Transcripts For CSPAN2 Adam 20240704

Tv newsletter today and be sure to watch American History tv every saturday or anytime online at cspan. Org history. Two years ago as the covid19 pandemic closedend businesses and schools, people across the nation turned to parks and othes open spaces. In urban parks and sprawling National Parks we thought places we could socially distance and let nature lessen the stress of the date that day we c lands but often take them for granted, learning how they came about and how they been used over time enriches our overall understanding of them. Here at the National Archives we preserve the records of the four for ages is most involved in the management of our our natios public lands, the bureau of lane management, u. S. Forest service, u. S. Fish and wildlife service, and the National Park service. The written records photographs of Motion Pictures contain the stories of the beginnings of federal stewardship. In his book making americas public lands adam sowards take us to the history of the flames and examined the changing priorities and challenges concerning them. Adam sowards is professor of history at the university of idaho. Is the author of United States west Coast Environmental history, the Environmental Justice William Douglas and american conservation, entered open pit visible from the moon. Michelle nijhuis is project editor at the atlantic where she edits futures for the planet section in the series called life up close to her writing has appeared in publications including the National Geographic at the New York Times magazine, and she is author of beloved beasts, fighting for life in an age of extinction. Now lets hear from adam sowards and Michelle Nijhuis. Thank you for joining us today. Hi, everyone. It such a pleasure to be with you today. Im Michelle Nijhuis and im here with adam sowards to talk about his wonderful new book, making americas public lands. If you are tuning intraday, its likely that you spent probably sometime in what adam calls the publics lands, our National Parks, wildlife refuges, National Forests, or any one of the other landscapes that make up our public lands system. And adams history one of the many things i appreciate about adams book is that its both very nuanced but also wonderfully accessible. And it is in addition very alert to the role of the public lands today, not only as valuable conservation lands, but as a source of some very deeprooted myths and concepts and traditions in our national politics, not only our environmental politics but our national politics. So adam, adam begins the book in the way you in a way you might not expect. He invokes both Henry David Thoreau and the politicalre philosopher and a rant here i know if it were possible to eavesdrop on a conversation between those two human beings i would give up a lot in order to do so. Added invokes the road because he had a very prissy idea that forest could i be held in common for the public good and then he invokes Hannah Arendt idea, her metaphor of the table as a place, as a metaphor for the public sphere, a table being a place where citizens can gather and find something approaching common ground. And i think adam will start with a short written for the introduction of an elaborate on that second metaphor. Thank you, michelle. This will be a fairly short reading. This table metaphor works to guide us through the history of American Public lands, and it helps us think about the public lands as part of the democratic experiment that is the United States. It takes no great leap of insight to find faults and failures in meeting the promises of democracy for the nation is rooted in the dispossession of indigenous land and the enslavement of africans. The history of public lands include democratic shortcomings and exclusions, just like every other part of euros political history. That is partly why think about public lands as an element of the democratic experiment is helpful. Because we can see who defined the nations land and for what purposes, new ideas supplanted old ones, and now novel understandings complicated traditionalvi views. With the lands themselves as the common object that focuse peoples attention, we learn that this quintessentially american system, like the nation itself, is full of experiments, successes and failures, and promises made, broken and redefined. Throughout this history the table and those gathered around it changed and multiplied, guided by evolving laws and science, not to mention shifting political interests. Holiday dinner incorporating new entrees the more interest at the table the more cacophonous and unfamiliar it appeared to those who had been gathering there for generations. This book is an account of how the table changed which is to say it is a history and not a philosophical treatise or a polemic. The book attempts to explain how the system came to be and why as well as how and why it changed over time. The consequences of this system on the land itself and for the people who relied on it for whatever purpose remains central to the account that follows it draws special attention to where constraints and boundaries were redrawn and new political and legal traditions initiated these moments of transition draw attention to novel arrangements of power and to the land. Frequently. If not always they were contested demonstrating that these lands and the processes that govern them mattered to americans who relied on them. Such disagreements are inevitable and healthy in a democracy when participants were allowed to be involved. This involvement has not always been the case with some participants directly excluded and some merely perceived their exclusion at other times. Thank you, adam. Thank you for setting the cacophonous table for us. Things about this book you have studied the history of public lands for a long time. I have reported on public land politics for a long