Public Lands and Private Rights: The Failure of Scientific Management

Description

Author: Nelson, Robert H.  (1944-2018)

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD)

Pub Date: 1995

Binding: Paperback

Condition: Fair.  Binding tight.  No tears, bends, or folds.  Warmly inscribed by the author to previous owner on ffep/half-title page.  Some edge and corner wear–it’s been looked through, but lightly.  No other signed copies available for sale.

Notes:  “Nelson’s basic conclusions are also uncomfortably clear.  Almost everything we have tried to accomplish on the public lands–from original, eighteenth-century efforts to sell the land and use the receipts to retire the Revolutionary War debt, to present efforts to charge equitable and efficient grazing fees–has failed.  Nelson is a little bit fuzzier than we might wish about the standards for identifying failure, given the frequency with which that thought emerges in his essays.  However, the basic notion–that judged by what Congress attempted to achieve, we have rarely come close to succeeding–is a reasonable basis for pause before embracing the next succulent slogan now on the platter: ecosystem management.”  (From the Foreword)  Essays primarily on timber usage and grazing on the public lands.  Eviscerates James Watt’s tenure as Secretary of the Interior under Reagan. “Wise-use” runs headlong into “Not In My Back Yard.”  From the library of the late environmentalist Dave Foreman.