Who Controls Public Lands?: Mining, Forestry, and Grazing Policies, 1870-1990

By Christopher McGrory Klyza

Book Overview

In this historical and comparative study, Christopher McGrory Klyza explores why land-management policies in mining, forestry, and grazing have followed different paths and explains why public-lands policy in general has remained virtually static over time. According to Klyza, understanding the different philosophies that gave rise to each policy regime is crucial to reforming public-lands policy in the future. Klyza begins by delineating how prevailing policy philosophies over the course of the last century have shaped each of the three land-use patterns he discusses. In mining, the model was economic liberalism, which mandated privatization of public lands; in forestry, it was technocratic utilitarianism, which called for government ownership and management of land; and in grazing, it was interest-group liberalism, in which private interests determined government policy. Each of these philosophies held sway in the years during which policy for that particular resource was formed, says Klyza, and continues to animate it even today.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807845671
• ISBN13: 9780807845677
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A very important book on U.S. government policy

Some people have the illusion that America's economic development was produced by individuals who made it on their own "without a dime of government help". This book will help educate people about America's real economic history. In reality a good part of America's economic development was created by massive subsidies to private economic interests by "big government". Indeed, reading this book shows that the development of the west is in many ways a form of state capitalism with the government owning huge sections of many states. Readers should also check out A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests since World War Two (Our Sustainable Future) This shows how the U.S. Forest Service made deforestation for the benefit of private economic interests a major priority in many areas.