time as a journalist. We both know that this history is is very complicated with countless characters and its also very long. Its prehistory is is as long or longer than its then its written history. But youve managed to fit a lot of complexity into a graceful volume. That is let me make sure i get it in the screen that is just a little over 200 pages so i know also from experience having just written a history of the Conservation Movement that writing efficiently and writing short is much more difficult than writing along. How did you find a path through the history of public lands that managed to capture nuance as well as as well as tell the story at a manageable length. Well, thank you for saying this kind words about the book. Im glad that it reads that way to you as you know when you tackle the big project you cant use every example in every story that you uncover and i think about the book a little bit like a key that it unlocks the larger history so that if youre reading it and it doesnt include your favorite park or your favorite forest or the range land thats in your state that you go to youll be able to read it and understand the larger context in which those things exist. One thing i try to do in the book that i dont know that its unique, but i tried to write it of the systems at large many writers and historians have taken on a single park or taken on the Forest Service and what i tried to or in in there some that look at all of the public lands, but when you look at those many of them are organized heres a section on the park service and heres a section on bureau of Land Management, and i wanted to try to see if i could tell it as a history in more of a stream of time. So looking for trends that cross all the agencies in the same sort of decades and maybe that allowed me to use examples that type multiple things together and where if i had gone a bit by bit agency by agency parked by park i would have would have been a much much longer book. Yeah, i i can see that. I i think that you you brought out some themes that that were maybe not new to me, but i hadnt quite grappled with directly. They were they were so big that i couldnt see them because i was down in the weeds of of individual agencies or individual places. So i found those those big themes to be especially fascinating now you make clear that the history of the public lands doesnt of course begin with the founding of the Forest Service doesnt begin with the signing of the constitution as i mentioned the pre history of the public lands is longer than the written history of the public lands. Where does the history of the public lands truly begin . Thats a great question and as with so many things sadly in American History. I think the history of the public lands begins with the dispossession of Indigenous People who lived on this continent since time immemorial the forces of colonization that depopulated much of the continent and and change the political military economic dynamics here sets the stage for all that comes after and so its that its that clash of colonization that i think really helps precipitate what leads to this public land system that we see emerging a little bit later. And i do want to return to that. Later in our discussion because that history is of course still very much with us and and there are some. There are some some modern responses to it that i think are very interesting in sources of hope for all of us, but let me move forward in in time a little bit in the context of that dispossession. There was a very interesting and complementary role played by Founding Fathers jefferson and madison and i actually wasnt aware of of madisons role in. Which his vision was mostly ignored i should say but but his his it was influential in in the in the formation of the public lands. Can you say a little bit about the their complementary visions and and their effect . On the public land system. Id be glad to its the effect is somewhat indirect but jefferson is sometimes been called the agrarian philosopher and sort of famously sees virtue embedded in farming in the practices of of that sort of labor in the land and that in part explains why he was enthusiastic to gain the Louisiana Purchase to increase the size of the nation expecting that independent yeoman farmers could move and move west. Of course this land is this is a process of dispossession thats happening with that westward movement and independently with their labor transform the raw earth as they imagined it into good productive labor are good productive products that we might sell and have sustenance for the challenge with this is theres a lot of land in north america and it be very easy to just sort of to mix my metaphors here cut and run as you would imagine in a forest and madison along with others in the early part of the republic fought. Theres a need to slow down and theres a need to improve our land and not use it. So extensively so stay rather than move and treat the land better and more sustainably which was in some ways in antislavery position as well and idea not to keep moving west and moving the the slave system west to of course, theres so many paradoxes like we could spend the rest of the hour talking about them for both of these men who who did not so much live their ideals as right about them know, ill stop with with that. Yes, i both were slave owners. We should acknowledge. That so and and so really for a long time that the vision the the vision that led to the public lands was was a commercial vision. I mean conservation didnt come in until much later and and its interesting to me the what comes out very clearly in your book is that it was a commercial vision very divorced from the reality of the land itself and that the reality of the the western climate. And and the the public lands system. I i think it could be said that that in a very broad sense it resulted from a collision