I am a National Park addict - I have made it a point to always visit the national parks available to all Americans whenever I'm near one. My favorite is the one I'm closest to and thus have visited the most - the Great Smoky Mountains NP. But I think that Glacier NP has to run a close second - this jewel of Western Montana is so lovely, with landscapes and vistas so sweeping and majestic that they almost defy description. The wildlife is so varied, from the small pika to mountain goats and bighorn sheep to grizzly bears. So this book - part a history of the many types of public lands (it's not just national parks) and how they came into being and how they are managed, and part a travelogue and personal journey of the author's through some of America's most pristine places - appealed to me on many levels. Some of these are places I've visited, or want to visit, while others are places I'm unlikely to go and yet I feel richer knowing that they are there for all Americans.
Americans as a nation own an incredible 28% of our land as public lands - 640 million acres. It's not just national parks, but also wildernesses, wildlife refuges, national forests, and other publicly managed lands. The author starts with Yellowstone - the first national park, and first of its kind in the world - and traces the development of public land policy as pro-conservation forces like Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir were confronted by pro-development forces. The pendulum swings back and forth over the next 100 years as these two forces continually push and pull the boundaries on how we use our public lands. The past few years have been an overall loss for the public as there are forces that want to exploit the resources with little regard to what we all lose. This is an important book because Kenyon is not a tree-hugger - he does hunt and fish and wants to protect the natural areas for those uses. The use of public lands can bring together liberals and conservatives, hunters and tree huggers - we all should be concerned about our lands. It has become a partisan point and it should not be - this should concern all of us as Americans. This land IS our land - unless it is sold or exploited by industry.
Quotes to remember:
Teddy Roosevelt: "Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see."
Mark Twain supposedly once said that "history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes."
...wild places and resources of America, especially its forests, shouldn't be monopolized by the rich few, but rather conserved for the many....conservation should be defined by managing natural resources to "provide the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run."
Roosevelt...created 5 national parks, 150 national forests, more than 50 wildlife refuges, and 18 national monuments - in total more than 230 million acres of newly protected lands. And he did all of this despite enormous pushback from anti-public-land forces.
In its 9 years of existence, it's said that the Civilian Conservation Corps planted between 2 and 3 billion trees, cleared 13 thousand miles of hiking trails, built more than 40 thousand bridges and 3 thousand fire towers, helped establish more than 700 new state parks, made improvements in 94 national parks or monument areas, and developed 52 thousand acres of public campgrounds. And while all the work happened nearly a century ago, many CCC projects are still used today.
October 2, 1968. The legislation formally established two national scenic trails - the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail [I had no idea that the AT was this recently established]
...the nation witnessed a rare moment in history when both Democrats and Republicans fought in equal measure to carry the mantle of the environmental movement forward.
Rather than proposing overt land sales...now it's 'Let's cut agency budgets, let's impair the value of these lands, let's not fund all of the management actions, let's not fund all of the back-logged maintenance, let's not give the agencies the money they need to do their work.'
That Wild Country: An Epic Journey Through the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands
4.4 | 3,711 ratings
Price: 17.5
Last update: 08-24-2024
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Important reading about Our Public Lands
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2020Amy
Would have appreciated a stronger stance against ABUSE of public lands
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2021