The management of America’s public lands and waters is a balancing act at the delicate interface of people and places.
The needs, visions, and desires of human communities — from Tribal nations to ranchers and drillers to recreationists and conservationists — pull in varying and sometimes shifting directions. Meanwhile, massive forces — from climate change and biodiversity loss to urbanization — are straining our forests, watersheds, wildlife, and natural communities in increasingly complex ways.
Public attention on our shared lands and waters tends to rise during periods of severe imbalance, when conflict and discord dominate the headlines. This was true of the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014. And we are seeing it again in response to federal land sell-off proposals and drastic Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts to land management staff and budgets last year.
But there is a bigger story about our public lands and waters that is also worth telling. It is the story of how Americans, bound by a shared appreciation and love for their public lands and waters, have — decade after decade — forged compromises and collaborative solutions to some of the most difficult challenges we have faced. I have watched this story unfold throughout my career, with communities from Alaska to Florida choosing the hard work of cooperation over the pain and costs of conflict.
Americans, bound by a shared appreciation and love for their public lands and waters, have — decade after decade — forged compromises and collaborative solutions.
It is a story that is still unfolding. We, collectively, have the power and responsibility to write its next chapters. For it is in this moment of intense political polarization, in which public land and water management is swinging back and forth like a pendulum, that we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to realign policies, agencies, and laws with the values and vision that most Americans — a bipartisan majority — share.
How do we do this? The truth is, there are no bumper sticker-sized answers or easy fixes. The challenges facing our public lands and waters — and the needs and priorities of the people who depend on them — demand landscape-scale, durable, inclusive, science-informed, bottom-up, outcome-focused strategies. In other words: collaborative conservation powered by healthy and active democratic processes.
The vast and varied complexities of managing America’s public lands and waters
The Interior Department manages one in every five acres of the United States — over 500 million acres — with 573 wildlife refuges, 433 national park units, more than 240 million acres of multiple-use, public domain lands, and 1.7 billion acres of outer continental shelf. The U.S. Forest Service, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, manages another 193 million acres.
Consider the daily challenges facing the professionals tasked with managing these lands and waters, and the complexities that reside in the dynamic interface of people and places. Should snowmobiles traverse Yellowstone? What about mountain biking? Where? When? How? Where might ranchers graze their cattle? Or where might we cut timber for our homes, find energy to warm our houses or minerals that transform into our toothpaste, our pacemakers, our wedding rings, our computers? And who should decide?
The challenges facing our public lands demand landscape-scale, durable, inclusive, science-informed, bottom-up, outcome-focused strategies. In other words: collaborative conservation powered by healthy and active democratic processes.
My experiences over the past three decades have given me a sweeping view of the lands, waters, wildlife, and communities of our nation — and of the people and agencies charged with stewarding our shared lands and waters.
I had the great good fortune in my job at the U.S. Department of the Interior of meeting fifth-generation ranchers in dry desert lands along the southwest border, ranchers who know and love their land, their lifestyles, their legacy, and their communities. I sipped coffee with Athabaskan Natives in a remote fish camp in the wilds of Alaska on the Yukon River and walked through forests with loggers in Maine intent on lightening their environmental footprint for a sustainable future.
While at the Interior Department, I saw and experienced challenges, too — challenges that test the endurance of our governing institutions, present environmental conundrums, and complicate our quest for healthy lands and waters, thriving communities, and dynamic economies.
I saw public land managers trying to serve the public interest amid a tapestry of rights, ownerships, and responsibilities that guide — and often constrain — their options. They manage places that have private ownership of lands but public ownership of mineral rights. They oversee places that are eligible by law for resource extraction — and others, like national parks, destined for the preservation and enjoyment of the public. Still others, like wildlife refuges, were established primarily to protect wildlife. And many of the lands and waters they help steward are critical to Indigenous populations whose histories are rooted in these lands.
Effective, durable, and collaborative management strategies depend on the careful and creative work of professional civil servants — on the ground, working in tandem with states, Tribes, local communities, and landowners.