between this this jeffersonian vision of an agrarian republic and then the the harsh reality of of the western climate. Can you tell us tell us what happened when those two visions met or those are realities met. Yeah, so even before the constitution was signed this the system that was in place. Was that all land held in common by the by the state the ultimate goal was for that to become privately owned and the government under the articles of confederation and under the constitution developed various means to get that land into private hands and the most famous example, of course is the homestead active the 1860s, but there were predecessors to that. And that worked reasonably. Well 168 acres you could make a selfsufficient farm in lots of places like that. But as more white farmers moved to the west they found that 160 acres was way too little or way too much. So it was too dry or also two mountainous. That was an also a something. That was the homestead act was not sustainable for and so congress. Try it out adapting these laws. They said gosh well if you plan some trees you can have more land or if you bring irrigation you can have more land and these just kept not working and 16 acres on a steep slope in the Rocky Mountains isnt gonna lead you to a very selfsufficient sort of livelihood and many places in the west were too high or too cold to to have really an agricultural economy as these founders had expected. No matter how many trees you plant. All right, exactly. Yeah, and so in the 1870s and 1880s and sort of increasing in that area. You have a number of people saying well we need to do things differently and some of that was maybe the land needed to be the land given away taken away would need to be smaller and we bring irrigation and manage a smaller amount of land or maybe it needed to be bigger. You need a lot of acreage to run cattle in different parts of say colorado as an example so we can make some adjustments there and within those conversations one of the ideas that emerges is maybe these big mountain ranges with all these trees shouldnt be owned by individuals because 168 acres of trees is not going to last very long. So maybe they should be controlled by the federal government. So these eyes start or these ideas start percolating in the 1860s 1870s, but Congress Moves slowly. Then and it took a while before congress decided that in 1891 that the president could have the right to reserve some of those lands so that they would not be cut they would not be owned by individual people or companies, but they would be kept in trust by the federal government and then that evolves in a variety of different ways around that turn of the 20th century. Right into what we think of as conservation. Yeah, and i mean and just to emphasize these these lands that that couldnt be homesteaded. Were still being exploited both by individual landowners and by corporations who saw them as oh well, you know free trees or free pasture. Tell us a little bit about what was happening. Just what was happening on the landscape. Right. So before these measures go into effect. Its its free and open for whoever can get to it and there are large herds of cattle or sheep that are moving up the mountains and sometimes theyre competing with the other cattle and sheep operators in the in the valley. And so that led to pretty bad over grazing in lots of cases. Theres a lot of concern about timber being stolen from these federal lands as well when the first forest reserves as they were initially called were created there were relatively few regulations. And so then the concern was about timber trespass people stealing and i guess to back up one bit of context is theres a great fear at this time in American Life that were gonna run out of trees and were gonna run out of lumber. This is the age of wood and which provided fuel as well as Building Material and timber corporations had denuded the upper midwest very very quickly in the last part of the 19th century, and theres a great learn that that cant be allowed to happen in the sierras in the cascades in the rockies or we wouldnt have enough wood to fuel our nation in their nations economy. So that is all sort of creates some of the urgency around us. But to use any of that wood or to use any of that pasture. No one paid anything. So theyre taking from the public lands valuable resources and turning a profit from it and thats also part of the concern that develops around these conservationists who want to Institute Summary forms as we move into the 20th century. Mmhmm. So this was in part this these were people who are incense echoing madisons warning about soil, you know, were going to use up the soil. They were saying were going to use up these trees this week these were, you know, early conservation sentiments, but there was also a commercial interest here the federal government. Is is losing money by giving away . Or passively giving away these resources. Right um, so the federal governments assertion of control over the publics lands did create enormous bitterness. I know ive read some stories about what it was like to be in early one of the first forest rangers and to ride into town as a representative of this newly created Forest Service and be confronted by a bunch of unhappy ranchers who for the first time were going to have to pay grazing fees or were going to have to manage their cattle in certain ways and generations later. I know from from reporting and living in the rural west its not unusual to hear the federal governments presence in the west, and im sure in other parts of the country as well refer to as as a land grab so set the record straight for us. I know its it wasnt a land grab but what was it . Now, well, it wasnt a gland grab. Ill have to think about what it was as so theres the vast unclaimed once the land had been dispossessed by native from native peoples. Those all the unclaimed land