Toward a National Conservation Network Act: Transforming Landscape Conservation on the Public Lands into Law

The United States has made a remarkable commitment to nature conservation on the federal public lands. The country’s existing array of national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments, wildlife refuges, and other protective designations encompasses roughly 150 million acres, or nearly 40 percent of the “lower 48” federal estate. A robust land trust movement has protected another 56 million acres of privately owned lands. Advances in scientific knowledge reveal that these protected enclaves, standing alone, are insufficient to protect native ecosystems and at-risk wildlife from climate change impacts and unrelenting development pressures. Abetted by existing law, conservation policy is now focusing on the larger landscape to preserve biological diversity and to promote ecological resilience as principal management goals. This growing emphasis on landscape-scale conservation is evident in various protected area complexes that have arisen organically across the federal estate in places as diverse as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, California’s Mojave Desert, and Colorado’s San Luis Valley. To fully capitalize on these ad hoc developments, this article makes the case for a new National Conservation Network Act to legitimize and expand upon these protected areas. It first reviews the origins and evolution of the nation’s protected land systems and related nature conservation strategies, and then identifies the scientific and legal developments underlying landscape-scale conservation strategies. Next, it highlights several emergent protected area complexes evident on the public lands, explaining their diverse origins and important conservation contributions. It concludes by proposing new legislation that would place a statutory umbrella over these protected complexes, mandate effective interagency coordination within them, enlist private lands as voluntary “affiliates” in these conservation efforts, and establish new wildlife corridor and restoration area designations. The proposed law would validate the current movement toward landscape conservation, and thus amplify the federal commitment to nature conservation to meet the challenges looming ahead

Taking Account of the Ecosystem on the Public Domain: Law and Ecology in the Greater Yellowstone Region

Greater Yellowstone\u27s future will be shaped by, and ultimately will reflect, evolving national public values. The ecosystem concept interjects a provocative new image into the debates that are now influencing and molding public lands policy. Scientifically, the concept demonstrates the indisputable interconnectedness of jurisdictionally fragmented public lands. And the concept has great power as a metaphorical device, rooted in scientific fact yet evocative enough to stir the hearts and minds of an American public now strongly committed to the preservationist ideal and its national parks heritage. Already the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem concept has fused two world-renowned national parks, several well-known wilder­ness areas, and the adjoining national forest lands into a regional en­tity that has engaged public attention at national and international levels. It has broadened the perspective of land managers beyond their own borders, and it is transforming traditional conceptions of land management policy. In short, the ecosystem concept provides the fun­damental premise for regional management and thus brings a compel­ling new vision to the ongoing debate over the future of the public domain

Saving Special Places: Trends and Challenges with Protecting Public Lands [outline]

7 pages. Includes bibliographical references Robert B. Keiter, Wallace Stegner Professor of Law, University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of La

Wildfire Policy, Climate Change, and the Law

This essay will first briefly review the evolution of federal wildfire law and policy. It will then examine the relationship between climate change and wildfire, including potential legal and policy implications. Next, it will identify and explore how adaptation and mitigation strategies might be employed to address the growing climate-related wildfire risk. This entails reviewing the wildland-urban interface problem and risk reduction policies designed to protect human lives and property. It also entails examining the impact climate change and enhanced fire regimes will have on natural resource management policy and strategy. The essay concludes with brief observations on how law and policy might better address and accommodate the fire-related challenges that loom as the climate continues to warm