the state’s leading Republican newspaper, insisted that the five-year period outlined in the law applied to Alabama’s act of acceptance in 1867. However, the Democratic Montgomery Advance insisted that the acceptance act of 1868 prevailed and that the state had an extra year to move. When the Alabama State Journal dismissed such arguments, the Advance observed that “politics” had entered the decision-making process: a Republican had been promised a professorship. The Alabama State Journal countered that the board of education...

Race and Local Knowledge: New Evidence from the Southern Homestead Act

The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 was a large-scale effort by Congress to make land ownership accessible for recently freed slaves by opening 46 million acres of public land exclusively for homesteading. Using new micro-data from Louisiana, we examine the factors that led to successful homesteading. We compare homesteaders to the agricultural population, finding few differences other than wealth. A disproportionate percentage of homesteaders were white. We substantiate some of the claims put forth in the earlier literature, such as large amounts of fraud. Further, we present a more nuanced interpretation of a greater success rate for African-Americans. Being local or non-local had no meaningful impact on white success rates but had a large impact on African-Americans. Local African-Americans were more likely to obtain title to their land while non-local African-Americans were less likely to succeed. We hypothesize that regional knowledge, kinship networks, and white resistance to non-local African-Americans are possible explanations for this racial difference.

Risky Removal: Developing a Holistic Understanding of the Risks of Redeveloping Sites Contaminated with Unexploded Ordnance

In the United States, approximately 10 million acres of public land have been used for live-fire military exercises 1 and some fraction of the ordnance deployed here remains active and buried on site. As military facilities transition to civilian uses, unexploded ordinance (UXO) may endanger human lives or leach harmful chemicals into the environment. Thus, the United States government has invested considerable resources into finding and removing UXO1. Using current techniques, magnetometers and electromagnetic induction sensors collect geophysical data to identify anomalies (metallic objects that might be UXO) and use signal-inversion and feature-extraction algorithms to infer likely, but uncertain, locations and material properties. 2 Lacking clear decision guidance, risk-averse site managers often spend the majority of resources digging scrap metal with false-positive UXO signals, which is untenable given the vast scope of the problem and diverts scarce resources from higher-risk areas. Despite sensor advancement, remediation managers face a series of difficult and nontransparent decisions regarding risk, cost, mission, and sociopolitical trade-offs. These decisions are often dealt with ad hoc and fall short of risk-informed guidance regarding when to remediate, where to prioritize digging, suitability for future uses, and residual risks. Even with extensive digging, it is difficult to know that all UXO have been removed, making questions like “can you guarantee that this site is safe?” and, “how sure are you?” difficult to answer. Intuitively, we understand that risk involves more than sensor data and signal processing. Given two similar sites with similar distributions of identified anomalies, would a site manager be equally confident that remediation had ensured future safety if (A) one site is intended for a wildlife preserve and the other for public use; (B) one site has an oral history of live ordinance and the other of predominantly inert ordinance use; or (C) one site is near many excavated UXO and the other near excavated scrap with false-positives signals? In each case, advanced classification technologies may not differentiate between the contrasted examples, yet a rational person would expect risks to differ. Rather than indicating a failure on the part of sensor technologies, this highlights the importance of including nonsensor information. Bayesian Networks 3 (BNs) are particularly useful for transparently integrating diverse information to estimate probabilities. For example, suppose interviews, site histories, and geophysical information inform expert judgments about likely UXO concentrations. Experts define prior probability distributions (e.g., Beta distributions) for the proportion of UXO. Geophysical sensors provide additional information. Real-time excavation results update the distributions. Existing sensor analysis tools match the closeness between detected anomalies and object types. BNs can combine all these into predictive probabilities (Figure 1, left side). While BNs have occasionally been used in current classification efforts, they do not integrate dig results and rarely use data from nonsensor sources 2 .