was part of what was known as the Public Domain and as territories, utah, wyoming, idaho, whatever as they be entered into the union almost everyone. Theres just a couple exceptions explicitly gave up claim to all of those Public Domain lands that those are the federal governments. So youll often hear in well throughout the 20th century and the 21st century talking about the state should get their land back. It was never theirs to have so it couldnt have been it couldnt be taken back. And when the Forest Service is probably the best example of this when it is finally created in 1905. So just a quick note you can reserve for us in 1891, but theres no agency in charge of them until 1905. So theres a little gap there in how things are going to be managed. Real quickly some i would say fairly light regulations get imposed and some very fairly small grazing fees get imposed. But if youre a rancher who had grown accustomed over a decade or two decades or three decades of running cattle and not paying anything those grazing fees seemed like they were taking money from you. They were taking your rights away. So there was a great deal of controversy around that and a desire to push back against it Supreme Court by 1911 said absolutely the Forest Service has the right to do that and to administer these sorts of fees in many places, i think. A record shows that the initial creation of these sorts of places generated a lot of resentment and a lot of uncertainty and then in a little bit of time. It became okay that say the fact that the Forest Service was going to help put out fires. Made in an okay thing for them to be around now and many of the restrictions were in the larger context of all the changes happening in the first part of the 20th 20th century. Not that big a deal and so theres a settling in process. I think were locals get accustomed to. What these public land agencies are doing . Because quite frankly theyre not doing a lot theyre doing more than what it existed before but not real restrictive measures quite yet. Mmhmm. So the agency as the Agency Settles into its place that youre at your metaphorical table the people who are already sitting at the table or who had had sat themselves at the table get used to their presence. Yeah. I think that thats a good way to describe it. Yeah, and and theyre so it wasnt just that the conflicts did continue there was acceptance of the the presence of the Forest Service, but but of course arguments continued between the agency in between land universe users and they were all so arguments among between land users themselves, right . I think people may have heard of the conflicts between the cattle ranchers and the sheep grazers, which actually got quite well, theyre theyre legendary and a negative sense in the region. Can you tell me a little bit about why why that was so passionately fought. Yeah, its thats a real complicated story and it depends on the location where you are a part of it has to do with scarce resources when when the forage declines and there are a lot of animals trying to eat that scarcity generates conflict. If you are a pastoralist and you have animals you move them and you move them across land and so that system of its called transhumans is not doesnt work super well with private property and that could generate some challenges as well the labor that ran many of these animals across the mountain ranges and across valleys in wyoming or in the southwest. Were not always white and that could be associated with that could be associated with conflict as well. And associations regarding who is illegitimate homebuilder, which was a term that was used often at the turn of the 20th century. So many of those sorts of economic conflicts sort of emerge, and theres also a conflict between someone who runs thousands of cattle and some of that shes got a small little homestead that is just trying to make it work, and those bigger, more powerful Political Economic interests cac really run what you might call a little guy out. And i were, in fact, there was violence here people were r the sorts of issues. They are not divorced from the land, not divorce from larger political questions, not divorced from cultural preferences and issues like that either. Yeah, you sometimes hear them referred to as the cattle and sheep wars, and they might not have been on the skill we usually think of as wars but they did as you say sometimes result in violence. But thats a good point its not simplyee a conflict between two ways of using the publics lands, but its economic, perhaps racial and cultural conflict as well. Yes. So as this is happening, as i suppose we can call them customary users of the public land, are grappling with the presence of newly created federal agency, there isn also information as a whole theres a growing interest in conservation. We mentioned this briefly. But how is that affecting the work of these agencies and how is it affecting what was happening to the landscape itself . Thats a great, great question. Theres lots of elements of conservation, and so, for example, one element that is involved is recreation. So we want to protect the beautiful places that people could visit and enjoy as a tourist, and this comes to be seen as americas equivalent of visiting the alps, for example, in europe. So we want to protect these usually they are unusual landscapes, so the grand canyon, yellowstone, and these get protected because it would be a place to recreate and later recreate ourselves and think about ourselves as americans as something distinct in the world. So thats one element of this. So thats different at this point from lets protect the trees and getting all cut down. There are other elements of the Conservation Movement that are interested in making sure theree is water to be either irrigated or to go to cities, and that relates very closely to the National Forests which are almost always the