Many of these challenges are too complicated and nuanced to be solved with national policy changes or by people sitting in agency headquarters. Effective, durable, and collaborative land and water management strategies depend, instead, on the careful and creative work of professional civil servants — on the ground, working in tandem with states, Tribes, local communities, and landowners. Foresters. Park rangers. Biologists. Cultural resource specialists. Hydrologists. And many more.
The shifting forces shaping public land and water management
The many values, resources, and laws that shape our public lands have long made them intrinsically complicated to manage. But this complexity is magnified by the reality that they — and how we think about them — are also in transition. At least four key phenomena are driving this transition.
First is the growing scale of the land management challenges we are facing as a country. We are seeing a shift from needing to confront site-specific problems to landscape-scale issues. Climate change, fire, water, species — all present management requirements that extend beyond lines on a map or the ownership patterns of land deeds and fee simple titles. Thus, a central governing question becomes that of how to coordinate action across boundaries.
Second is the challenge of complexity. Climate change and its effects on land, water, wildlife, and people are vast and varied, impacting agriculture, wildlife, forests, grasslands, coasts, and both urban and rural communities. Invasive weeds, poor soil quality, water quality and supply challenges, the ravages of catastrophic wildland fire, and more — these problems have far-reaching effects on people and nature. Similarly, expediting clean energy development is critical to addressing climate change, energy security, and energy affordability, but can result in cascading impacts to biodiversity, which then present other management challenges across landscapes, migration corridors, and specific sites.
Third is urbanization — the growing interface of people and public lands. Today, 30 percent of all Americans live at what we call the wildland urban interface. Where once our land managers saw one cow and cowboy in a month, they may now see 1,000 off-road vehicle users in a single hour. Federal public lands now tally nearly 1 billion visits each year.
Fourth is the growing instability in federal budgets and personnel capacity, despite a need for longer-term planning and investment. Consider, for example, the need for long-term investments in wildfire fuels treatment, which is not a “fix it and exit” or “buy it and done” proposition. Yet Congress is constantly struggling to provide predictable, multi-year investments to support forest restoration work. Meanwhile, the severe loss of agency staff in the past year — over 30% for some federal land-management agencies — seriously undermines capacity to provide this ongoing stewardship.
The role of collaborative conservation in reshaping public land and water management
To meet the challenges facing our public lands and waters — and to adapt to the shifting pressures they are facing — we need landscape-scale, durable, collaborative, inclusive, science-informed, and outcome-focused conservation. For example, we need to improve wildlife habitat connectivity through a multi-species focus, strengthen climate resilience by investing in nature, deploy clean energy through smart siting, and get more focused on water, water, water.
None of this can happen without more coordination: public-private partnering, consultation and collaboration with Tribal nations, coordination with state and local governments. And lots more.
The good news is that there is a growing public appetite for collaborative approaches. In many communities across the country, we are seeing a strengthening of the art of conversation.
Despite intense national discord, there is a desire for on-the-ground problem-solving and bottom-up decisions. Even with deep divides and shrill voices in Washington, D.C., many of this Nation’s communities are engaged in distinct, yet increasingly linked social, environmental, and economic enterprises that enhance — not merely sustain — wildlife, lands, waters, communities, and economies. How do we nurture these efforts? How do we learn from them?
In many communities across the country, we are seeing a strengthening of the art of conversation. Despite intense national discord, there is a desire for on-the-ground problem-solving and bottom-up decisions.
Examples span the nation. In the Network for Landscape Conservation, a hub for community-grounded collaborative conservation partnerships, for example, we see hundreds of people participating in conservation networks, collaborations, and shared stewardship efforts that involve federal, state, and Tribal agencies, private landowners, local communities, and companies. We see innovative collaborative management partnerships such as at the Boston Harbor National Recreation Area, which involves the National Park Service, state government agencies, and others in its governance. Or we see National Heritage Areas that are managed through federal, state, and local partnerships. Other similar innovations dot our federal landscapes.
Focal points for re-thinking public lands management
There are many opportunities, discussed below, for examining current laws, regulations, and other management provisions to advance the above goals. However, strengthening support for collaborative efforts, including collaborative governance, seems especially relevant in thinking about conservation and the future of public lands.