Lands with Wilderness Characteristics, Resource Management Plan Contraints and Land Exchanges: Cross-Jurisdictional Management and Impacts on Unconventional Fuel Development in Utah's Uinta Basin

Lands with Wilderness Characteristics, Resource Management Plan Contraints and Land Exchanges: Cross-Jurisdictional Management and Impacts on Unconventional Fuel Development in Utah's Uinta Basin

USDA Forest Service research and development - caring for the land and serving people

Total forested area in North America is 677.5 million ha (32.7% of land area), which is 17.1% of the global forests. Total area of the U.S forests is 303 million ha, which is the 4th largest in the World behind the Russian Federation, Brazil and Canada. In 1876, the United States Congress created the office of Special Agent in the Department of Agriculture to assess the quality and conditions of forests in the United States. In 1881, the office was expanded into the Division of Forestry. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 authorized withdrawing land from the public domain as “forest reserves” managed by the Department of the Interior. In 1901, the Division of Forestry was renamed the Bureau of Forestry. The Transfer Act of 1905 transferred the management of forest reserves from the General Land Office of the Interior Department to the Bureau of Forestry, henceforth known as the US Forest Service (http://www.fs.fed.us/aboutus/history/). Presently the agency is part of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA Forest Service (USDA FS) manages public lands, provides assistance in management of the privately-owned forested lands, and does research. Major divisions of the agency include the National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, and the Research and Development (R&D) branches. The R&D branch provides research support for forests and range management and helps in knowledge and technology transfer to the National Forest System and the State and Private Forestry. The United States currently has a system of 155 national forests, 20 national grasslands, and 79 research and experimental forests, as well as other special areas, covering more than 193 million acres of public land (Adams et al. 2008). The USDA FS has evolved into a 30,000 employee agency that manages the national forests for a number of multiple uses, including recreation, timber, wilderness, minerals, water, grazing, fish, and wildlife (http://www.fs.fed.us/aboutus/history/). As of fiscal year 2010, the USDA FS has a total budget authority of $5.15 billion, of which 42% is spent fighting fires (http://www.fs.fed.us/aboutus/budget/). The mission of the USDA FS is: to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. Its motto is: caring for the land and serving people. As a lead Federal Agency in natural resource conservation, the USDA FS provides leadership in the protection, management, and use of the Nation’s forest, rangeland, and aquatic ecosystems.

Review: The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray’s Diary

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any person who is the head of a family … shall … be entitled to enter one quarter section or a less quantity of unappropriated public lands, upon which said person may have filed a preemption claim. …” So begins the Homestead Act of 1862, signed into law on the 20th of May by President Abraham Lincoln. The work of this extraordinary piece of writing is well known: more than 270 million acres of public land were parceled out to private citizens before the act’s repeal in 1976. Famously, the Homestead Act encouraged widespread Euramerican settlement of the western states and territories, but in so doing, it accelerated the infamous expropriation of land from native peoples and intensified federal initiatives that hastened their relocation, confinement, and genocide.

A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future. By David Hancocks. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xxii + 280 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $35.00

Federal land management agencies in the United States, particularly those responsible for overseeing public forestlands, are under constant vigil by those demanding environmentally responsible land use. Since the early 199os, many agencies have responded to these political demands by brandishing Ecosystem Management -a framework for environmentally friendly forestry. In 1993, for instance, the United States Forest Service, the National Park Service (NPS), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), pledged to work with each other to protect and restore biological diversity and preserve wildlife species in the Pacific Northwest. These agencies collaborated on land management plans that would cover over 2omillion acres of federally administered forests from Northern California, Oregon, and Washington to Idaho and western Montana.! These federal agencies embraced Ecosystem Management to varying degrees The NPS, which encountered little criticism, has been content to cooperate with the other two agencies in managing endangered and threatened wildlife species, particularly in the western states. The BLM and the Forest Service, on the other hand, faced both public outrage for their logging policies and court rulings that halted timber operations across the Pacific Northwest-their most profitable forests - and they went further in their engagement with Ecosystem Management. Of these two agencies, the Forest Service's Ecosystem Management has been more involved and has drawn far more media attention, though BLM Director Jim Baca pledged to work "diligently to develop an approach to Ecosystem Management on the 270 million acres of public lands ... for which it has stewardship responsibilities."3 The BLM is and has been significantly smaller agency (in terms of budget and workforce), and it has been significantly less influential in national politics than the Forest Service. Its efforts toward Ecosystem Management have involved playing a junior partner to the larger agency in efforts to meet federal law.4 The Forest Service made Ecosystem Management its policy mantel piece, following a decade of severe internal and external conflict that culminated in a political

