Journals
Spring 2007, Vol. 47, No. 2
ESSAY—Wildland Fire Use in Southwestern Forests: An Underutilized Management Option?
Molly Hunter
When I approached Toby Richards to be interviewed for a synthesis project on fuels management, he wanted to meet me in a remote, forested corner of New Mexico rather than in his Forest Service office. Toby is the fire management officer for the Black Range Ranger District of the Gila National Forest and along with other resource managers he is responsible for managing wildland fires. This remote forest was where he was executing perhaps the most important part of his job, managing a naturally ignited fire. The gut response of most firefighters in a similar situation would be to put out a fire as soon as it is discovered in the forest and prevent its "destructive" spread. Toby and the resource staff of the Black Range Ranger District, however, were only interested in letting this fire, the Taylor Fire, spread across the landscape in its natural fashion. As this particular fire was closely monitored and allowed to burn over the landscape for several weeks, it most likely provided numerous benefits, including reducing uncharacteristically high levels of fuel in the form of woody debris, brush, and small trees; recycling nutrients; and improving wildlife habitat. In addition, these benefits would be provided with relatively little cost compared to other management activities.
This practice of letting naturally ignited fires spread is in accord with an important goal of the Forest Service, "restore fire-adapted ecosystems." This goal stemmed in part from the thinking of the great conservationist of the twentieth century and advocate for wilderness areas, Aldo Leopold. Early in his career with the U.S. Forest Service, Leopold too was a proponent of suppressing wildfires. However, his views changed when, in 1936, he visited forest systems in northern Mexico that were relatively untouched by humans and still largely influenced by frequent wildfires. Contrary to the heavily grazed and fire suppressed forests of Arizona and New Mexico, he noticed that the Mexican forests presented "so lovely a picture of ecological health." With this observation, Leopold planted a seed, the idea that fire is a natural and important component of many forested systems of the western United States.
Very Large Array: Early Federal Historic Preservation—The Antiquities Act, Mesa Verde, and the National Park Service Act
Richard West Sellars
Vandalism to archeological areas in the American Southwest provided the chief motivation for passage of the Antiquities Act of 1906. One of the Progressive Era’s foremost preservation laws, this Act firmly established research and education in science and the humanities as valid goals of public land management in the United States. In addition, the Act authorized the use of presidential proclamations to create "national monuments" on public lands that are especially significant to science or history. The Act’s leading congressional advocate, U.S. Congressman John F. Lacey of Iowa, also supported the creation of Civil War battlefield parks in the East and national parks in the West, as well as early wildlife refuges and national forest reserves. The Antiquities Act thus came into being within the context of an array of new conservation and preservation legislation, which included the 1906 Mesa Verde Act and the 1916 National Park Service Act. All together, the legislative histories and the wording of these three statutes—plus management activities ongoing in the early battlefield parks, national monuments, and national parks—formed the philosophical and policy foundations for national park service historic preservation practices throughout much of the twentieth century.
Defining, Valuing, and Providing Ecosystem Goods and Services
Thomas C. Brown, John C. Bergstrom & John B. Loomis
Ecosystem services are the specific results of ecosystem processes that either directly sustain or enhance human life (as does natural protection from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays) or maintain the quality of ecosystem goods (as water purification maintains the quality of streamflow). "Ecosystem service" has come to represent several related topics ranging from the measurement to the marketing of ecosystem service flows. In this article we examine several of these topics by first clarifying the meaning of "ecosystem service" and then (1) placing ecosystem goods and services within an economic framework, emphasizing the role and limitations of substitutes; (2) summarizing the methods for valuation of ecosystem goods and services; and (3) reviewing the various approaches for their provision and financing.
Many ecosystem services and some ecosystem goods are received without monetary payment. The "marketing" of ecosystem goods and services is basically an effort to turn such recipients—those who benefit without ownership—into buyers, thereby providing market signals that serve to help protect valuable goods and services. Some formal arrangement is needed to make this happen. We review the various mechanisms for provision and financing of ecosystem goods and services.
New Directions in Environmental Policy Making: An Emerging Collaborative Regime or Reinventing Interest Group Liberalism?
David J. Sousa & Christopher McGrory Klyza
Scholars and practitioners frustrated by the inefficiencies of environmental policy and the excessive adversarialism of environmental politics have embraced a panoply of "next generation" reforms of policy and process. Reformers hope that emerging policies can be more pragmatic and efficient than those shaped by the laws of the 1960s and 1970s, and that policymaking processes will be more collaborative and less conflictual. There has been movement down the collaborative path in many areas, from habitat conservation planning under the Endangered Species Act to formal and informal attempts at negotiating pollution regulations to local collaborative conservation efforts like the Quivira Coalition. This article acknowledges the depth of the problem of adversarialism in the current environmental policymaking system as well as the potential of some of these collaborative approaches, but argues that this strain of the next generation agenda is in important respects a return to an old and discredited form of the "policy without law" decried by Theodore Lowi in his classic The End of Liberalism in the 1960s and attacked by those who built the modern structure of environmental law.
The Politics of "Cap and Trade" Policies
B. Timothy Heinmiller
This article explores the fundamentally political nature of cap and trade resource management policies. It disaggregates these policies into their three main processes (capping, allocation, and trading) and outlines the distinctive distributive conflicts characteristic of each. The Murray-Darling Cap on Diversions in southeastern Australia serves as a detailed case study used to highlight these conflicts, and evidence drawn from other cap and trade programs around the world supports these observations. Recognizing the politics of cap and trade policies helps to explain why these programs do not always follow economic models and clarifies the roles of governments and stakeholders in program design and operation.
Property Rights Regimes to Optimize Natural Resource Use-Future CBM Development and Sustainability
Curtis Easton, Allan Ingelson & Rainer Knopff
Property rights regimes that promote sustainable development in the context of coalbed methane (CBM) exploration and production recognize and optimize the value of multiple natural resources including minerals, water, flora, and fauna. Institutional mechanisms that account for and mitigate both the short- and long-term external impacts from CBM development promote sustainability. The long-term potential for a vibrant recreational and tourist economy on a particular landscape may be compromised by overly shortsighted mineral resource extraction.