Partnerships and Collaboration:
Over 100 years ago, explorer John Wesley Powell observed the intersection of people and nature with a systems lens. Writing about the interdependence he saw, he concluded: “People must necessarily work together for common purposes within interconnected spaces and places.” Fast forward over 120 years, and we have seen a growing embrace of Powell’s vision where large-scale conservation and restoration initiatives are broadening in scope, scale, and extent. We see large-scale conservation underway in the Gulf of Mexico, Missouri and Mississippi rivers, Chesapeake Bay, Great Lakes, some marine reserves, and more.
These efforts require cooperation among federal, state, local, and Tribal agencies working with industries, private landowners, and nonprofit organizations. Collaborative conservation at small and large scales is not new, but such efforts are a centerpiece of innovative 21st century conservation. How do we nurture these efforts?
The challenge of enhancing collaboration includes supporting public agency staffing and funding for agencies and other partners to engage in collaborative conservation efforts.
Many public lands management challenges span time, geographic space, governing jurisdictions, land ownerships, and multiple agency authorities. Many restoration and management efforts are decades-long. All require long-term and, often, multi-agency funding to implement complex plans among many partners. This large-scale focus is emerging in both the countryside, such as with the Blackfoot Challenge, and cities, where we see efforts such as the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. These endeavors involve looking at whole systems. They often require considering how to link conservation to economic action, community well-being, and citizen engagement.
The challenge of enhancing collaboration includes supporting public agency staffing and funding for agencies and other partners to engage in collaborative conservation efforts. The Partners for Fish and Wildlife program, Conservation Reserve Program, Regional Conservation Partnership Program, the Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership Program, and others offer building blocks for collaborative conservation.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA):
In their recent book, Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson posit framing policy actions with an “abundance” focus centered on enabling more housing, energy, infrastructure, and other needs. But such a focus may reinforce notions of environment/economy tensions. Rather, the great challenge for implementing NEPA, which requires agencies to evaluate the environmental effects of proposed actions, is how to facilitate the blending of environmental, economic, and social values into decisions and outcomes. Fundamentally, this balancing demands participatory and collaborative dialogue across interested and affected participants.
Achieving robust public participation and collaborative engagement has been an evolutionary and rocky journey since the law was signed in 1970. Critiques of these processes have pointed to their often-adversarial nature; lengthy decision processes and a lack of consistent timetables, modes of public participation, and other requirements that have hampered interagency coordination; and public and other agency participation occurring too late to be effective in enhancing strategic planning.
However, until changes by the second Trump administration, federal agencies had increasingly incorporated collaborative processes into NEPA decision making.
In Arizona, in the 1990s, BLM initiated a traditional planning process for creating the Empire-Cienegas Resource Conservation Area. Local communities concerned that restoration must include state trust and private lands and landowners formed the Sonoita Valley Planning Partnership.
Eventually, the Bureau of Land Management established (with congressional approval) the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, which developed a community-based management plan for the National Conservation Area (NCA). Las Cienegas NCA was the first major BLM-administered land area to simultaneously engage in community-based planning and community-based implementation of the adopted plan.
More recently, the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan resulted from a collaborative effort to achieve conservation goals while ensuring opportunities for robust renewable energy development. The effort covered 10 million acres of California public lands, identifying pre-screened zones — development focal areas and areas to conserve. The Plan illustrates possibilities for larger-scale, collaborative, science-informed decisionmaking involving multiple agencies.
Is NEPA ideal? No — it is sometimes cumbersome. And sometimes analyses overlook important impacts. But in its basic framing, it offers a platform for blending values and participatory processes fundamental to advancing healthy lands and waters and thriving communities.
Until the current administration, we saw at least two decades of gradual efforts to enhance collaborative and coordinated decision processes under NEPA and to broaden the landscape scale at which plans and actions were evaluated. These efforts were headed in a constructive direction, including NEPA regulations that allowed incorporation of alternatives formulated through collaborative processes as the preferred management alternative. Such rules were formulated in the Interior Department’s 2007 NEPA regulations. They merit reconsideration and strengthening. We had also seen a growing recognition that some actions, such as ecological restoration, have significant benefits that warrant considering streamlined decision processes.
