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This article analyzes recent developments regarding public lands and their management, focusing on state demands to gain control over federal lands and controversies over national monument designation and the legality of monument reductions. I place recent conflicts over public lands in historical context and show that they are, for the most part, nothing new. Since the 1890s, when the first forest reserves (now national forests) were established, there have been calls to transfer much of the federally managed public lands to states for their management or sell them to private interests. There has also been a century-plus disagreement over natural-resources use versus protection of these same lands. I argue that these conflicts generally follow predictable patterns, while also noting several recent departures from historical patterns.

While the Treasure Valley is water rich, the East Snake River Plain has used collaborative governance to curb decreasing aquifer levels. Collaborative governance allows all stakeholders a seat at the table, supporting the development and involvement of these groups could be a useful mechanism for representing the perspectives and interests of all Idahoans. . Water supply might change in the future, particularly the timing of peak streamflow. This has major implications for irrigation in the valley. . We do not currently have enough data and information to confidently determine how growth of the urban area and loss of agricultural land will impact total water needs in the Treasure Valley. Density of urban growth and associated urban outdoor water use are major factors of uncertainty. . Creative market solutions could be a valuable tool for trading water, but they need sufficient oversight in their development to decrease the risk of rural communities losing their water to urban growth. There are examples of these markets being successful in other growing western cities. . Water quality has been improving in some areas due to innovative solutions and stakeholder engagement.

Biocentric public adminstration is an interesting, yet troubling idea. The notion of biocentrism and its resultant subordination of human interest and values to the intrinsic values of nature raises problematic questions for democratic public administration, the discretionary judgment of public administrators, and the role of science in the biocentric regime. The article uses several of the western wildfires of 2000 for insights, reviews the Conservation Movement, and explores the use and role of ecological science to critique and inform biocentric public adminstration.

Federal land bureaus are developing a new approach to the management of large areas of public lands called ecosystem management. That approach remains fraught with many conceptual and implementation difficulties. One of the most important of the those difficulties concerns the relationship of scientific/professional modes of decision making with democratic decision processes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the first large scale attempt to implement ecosystem management in the Greater Yellowstone area and the difficulties that effort had in reconciling these modes of decision making. The paper concludes with suggestions as to how these two methods of resource decision making might be brought closer together.

Ecosystem management increasingly is viewed as a new “paradigm”; of public land management. The literature is becoming replete with studies of ecosystem management, including its implementation. Yet many of the studies are overly reliant on a technical and expert‐centered mode of implementation, as well as being somewhat uncritical about the value of ecosystem management. This policy review argues that much can be learned from the early days of the Progressive movement about how to bring about change in public land management. Specifically, early Progressives often were successful because they were able to link scientific management with key democratic values. This is the task that is facing ecosystem management advocates today as they confront a public interested, yet suspicious, of this evolving new land management regime.

The administration of the public lands in the Greater Yellowstone area always has been contentious. Today, the administrative and public policy issue of central concern is how, and whether, to administer the region under the principles of “ecosystem management.”; Although gaining in popularity as a new natural resource management and administrative paradigm, ecosystem management is fraught with unanswered questions pertinent to public administration, political theory, and public policy. These questions, discussed here, include the use of concepts of nature to defend various political orders; the role of science in this particular public policy debate when contrasted with more democratic methods of public decision making; and the administrative assumptions of national park and national forest managers.

