The nation's largest landlord : the Bureau of Land Management in the American West

Book

The nation's largest landlord : the Bureau of Land Management in the American West / James R. Skillen.

Summary:

It is the largest landholder in America, overseeing nearly an eighth of the country: 258 million acres located almost exclusively west of the Mississippi River, with even twice as much below the surface. Its domain embraces wildlife and wilderness, timber, range, and minerals, and for over 60 years, the Bureau of Land Management has been an agency in search of a mission. This is the first comprehensive, analytical history of the BLM and its struggle to find direction. James Skillen traces the bureau's course over three periodsits formation in 1946 and early focus on livestock and mines, its 1970s role as mediator between commerce and conservation, and its experience of political gridlock since 1981 when it faced a powerful antienvironmental backlash. Focusing on events that have shaped the BLM's overall mission, organization, and culture, he takes up issues ranging from the National Environmental Policy Act to the Sagebrush Rebellion in order to paint a broad picture of the agency's changing role in the American West. Focusing on the vast array of lands and resources that the BLM manages, he explores the complex and at times contradictory ways that Americans have valued nature.--from publisher description.

Record details

ISBN: 9780700616718 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0700616713 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780700618958 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0700618953 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Physical Description: xvi, 296 pages : maps ; 24 cm
Publisher: Lawrence, Kan. : University Press of Kansas, ©2009.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:: Enduring tensions of public lands management -- Born into controversy -- The new BLM -- BLM enters the environmental decade -- Political inertia under a new statutory mandate -- BLM in the 1990s : bureau of landscapes and monuments? -- Neosagebrush politics.