I U H Q
The recent designation and subsequent downsizing of the Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah has brought heightened awareness to public lands politics. At the time of this writing, ongoing political and legal cross swords over the status of the monument and its boundaries expose fissures in our land politics as deep as—and in some ways aligned with—the political divisions confronting our country. Divisions over what public lands are, what they should be, and how they are to be managed have perplexed our culture for generations. The contested question boils down to the meaning of public in public lands: to whom do these lands belong and for what purpose, how are they to be managed, what criteria decides who benefits from them, and who is excluded. Bears Ears is part of the approximately 640 million acres federally managed in the United States, larger in land mass than Alaska and Texas combined. That these lands are owned by all Americans seems simple enough, but that reality obscures thorny legal, political, managerial, cultural, geographical, and ecological issues part and parcel to any serious discussion of the vast real estate owned in common.
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We intend this special issue to contribute to the serious discussion swirling in the political and policy realm—even as we hope it also appeals to the public. Although public lands history appears at first glance a tedious subject, the topic could not be more pressing to anyone who cares about Utah and the West. Most readers of this journal will know of public lands from personal experience: we live close to them, extract resources from them, recreate on them. Drive any distance in the western states and you will notice that they dominate the skyline. These tangible associations run deeper still for many in our communities. Far from being uninhabited, these lands sustained generation after generation of Indigenous peoples who lived and died on them; Native Americans today rely on them still for economic, cultural, and religious purposes. The sweep of the general term public lands belies these intimate connections. Collectively they may take an amorphous form in our minds, but specific landscapes, landforms, features, and place names hold particular meanings to the people who know and love them.
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