early ones are almost always in urban watersheds. We dont normally think about it this wayay but thats what manyf those First National forest are all about is to protect the watershed of seattle, when the watershed becomes phoenix. So these things start to work together, i think at this time as well. There are other concerns about say wildlife which you know more about than i do of course, were certain animals are either going extinct or very nearly so, and theres the necessity to protect some habitat where these animals might be able to survive, or to places you wouldnt be hunted. This was a sort of simplistic notion that it was just starting and if we could stop hunting, all the animals would come back. But that was how managers were starting to think about this in the early part of the 20th century. In order to create more of this type of wildlife and less of that type of wildlife so there would be ptor control campaigns to get rid of all the wolves or to reduce the coyotesa and so that we can have the animals that we want. So whats starting to emerge in the early part of the 20th century and really intensifies as we moveid toward the middle f it, lots of management, lots of fingers trying to get into the systems and tinker with them to make them, well, this is the place where we can have tourism. This is a place where we havel this sort of animal, and we will get rid of that other kind of animal that might cause a problem there, and we will mandate these folders for water but also for timber later down the road. So theres longterm thinking but theres also a sort of narrow range of options that are in the imagination of the people that are starting to do all the tinkering. Yeah, its such anbo interesting point. As someone whos thought arv lot about the rights of the Conservation Movement, there are all these different threads that are working on separate fronts a to a large extent, you know, the sportsmen are trying to protect the animals they love to hunt, the urban reformers who wanted clean water into cities, people who were trying to protect scenic landscapes and people who recognized or were starting to recognize the ecological importance of forest in order to protect and for that reason. As i said they were all fighting on separate fronts but they all converged in the fence on the public lands and they were all either sitting at the table or trying to get a seat at the table. And then as you say the managers themselves who had kind of tentatively set out and said oh, dont worry about us, were jusn going to charge a modest grazing fees and limit the number of cattle detriment of public lands and provide a trip perhaps present to a poetry, we are now going at a much expanded, you know, move over,ce were going o take up much more space at this table and were going to get much more involved in what happens on the landscape. So that brings us into an era that i a know your thought a lot about in particular, the 50s through the 70s youve identified as an especially important chapter in the public lands and this is something that was fairly new to me as well. So what was, we have the conversation movement. We have a pretty now professionalized system of land managers, and then we have continued use of the public lands and perhaps multiplying users of the public land. How did that cacophonous conversation unfold in the 50s through the 70s . Yeah, thats great. A quick preface that i think is important part in the 1930s theres a Great Depression of course and one of the most popular programs ofhe fdrs new deal was the civilian conservation corps. And so public land agencies had that sort of the availability a bunch of unemployed men to do projects pixel trails that bill and rose got built in fire lookouts got built and for followed by schizoid between these places in the backcountry. That helped sort of set the stage for what happens after world war ii because so much had been built during the 1930s because of these programs. Sorry to interrupt but there was an economic stimulus purpose to that, not only to employ people but to stimulate tourism, correct . Right. On the public lands that people all sorts of things. Okay here interesting. That infrastructure if you will, is created then during that 1930s, or expands what had been there before, and as we move moved into world war, the postworld war ii era on the one hand, we haveig a big chunk of American Society that has pent up demand to have fun and pick out some money. Military. So people start rafting like they hadnt before and you have gear to go backpacking and there are all these new trails and the infrastructure to get these places. So theres on the public side. Theres this large and growing group of people who want to experience the outdoors want to experience the public lands and theyre going to scenic places. Just magnificent landscapes unquestionably magnificent. Im just you cant argue with that. At the same time some of the land managers are trying to trying to manage their trying theyre getting involved and their intensifying their management of these places and their intensifying everything their intensifying Recreational Use their intensifying how theyre going to manage the forage the grasses that the animals are going to eat. Theyre intensifying how theyre going to manage the forest themselves and at the same time part of that consumer demand that i mentioned just a moment ago included building a lot of new houses and a lot of private timberlands had been if not entirely exhausted before World War Two. It had been cut over pretty good and so at this point in the post World War Two era, they looked to the public forest as a source of lumber. And so timber sales on fort National Forest increased dramatically. So a bunch of stuff is happening here. There is intensifying management in the National Parks in the National Forest on the bureau of Land Management lands, heck theyre even