These American Lands : Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands

Review: These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands By D. Zaslowsky, T.H. Watkins, and the Wilderness Society Reviewed by Rebecca Harner Northern Arizona University Zaslowsky, D., Watkins, T. H., and The Wilderness Society. THESE AMERICAN LANDS: PARKS, WILDERNESS, AND THE PUBLIC LANDS, Rev. and expanded ed. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1994. 398 pp. US$22.00 paper ISBN: 1-55963-240-2. Recycled, acid-free paper. Being a long-time supporter of National Parks, I was surprised at the amount of information new to me in THESE AMERICAN LANDS. I had no idea, for example, that there were public lands designated as Wild and Scenic Rivers and National Trails, or that these were somehow separate from the National Park system. Indeed, THESE AMERICAN LANDS details the 634 million acres of public lands which include National Parks, National Forests, Wildlife Refuges, Bureau of Land Management lands, Alaska lands, designated wildernesses, Wild and Scenic Rivers and National Trails. One of the authors' goals was to provide a comprehensive look at public lands in one source. They achieved this without being too simplistic in this readable and entertaining book. Each chapter is devoted to a different type of public land and begins with a history of how it came into existence, including all of the major legislation involved. A discussion on present usage of the land follows, as well as discussion on future directions, management decisions to be addressed, and ideas for land expansion. This information has been heavily revised and expanded from the 1984 edition; future editions should continue to update such valuable information as well. One of the most interesting features of THESE AMERICAN LANDS is that its chapters read like stories, filled with little-known details of the conflicts and controversies occurring over the years. Speaking as a reference librarian, a particularly useful component of the book is the Appendix, which lists by name most of the public lands in the United States and provides useful details as to the state (or states) represented, the number of acres or miles involved, the responsible government agency, and the public land designation year. Appendix A is

Voting for Smokey Bear: Political Accountability and the New Chief of the Forest Service

Has Smokey the Bear become Smokey the Politician? The image of Smokey Bear, peering from magazine pages and billboards, does not cut the profile of someone scrambling for political office. Smokey, the mascot of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDA), symbolizes the warm and fuzzy (or is that furry?) side to our national forests. Smokey is shown living peacefully in a forest among flowers, birds, and fawns. In this Eden-like setting, he asks that we be careful with fires in his community--the national forests. Like tourists who avoid the rough side of town, we do not see the complete story of Smokey's community. We never see Smokey clear-cutting forests, drilling for oil, downhill skiing, riding ATVs, snowmobiling, mining, hunting, or herding cattle. To some, such images would seem at odds with Smokey's community. Others, however, would conclude that Smokey was merely making wise use of his forest home. If Smokey's image mirrored the true complexities of national forest management, he would likely be a controversial figure, reflecting more accurately the divisive issues surrounding the agency he represents. Because of actions of the Clinton administration, those controversies surrounding the Forest Service's management of the national forests may now be settled in the political arena, for the Forest Service has become politically accountable. Smokey Bear must now be responsive to the ballot box. On October 28, 1993, the Clinton administration removed F. Dale Robertson from his position as chief of the Forest Service. In the tradition of Forest Service chiefs before him, Robertson was a career Forest Service employee. He had risen through the ranks of the agency to become its head in 1987, during the Reagan administration. The removal of Robertson sparked a debate between those who accused the Clinton administration of politicizing the Forest Service and those who clamored that a clear change in the direction of the Forest Service was due (Cushman, 1993).(1) A few weeks later, on November 17, 1993, the Clinton administration announced that Robertson's replacement would be Jack Ward Thomas, who was a Forest Service researcher involved in developing a protection strategy for the northern spotted owl. Although Thomas had worked for the Forest Service for many years, his lack of management experience in the hierarchy of the Forest Service precluded his selection as a career appointee. In other words, his selection is considered politically motivated. This breaks with the long-standing tradition that the chief of the Forest Service is filled by a career appointment. However, a review of the fundamental laws and issues concerning the management of our national forests reveals a picture of land-use management that is based, ultimately, upon value judgments. While objective scientific determinations play an important role for the Forest Service in evaluating management options, as well as implementing management decisions, the criteria that guide the Forest Service in the selection of its management direction are imbued with subjectivity. Given such a mission and the constitutional framework of our representative democracy, it is wholly appropriate to hold the Forest Service accountable to the values of the people as reflected through their elected representatives. The Forest Service is charged by law with managing the 191 million acres of public land which comprise 156 national forests and 19 national grasslands (U.S.D.A. Forest Service, 1993; ii). These lands are located in 44 states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960 (MUSYA) is the fundamental law that guides the Forest Service in its management of these lands. In particular, MUSYA provides that the national forests shall be administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed and wildlife and fish purposes (Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960 [sections]1). …

Cadastral Surveys and Resurveys

In accordance with Reorganization Plan No. 3 of President Harry S. Truman, in 1946, the Bureau of Land Management (hereinafter called “the Bureau”) was established in the United States Department of the Interior on July 16, 1946, through consolidation of the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. The General Land Office was established in 1812 and the Grazing Service in 1934. By the consolidation, the administration of approximately 400,000,000 acres of public land in the west was brought into one unit to provide for more effective administration at less cost and to insure maximum service in the public interest by the decentralization of activities.

