Public Lands Management at the Crossroads: Balancing Interests in the 21st Century.

• Author: Hasenstein, Ethan R.
• Position: Symposium

On a damp spring weekend--March 26-28, 2004--Lewis & Clark Law School hosted the 2004 Annual Conference of the National Association of Environmental Law Societies (NAELS) at its campus in Portland, Oregon. The topic of the 2004 Annual Conference was "Public Lands Management at the Crossroads: Balancing Interests in the 21st Century," and it is the subject matter of Environmental Law's latest Symposium Issue. The event brought together leading experts from academia, industry, and the federal government, as well as ranchers, conservationists, and attorneys.

The Law School and NAELS were honored to host former Forest Service Chief Dr. Michael Dombeck (1) to present the keynote address, which set the stage for a weekend of lively and insightful debate. Attendees of the 2004 Annual Conference were treated to the presentation of five major papers, as well as several engaging panel discussions and informal talks by presenters such as Mark Rey, Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment, Department of Agriculture, and Andy Kerr, long-time Oregon conservation activist and political consultant. This issue of Environmental Law features four of these papers.

The Articles featured in this Symposium Issue are particularly important in light of the 2004 presidential election. During its first term, the Bush Administration made clear its intent to fundamentally restructure the American public lands management system. In contrast to the Clinton Administration's eight-year effort to move the management of our federal public lands toward preservation, the Bush Administration has taken a more utilitarian approach to development on the public lands. The Articles that follow focus on this policy shift and present cogent legal analyses of the new paradigms in wild land protection, recreation management, grazing, and timber production. The authors, Sandra Zellmer, (2) Jan Laitos (3) and Rachael Reiss, Joseph M. Feller, (4) and Robert Glicksman, (5) each present thorough historical perspectives on public lands policy and concise comparative analyses of the Clinton and Bush Administrations' differing approaches to managing federal resources.

The editors of Environmental Law are proud...