intensifying their management abducts. We want to have more ducks that we can hunt on the what wildlife refugees so theres lots of like were gonna so, its not just managing. Its were gonna maximize the use of these places and the use of these resources and at the same time all these americans are going out and theyre driving their big cars. National parks. Theyre going camp in the National Forest, theyre starting to see stuff. Theyre starting to see overgrazed rangelands. Theyre starting to see some clear cuts and theyre starting to think maybe maybe the Forest Service is doing too much. Maybe the park service has built too many visitors centers. So emerging in the 1950s then. And i havent even mentioned the dams that are being put in every stream that is possible. It seems like at this time. There is an emergent Wilderness Movement where theres a desire to protect places from commercial development more or less entirely and that coalesces in the 1950s and pushes toward what becomes the wilderness act which passes in 1964. And thats not the very first law in this era but between 1964 and say 1976 a whole handful or a couple handfuls actually of laws past Congress Overwhelmingly bipartisan. Just some of them unanimous in the house or the senate to the endangered species act the endangered species. Act wilderness act had four votes against i mean just its overwhelming by partisanship at this time to totally change what happens on the public lands and what some of the purposes are and not only that so the wilderness is a different purpose that gets really codified for the first time through congress, but the other thing that emerges during this era that is so important is the processes of management change. So that when changes to wilderness areas. Or when a timber sale is going to go up there will now be beginning in the 1970s. A place for the public to not only object but just to weigh in. And the Forest Service would have to say were planning a timber sale. Here are the options for the proposals that we have. And the public could i have a lawsuit this created opportunities for that and so to get back to the table metaphor all of us sudden. Theres a lot more people sitting at the table. There are people there who are going to represent salmon and there are people there who are going to represent rafters and there are people there who are going to say we shouldnt be cutting trees in this place for these purposes. And so if youre someone that sat at the table when there are only 10 people and now there are 20 you have less power and that becomes. Concerning you used people used to listen to you and now you have to wait longer to speak and youre not the only voice and so that really changes how this system has been functioning right . And what used to look like a full table is starting to look a little thin. People all reach out to get what they want. Yeah. Yeah, maybe this is a good time to take a breath and and just look back at how far weve comment during our discussion in the last few minutes, and im just struck by the the contrast between what was happening just a century earlier that the federal government had these lands that that were almost in some sense is a burden to the federal government. They couldnt give them away because they were not suitable for homesteading they had some commercial value. But but really they were they were kind of you know un it lands and then and now, you know as were the period were discussing in the 70s. Ese lands are expected to you know provide. Timber provide clean water provide pasture provide, you know water in through reservoirs and then provide all sorts of recreation motorized and nonmotorized and then provide all the values that we attribute to capital w wilderness the Legal Definition of wilderness. This is just a huge. Its a huge shift in our perception of of these of these land and and we expect from them. Absolutely, and i mean if within the career of one person in one of those agencies, they would have seen just a radical change in what was being asked of them. And i think that thats an important way to think about it. Like if youre a young person born in say that youre the Forest Service was created in 1905 and you start working for the Forest Service when youre 25 and 1930 and you spend 30 or 40 years in that Forest Service. Its gonna look pretty radically different by the time that you retire. Right that i mean the landscape probably looks very different and then and the processes as youre saying, you know, all of a sudden theres a there where you used to as a as a forest ranger, you might have gone out and talked with a few people about what was going to happen next year on the forest you now have a formal system of public consultations that are participated in by people from all over the country. There are a number of federal laws that that need to be it as your as youre planning for the forest and you know, these were all these are all what we consider today great conservation victories, but they certainly changed the conversation about the public lands in in quite ways. Absolutely. Yeah. So so this and you talk about how this this in a lot of ways. This shall we say crowding of the table . I dont mean to make it sound negative this this inclusion of more people at the table without necessarily making the table bigger that led to that in in some ways led into the Political Polarization that we saw during the reagan years. Can you talk a little bit about the connection there and and im interested in the polarization not just in environmental politics, which you and i are both familiar with but but in to some extent the public lands started to become. Started to play a significant role in national politics. Yeah, i think that thats right part of it is again about sharing power, which ive already mentioned but in 1979 the assembly of nevada declared that the public lands within nevada were