Phosphate deposits of the United States

Different types of phosphate deposits and different sources of phosphate in the United States are briefly discussed. In Florida two types of phosphate are now mined, land pebble and hard rock. The principal characteristics of these types of rock are stated and methods of prospecting, mining and recovery briefly outlined. Testimony given before the Congressional Committee to Investigate the Adequacy and Use of Phosphate Resources of the United States, November 28, 1938, at Lakeland, Fla., showed Florida's reserves to be far greater than previously supposed. Similarly at corresponding hearings in Tennessee a few days earlier the reserves of brown phosphate, the only type now mined in that State, were shown to exceed earlier official estimates. Reserves of the Western fields have been raised a little to bring them abreast of current information but no attempt has been made, as in the other States named, to include lower grades of rock than those formerly considered in the estimates. Professor J. Stewart Williams has shown for Utah that such a procedure would tremendously increase these figures.Reserves of the United States as a whole are now considered to exceed ten billion tons, not counting those classed as possible or certain phosphatic limestones mentioned at the hearings of the Congressional Committee. As nearly 2,000,000 acres of public land in the Western States and 66,000 acres in Florida remain to be examined for their phosphate content the stated figure will ultimately be greatly increased. At the present rate of consumption, 3,000,000 tons annually, ten billion tons would last more than 3,000 years.

Natural Resources

American well-being on secure foundations.-In natural wealth this country is unrivaled. With one-twentieth of the world's area and population, we produce one-fourth to three-fourths of the world's annual supply of grain, cotton, coal, zinc, lead, copper, iron ore, and oil. Dependence of civilization on mineral resources increasing. -Since 1918 our mineral output has increased 40 per cent. Agriculture grows only as fast as population, but the demand for minerals changes with every discovery and invention. The "American secret" lies in mechanised energy. The American wageearner has more power at his elbow than any other worker in the world. Twenty years ago one family in ten bought electric current; now it is two out of three. River problems.-The Muscle Shoals and Colorado power projects have attracted more public attention than their economic importance warrants, but the problem of the Mississippi River floods is one calling for the best of American engineering. Mineral estate of the American people.-Nearly 200 million acres of public land is still unappropiated, and the mineral deposits in public ownership constitute a large share of our national wealth. The mineral-leasing law recognizes community of interest between private operator and public landlord.

Public Range Lands--A New Policy Needed

Previous articleNext article FreePublic Range Lands--A New Policy NeededRomanzo AdamsRomanzo Adams Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 22, Number 3Nov., 1916 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/212621 Views: 30Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Iker Saitua Ganadería y problemas de explotación de las tierras públicas en el oeste norteamericano a finales del siglo XIX y comienzos del XX: el caso del estado de Nevada, Mundo Agrario 22, no.5151 (Mar 2022): e175.https://doi.org/10.24215/15155994e175J. W. Thorne, B. M. Murdoch, B. A. Freking, R. R. Redden, T. W. Murphy, J. B. Taylor, H. D. Blackburn Evolution of the sheep industry and genetic research in the United States: opportunities for convergence in the twenty‐first century, Animal Genetics 52, no.44 (May 2021): 395–408.https://doi.org/10.1111/age.13067Iker Saitua, “Flagging the Lines”: Basque immigrant sheepherders and the early US Forest Administration in Nevada, 1890-1920, Historia Agraria. Revista de agricultura e historia rural , no.7777 (Dec 2018): 137–168.https://doi.org/10.26882/histagrar.077e06sIker Saitua Los pastores vascos y la guerra de las praderas. Inmigración vasca, industria ganadera y conflictos por las tierras federales en el estado de Nevada, 1890-1934, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 39 (Jan 1970): 191–211.https://doi.org/10.5209/CHCO.56271