Riding the Wave: Open Access, Digital Publishing, and the Undergraduate Thesis

Char Miller, W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, Claremont, CA., gave the Opening Keynote for the USETDA 2013 Conference, July 24-26, held on the Claremont McKenna College and Scripps College campuses. In this keynote address, Dr. Miller discusses the importance of building the educational foundation to support students and then incorporate opportunities for undergraduates to share their research. Dr. Miller draws from his experience collaborating with librarians to integrate information literacy into the curriculum and requiring that all senior theses in the program be posted on the Claremont Colleges\u27 Open Access institutional repository, Scholarship@Claremont

Uncle Sam’s Badge: Identity and Representation in the USDA Forest Service, 1905–2013

Howard Abbey could recall the exact moment when he learned that he had passed the forest ranger’s examination for the newly established USDA Forest Service (USFS). In the early morning of Aug. 1, 1905, while he was managing a team of horses pulling a mowing machine on the McIntosh Ranch in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains, Allen Ray Powers, a Forest Assistant on the Plumas Forest Reserve, rode up and “informed me that I was wanted at the Forest Supervisor’s office in Quincy.” Abbey handed over the reins to his boss and walked the 2 miles to town where he met with Supervisor Louis A. Barrett, who congratulated the young ranch hand on having passed the exam. After accepting the offer of a job as a Forest Guard on the Plumas, and “taking the Oath of Office,” Abbey was “given a bronze badge—insignia of office” (Abbey 1940, p. 5)

Fire Inevitable, Despite Attempts to Tame Chaparral

You didn’t need to fly into Ontario International Airport this past week to know that Southern California’s fire season had begun. But the view from 10,000 feet offered a unique perspective on how wildfires impact the region

Embers

After living in Southern California for nine years, I should be used to fire season—and the fact that there is something called fire season—but I’m not. My wife and I moved to the Southland in late summer 2007, and within the month we saw some of the region’s most horrific firestorms consume vast stretches of chaparral-cloaked foothills, deep canyons filled with alder and oak and, at higher elevations, thick stands of pine and cedar

Making the Past Present: Editor\u27s Note

For this inaugural volume of the ESHJ, editor Char Miller discusses the formative role that writer Mary Austin (1868-1934) has had in identifying many of the Eastern Sierra\u27s key features, natural and human. This new journal hopes to add to the intellectual work that she launched, serving as a window into this complex, fascinating, and contested region

Amateur Hour: Nathaniel H. Egleston and Professional Forestry in Post-Civil War America

Nathaniel Egleston, the second head of the U.S. Division of Forestry (1883–1886), is a forgotten figure in the history of early American forestry. The one-time minister became a tireless advocate for trees in the post-Civil War era, writing innumerable and well-received essays and pamphlets. But his enthusiasm did not translate into administrative success, and he was replaced by Bernard Fernow, who in turn was succeeded by Gifford Pinchot; the pair’s scientific training signaled the professionalization of American forestry

Malheur Occupation in Oregon: Whose Land is it Really?

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a 187,757-acre haven for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds in eastern Oregon, is usually a pretty peaceful place. But its calm was shattered on Saturday, January 2 when Ammon Bundy and a group of armed men broke into and occupied a number of federal buildings on the refuge, vowing to fight should the government try to arrest them. Their insurrectionary goal appears to be, simply put, to destroy the national system of public lands – our forests, parks and refuges – that was developed in the late 19th century to conserve these special landscapes and the critical natural resources they contain for all Americans. “The best possible outcome,” trumpeted Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, who began an armed standoff with law enforcement in Nevada in April 2014 over his continued failure to pay US$1 million in fees for grazing on public lands, is that “ranchers that have been kicked out of the area…will come back and reclaim their land, and the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control.” Theirs was not a rebellion, Bundy declared. “What we’re doing is in accordance with the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land.” He could not be more wrong. To understand why requires a basic understanding of the region’s complex and troubling history and the legal authority under which the federal land management agencies operate

The Pinchot Wire: Private Cash, Public Lands - Why the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument Matters

Here’s how President Obama celebrated the National Park Service’s 100th birthday: with the stroke of his pen, he established the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine, one of the most innovative initiatives in U.S. environmental history. That’s because the 87,500-acre park, which encompasses some of the Pine Tree State’s most remarkable forests and waterways, is a gift of the Quimby family and comes with a $40 million endowment, a private-public partnership without parallel

Back to the Garden: The Redemptive Promise of Sustainable Forestry, 1893-2000

As we struggle at the turn of the century to define and implement “sustainable forestry”— the next stage in the evolution of forest management in North America and the world—it is important to realize that its components have strong roots in the forestry profession. This article examines the relationship of forests and forestry with social equity issues during the last century. In the end, the author leaves us with a question: can sustainable forestry as we understand it today lead to conflict resolution? If not, what lies beyond sustainable forestry