there said that Congress Never had the right to take them and that really starts what we call the sagebrush rebellion, and weve seen various forms of it sort of pop up every every half decade or so since it seems like and when Ronald Reagan did run for president in 1980 the first time he declared im a count me in as a rebel. He was trying to associate himself with the sagebrush rebellion. Because it it what it does at. This time is its one more representation of the federal government and federal overreach and too much all of our problems or most of our problems are being caused by government from from that perspective in the 1980s and if you look back the previous couple of decades you do see increased responsibilities for the federal lands, but also a variety of other things that are being done in American Society at this time. And as i was speaking of in the last few minutes, its a bewildering change to a whole lot of people and one way to resist change is to say well, lets go back to the way things were and not have it or lets go back to the way we imagine things were only and well states will take over now states, you know, most state lands are required by statute to maximize resource potential and thats not consistent with the wilderness act and other such things so calls by western states to return the land to the states was a way of saying we want to have more control we want washington dc to have less. Role and what the ramifications of that might be . Um, i guess we never found out because most of those things did not actually go into effect and one of the things that did go into effect is that ramped up the environmental movement. So what one of the things you see happening in the 1980s is a shifting radicalism from the environmental side and a shifting radicalism from the anticonservation side if you will need their label is exactly correct, but it can get my sense here. And so theres spectacles that both sides participate in theres protests that both sides participate in civil disobedience that both sides participate in and over the next 40 years. Over the next 40 years i guess, those things waxed and waned. Violence is involved as we move into the 1990s, the day after the Oklahoma City bombing, a local forced office was told if you come take my cattle you are going to be greeted with a hundred men with guns, which isy something that we saw her an the 21st century as well. This is an accelerating trend that happens out of a reaction to those changes that happen in the middle part of the 20th century. Yeah. And as you say, just to emphasize that point, there is, perhaps on both sides theres a nostalgia for a past that never quite was. Because the public lands were never envisioned, the public lands system was never envisioned as a place that was purely to protect land undisturbed and was never envisioned as a purely commercial enterprise. There was always an element of sustainability from the beginning, and there was always an element of commercialism. Yeah, i think that thats right. I think thats true, yeah. And there was never a time where everyone was getting along and getting exactly what they wanted. Yes. Right. Yes. S. But there were times when people perhaps have more of a voice because other people were being left out. Absolutely. That is a real change, though perhaps not quite the change that perhaps the way its characterized by people often acknowledged the reason why they felt likeea they had more of the voice was a voice was because other people didnt have a voice. Yeah. And now the polarization we are talking about does continue today. I remember quite clearly when i was an itinerant wildlife field researcher in the mid1990s hearing some of t these conflics over the management of endangered species on public lands that got quite heated. And you know, violent as you say with threats and actual Violence Toward Forest Service and bureau of Land Management employees. And that his continued some of the same people and fact that the sins of some of the same people have continued that kind of rhetoric into the modern era. Perhaps you could talk a little bit about what we see just in the past few years, and the connection you see back to the origins of the public land system. Yeah. So there have been anticonservationists from the beginning of these publicli lans being reserved and retained by the federal government. And i think that again they sort of popped up during different times. There was a big movement right after world war ii. There was a hope that a bunch of the land could be returned, return again to the states peer and most people, most of the movement saidt this isnt about that. Its about not supporting the Conservation Movement at all. And so it was trying to undermine that with o the idea less of an idea of sustainability and more maximization of private profit to make it easier. And the polarization that we are all living through as adults, we see this and we see it play out on conservation issues where wildlife refuges are taken over by protesters or wilderness study areas have roads carved into them to try to prevent them from becoming wilderness areas. And so i think one set of radicalism leads to another set of radicalism in these things sort of ratchet up, and i think the answer to that is hard work. Its sitting down at the table and like i sort of imagine this table most of the time in this book being around where we can all sit at this roundtable and we can see each other here we are all in a different position and all have different values we can all see each other. But as we move into this period closest to us it feels much more like a long skinny table. We can see everybody anymore and wewe just continue to face off rather than share, and i think thats one of the challenges because i think one of the solutions is a lot of hard work getting to know what you want, what i want, what we might be able to