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Ethically speaking, how should federal and state governments manage western public lands on behalf of American citizens? And who specifically ought to decide on what the ideal use of those lands may be? Activists and lobbyists tend to focus on the first question, but the second is just as important for successful management of these lands. One’s ideal moral theory about how humans ought to interact with the land will matter little if that theory lacks a well-organized group to champion, implement, and defend it.
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The Problem of Enclosing Western Public Lands: Working Locally to Preserve our American Commons
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We should pay more attention to local communities and foster their ability to lobby for a place at the table when it comes to managing public lands. Their close geographical proximity to these lands gives them the political clout and the rational self-interest to defend their turf. As I explain below, in recent decades the Hispano communities of northern New Mexico have increasingly relied on this clout to fight both preservationists and developers where local interests may be threatened. Whether or not one shares a specific community’s moral vision, one must come to terms with its political efficacy. In this essay I suggest that local communities can be a bridge between extreme market- or ecology-based moral visions that, when pressed beyond abstract rhetoric, are often self-defeating. One local community’s effective contest against outside investors should be situated within a more familiar story—the management of western lands as a rivalry between competing moral visions. The first vision is grounded in the idea that nature has rights, or at least intrinsic value. The logical management extension of this biocentrism is that the land ought to be maximized for its preservation. On the other side of the scale is a market-driven vision based on the idea that land ought to be managed according to free-market principles. But the first has little policy power currently, and the second, while ideologically claiming to be a free
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