The Endangered Species Act:
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) sets forth provisions for evaluating species and, where relevant, listing them as threatened or endangered, triggering requirements to mitigate impacts on their population and habitat. The Act is a source of long-standing controversy — do burdens of protecting species disproportionately fall on private landowners? Some see the Act, in its implementation, as antagonizing states, communities, and landowners. Or is it essential to species conservation?
The policy challenge is how to enhance its implementation in ways that: 1) encourage species conservation by agencies and other landowners; 2) enable a multi-species, landscape-scale focus that can both enhance effectiveness and implementation efficiency; and 3) strengthen ESA provisions focused on coordination with states and incentives for landowner conservation, such as in the Act’s Section 6, which facilitates cooperation between federal agencies and states, and Section 10, which provides permitting allowing some impact on species if certain purposes or conditions are met. Tools like “safe harbor” agreements, which provide landowners the ability to protect endangered species without invoking restrictions on their use of the land provided protection goals are met, offer instructive lessons.
Funding:
Public lands include extensive infrastructure — roads, visitor facilities, trails, water control structures, and much more. Beyond infrastructure, management of forests to sustain their health and reduce wildland fire risks, tackling invasive species, maintaining ecosystem function for wildlife, engaging with users of these lands (whether for recreation, ranching, logging, hunting and fishing, or other endeavors) all require staff and money. Federal funding of these endeavors is an investment in the Nation’s assets, contributing to economies, communities, public health and safety, and nature and wildlife valued by Americans.
Creative funding opportunities reside in understanding the role of nature itself as infrastructure. Managing water and lands by partnering with nature presents among the greatest cross-cutting opportunities to benefit nature and people.
Restoring federal funding commensurate with sustaining healthy lands and their associated economic and social benefits is essential. But creative funding opportunities reside in understanding the role of nature itself as infrastructure. Managing water and lands by partnering with nature presents among the greatest cross-cutting opportunities to benefit nature and people. Partnering with nature means protecting and restoring wetlands that store and purify water and reduce flood risks to communities. It means restoring stream bank vegetation to keep streams cooler and cleaner, provide nesting habitat, and reduce erosion. It means sustaining healthy forests to reduce risks of catastrophic wildland fire and enhance carbon sequestration. It means nurturing healthy soils essential to all life on earth. Such efforts offer broad partnership opportunities with local communities — both for funding and implementation.
The Army Corps of Engineers has undertaken many natural infrastructure projects and released reports on “Engineering with Nature,” but more opportunities for federal leadership abound. These include supporting consideration of natural infrastructure in agency planning, in community hazard mitigation planning, and in infrastructure investments. Opportunities include increasing reforestation through the Forest Service Reforestation Trust Fund and supporting the Federal Highway Administration in infrastructure vulnerability assessments and training around its natural infrastructure guidance for transportation investments. Investing in National Wildlife Refuges at coastal wetlands both sustain biodiversity and reduce risks to coastal properties from storm surge.
Transcending the polarity
We face legitimate questions about how to strengthen the efficiency, effectiveness, fairness, empowerment, and more in the management of federal public lands. Those questions come at a time when our public lands and waters need us more than ever, and vice versa.
While both the need and experience with enhancing collaborative action to answer these questions abound, I will be frank. The prospect of aligning public land management, supporting laws, and organizational forms with the requisites of advancing healthy lands, thriving communities, and dynamic economies appears further off to me today than even a few years ago, as those challenges are now situated within much broader national divisions and a corresponding swinging pendulum between polarized perspectives. But transcending this polarity is essential to sustaining public lands that anchor interconnected, broader conservation that undergirds the well-being of people, wildlife, and the lands and waters that sustain all communities.
Our challenge now is how to hold thoughtful conversations about these matters, in particular, exploring ways to: 1) enhance collaboration and coordination among agencies and with communities; 2) facilitate action at relevant scales to achieve meaningful results; 3) support both science and experiential knowledge to inform action; and 4) encourage stewardship in all land management — public and private.
While it may be tempting to eschew these conversations, cling to orthodoxies, and remain set in our views, the current moment calls for active partnership and innovation. When it comes to the future of our public lands and waters, we — the people — are the ones who must chart the course.
