Rethinking America's Public Lands

• Author: Cheryl Simrell King
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12653
• Published date: 01 November 2016
• Date: 01 November 2016

Book Reviews 967

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 6, pp. 967–970. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12653.

Cheryl Simrell King has taught,

researched, and practiced in the areas of

policy, governance, citizen engagement,

community building and design, and

sustainability for 30 years. In addition to

serving on the faculty at The Evergreen

State College and, recently as director of

the Master of Public Administration (MPA)

Program, she works with local and regional

governments advising on, designing, and

deploying engagement strategies. Her most

recent work examines the potential in new

social movements to evoke transformational

change in governing and government.

E-mail: kingcs@evergreen.edu

Book Reviews

I t is poetic to write about two books that address

the use and management of public lands at this

particular moment in time. Recent events tell us

that decisions made, in the past and in the present, to

use and manage public lands, and the resources they

contain, are critically important.

In the first six months of 2016, we experienced massive

wildfires and, at the same time, the results of drought

and concomitant threats to some of the most important

agricultural lands made fertile with water taken from

rapidly diminishing water tables and rivers (e.g., the

largely irrigated California Central Valley produces

thirty percent of the produce consumed in the United

States). We also experienced an armed occupation of the

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by a group affiliated

with U.S. Militias and the sovereign citizen movement,

stemming from a 20-year legal dispute between a

rancher and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)

over unpaid grazing fees on federally owned land. The

occupiers, who were (are) contesting federal authority,

chose to stage their rebellion on land that was, ironically,

set aside in 1872 as the Malheur Indian Reservation

for the Northern Paiute. To whom that land belongs

was contested long before a group of renegades with

guns chose it to occupy; some argue that the federal

government is, in and of itself, an occupier of that land.

In 2015, in the Olympics National Park in

Washington State, the Glines Canyon Dam on the

Elwha River was removed, the last of a series of

projects authorized by a 1992 federal law to restore

the ecosystem of the Elwha River, transitioning a

dammed river back to the wild and returning sacred

and essential fisheries and cultural lands to the Lower

Elwha Klallam Tribe.

Year 2016 is also the Centennial of National Parks

Service, the federal organization that manages,

stewards, and preserves 84 million acres comprised

of 410 sites with 28 different designations: parks,

monuments, preserves, recreation areas, etc. (National

Park Service 2016 ).

At the heart of these events are the often antagonistic

and competing values inherent in all actions and

decisions about how to best manage and use natural

resources and public lands. Should rivers be dammed

for inexpensive electricity and/or drained for

irrigation, or should they be left in their natural states?

Should public lands be used for livestock grazing and,

if so, should people have to pay (and how much) for

the right to do so? Should “wilderness” be “wild” or

should it be managed? What does “wild” mean? To

whom do public lands belong? What does public

mean in this context? What about the people who

were forcibly removed from the lands in order for it

to become “public”? What rights do they have to the

land, and the resources contained within?

For the majority of the population in the United

States, encounters with public lands are sporadic

and short-lived. Perhaps we visit a national park,

recreational area, or national seashore on our summer

vacation. We may see the vast lands managed by the

BLM though our vehicle windows as we road-trip

across the country, but we are not likely to identify

them as public lands because they are often fenced

by the ranchers grazing livestock on the land and,

therefore, appear to be private.

As Randall K. Wilson says in America ’ s Public Lands:

From Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and Beyond (2014),

whether we know it or not, we are, collectively, owners

of approximately 650 million acres of “federally

managed public lands, comprising nearly one-third of

the entire U.S. land area.” Wilson continues:

Danny L. Balfour and Stephanie P. Newbold , Editors

Cheryl Simrell King

The Evergreen State College

Rethinking America ’ s Public Lands

Margret Grebowicz,  e National Park to Come

(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015).

104 pp. $12.99 (paper), ISBN: 0804789622 .

Randall K. Wilson, America ’ s Public Lands: From

Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and Beyond (Lantham,

MD: Rowman & Littlef‌i eld, 2014). 334 pp. $59.00

(hardcover), $34.99 (paper), ISBN: 1442207981.