compromise and collaborate. There are examples of this in a variety of locations but theres not a lot of examples of it and its timeconsuming and its costly, and the conservation challenges that we are faced with our extensive and they are interconnected because of these lands are connected with one agency and another agency plus privately in. So all of this is, it takes so much time and so many resources, and its a lot easier to just yell at each other. Right. I like that, i like that metaphor of, i i dont like t its a very appropriate metaphor of a long cable we cant quite see each other or cancel each other fully and are just i often feel that way when i report on these kinds of conflicts that people are just you know standing up and pontificating from a great distance to the other people who have a stake in these public lands. And theres very little listening to it all in. But as you say there are some examples of perhaps these roundtables still exist at the local and l regional level. Were getting close to the end of our time so maybe you could leave us with some inspiration. Because i know some of these stories especially that involve indigenous Led Conservation are very heartening and are examples of things that we could follow in the future. Yeah. Um wewe dont know the stories well enough yet i think, but i know that there are in the american southwest within examples for decadess now of environmentaliss working with trent traditd users to fit better ways. A partnership in Eastern Oregon where its really hard because this is in the same neighborhood where the wildlife refuge was taken over in 2016. In the 1990s, tensions that were really, really at a high point and kind of not, you know, hot environment and there was a determination in this community to like lets solve this and make it less intense. And theres been some Research Done to suggest that the reason for the wildlife refuge takeover did have a greater local effective because there had been long hours of neighbors getting to know neighbors and trying to solve these sorts of problems. And a look to things like the bears peers Intertribal Coalition that come together to try to protect bears peers in southern utah and eventually get it turned into a National Monument where theyh will be comanagers with the federal government involved in the spirit this feels like some sort of a whole circle something happening here where we have Indigenous People reaching out and being part of this rather than big left out deliberately or having the land taken deliberately. So im hopeful where that might go as it moves forward and develops their management plans of their. Yeah. I mean, we started this conversation talking about that the history of public lands is rooted in dispossession, and a store like bears ears gives me hope that, certainly that history cant be reversed or it cant be made up for, but that there is a way forward from it. And the high desert partnership, i mean, we should say for those of you who dont remember, the National Wildlife refuge takeover was an armed takeover by extremists, antigovernment extremists. It lasted 40 days, and i think that, as you say, the reason why the community was not more supported of the ideals of these interlopers was that, unbeknownst to these extremists who were from out of state, that the local people and local public land managers had done decades of work to find their places at the table and to have a conversation with one another. Exactly. Yeah. So i think we can all take heart that those conversations are not easy, but they are possible. Exactly. I know you wanted to end with just a very short reading, and i think that reflects the spirit of what we were just talking about. Sure. You take us out with that. The last paragraph in the book, and i just get done talking about some people come into table to find common ground. This point is not meant to suggest that using an governing public lands in the future will be, can be, or should be easy. It never has been the work of living within environmental constraint constraints is among world historys most complicated and important tasks. Mp. Challenges citizens and their elected Decision Makers to set aside narrow interests and seek a broader public interest. To make matters even harder the 21st century includes global problems of Climate Change biodiversity crashes and political corruption. Moving toward the future public lands can and should play a central role in combating these compounding crises. Recall Terry Tempest Williams words quoted in the books introduction the integrity of our public lands depends on the integrity of our public process within the open space of democracy. Promoting and maintaining that integrity demands and honest reckoning with history. The past that mans and honest reckoning with history and with history and the path that includes the exploitation of both people and the land in the protection of places and democracies. Robin maher stated the very land which we stand as their foundation and can be a source of shared identity and common cause. The task before us then is to ensure that our common goals are management and refuges and function as the public land and not the preserve of one group or another for that undermines the promise of a democratic and citizenship that might bind the nation together. One way we might begin to repair the earth and our politics is with the public lands. Thank you so much adam and thanks for this conversation today. Its great to hear your insights again adam sowards making americas public lands. Its out now and i hope you will pick it up and read it. Its very full of very thoughtful commentary on a very complicated story that affects all of our lives and affects the landscapes the landscapes that i know all of us. Thank you for joining y us today and i hope you enjoy the next event at the National Archives. Take care at him. Take care adam