Search

In recent years the “working landscape” concept has risen to prominence in popular, academic, and policy discourse surrounding conservation of both natural and cultural values in inhabited landscapes. Despite its implied reconciliation of commodity production and environmental protection, this concept remains contested terrain, masking tensions over land use practices and understandings of human–nature relations. Here we draw on a case study of landownership and land use change in remote, rural Wallowa County, Oregon to explore how working landscapes are envisioned and enacted by various actors. The arrival of landowning amenity migrants, many of whom actively endorsed a working landscape vision, resulted in subtle but significant transformations in land use practices and altered opportunities for local producers. The working landscape ideal, while replete with tensions and contradictions, nevertheless functioned as an important alternative vision to the rural gentrification characteristic of other scenic Western environs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperation across ownership boundaries is critical to most conservation efforts in mixed-ownership landscapes. Where owner objectives vary widely, as at publicprivate land ownership boundaries, cooperation can be especially challenging. This research explores the opportunities and challenges for cooperative fire management among public and private forest managers in the John Day Valley of eastern Oregon, an arid and fire-dependent region dominated by large federal ownerships and private ranches. Data were derived from indepth interviews with public and private land managers, ranchers, forest industry representatives, environmental activists, community leaders, and others. Through a process of theoretical coding, five themes affecting cross-boundary cooperation were identified: land tenure, power, ideology, uncertainty, and trust. These themes illuminate the complexity involved in cross-boundary cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]