The ground is littered with projects that failed because of strong public opposition, including natural gas and coal power plants proposed in Idaho over the past several years. This joint project , of the Idaho National Laboratory, Boise State University, Idaho State University and University of Idaho has aimed to add to the tool box to reduce project risk through encouraging the public to engage in more critical thought and be more actively involved in public or social issues. Early in a project, project managers and decision-makers can talk with no one, pro and con stakeholder groups, or members of the public. Experience has shown that talking with no one outside of the project incurs high risk because opposition stakeholders have many means to stop most (if not all) energy projects. Talking with organized stakeholder groups provides some risk reduction from mutual learning, but organized groups tend not to change positions except under conditions of a negotiated settlement. Achieving a negotiated settlement may be impossible. Furthermore, opposition often arises outside pre-existing groups. Standard public polling provides some information but does not reveal underlying motivations, intensity of attitudes, etc. Improved methods are needed that probe deeper into stakeholder (organized groups and members of the public) values and beliefs (sometimes called /heuristics) to increase the potential for change of opinions and/or out-of-box solutions. The term “heuristics” refers to the mental short-cuts, underlying beliefs, and paradigms that everyone uses to filter and interpret information, to interpret what is around us, and to guide our actions and decisions. This document is the final report of a 3-year effort to test different public discourse methods in the subject area of energy policy decision-making. We analyzed 504 mail-in surveys and 80 participants in groups on the Boise State University campus for their preference, financial support, and evaluations of eight attributes for energy conservation and efficiency, fossil fuels, nuclear energy, hydropower, and renewable energy. All participants saw a 7-person diverse energy expert panel. Some participants attended deliberation sessions; some received a 35-page briefing document that included pros and cons of the different energy options.

The ground is littered with projects that failed because of strong public opposition, including natural gas and coal power plants proposed in Idaho over the past several years. This joint project , of the Idaho National Laboratory, Boise State University, Idaho State University and University of Idaho has aimed to add to the tool box to reduce project risk through encouraging the public to engage in more critical thought and be more actively involved in public or social issues. Early in a project, project managers and decision-makers can talk with no one, pro and con stakeholder groups, or members of the public. Experience has shown that talking with no one outside of the project incurs high risk because opposition stakeholders have many means to stop most (if not all) energy projects. Talking with organized stakeholder groups provides some risk reduction from mutual learning, but organized groups tend not to change positions except under conditions of a negotiated settlement. Achieving a negotiated settlement may be impossible. Furthermore, opposition often arises outside pre-existing groups. Standard public polling provides some information but does not reveal underlying motivations, intensity of attitudes, etc. Improved methods are needed that probe deeper into stakeholder (organized groups and more » members of the public) values and beliefs/heuristics to increase the potential for change of opinions and/or out-of-box solutions. The term “heuristics” refers to the mental short-cuts, underlying beliefs, and paradigms that everyone uses to filter and interpret information, to interpret what is around us, and to guide our actions and decisions. This document is the final report of a 3-year effort to test different public discourse methods in the subject area of energy policy decision-making. We analyzed 504 mail-in surveys and 80 participants in groups on the Boise State University campus for their preference, financial support, and evaluations of eight attributes for energy conservation and efficiency, fossil fuels, nuclear energy, hydropower, and renewable energy. All participants saw a 7-person diverse energy expert panel. Some participants attended deliberation sessions; some received a 35-page briefing document that included pros and cons of the different energy options. « less

Over the course of the last two decades there has been a recurring theme among proponents of the National Park Service mission that politics has undermined the day-to-day goals of the Service. With the increased politization of the Park Service, two recent proposals have called for removal of the NPS from the Department of the Interior and call for it to become an independent body along the lines of other government entities such as the Smithsonian Institution. This article reviews these proposals and suggests that in the long run removal from the Department of the Interior will not solve the problems of the NPS and may well accelerate them.

In the summer of 1988, the world watched as Yellowstone National Park appeared to go up in flames. The National Park Service (NPS) found itself under severe criticism for what popularly became known as its "let bum" policy, a policy that was perceived as allowing the unchecked destruction of the world's oldest national park. As the snows of winter put out the fires, the media turned its attention to other matters, but not before reporting various congressional calls for the resignation of high-level NPS officials and promises of hearings on fire policy. To many, the 1988 fires might be viewed as an isolated example of policy failure. Yet, the fires can more accurately be viewed as another cue that the policy, management, and future of America's national parks all remain unresolved.