Welcome to DOI.gov

 

By Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton

We take seriously our awesome responsibilities to the American public:
- The Department manages one of every five acres of land in the United States, providing opportunities for wilderness, wildlife protection, recreation, and resource development;
- We supply water for much of the West so that farmers can grow food and people can turn on their taps;
- We provide access to energy and minerals so that people can warm and cool their homes, and drive to their jobs;
- We honor our special responsibilities to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and affiliated Island communities; and
- We protect wildlife and improve the environment.
We meet these responsibilities every day following the guide of what I call the 4 Cs: communication, consultation, cooperation, all in the service of conservation. We are committed to building partnerships to encourage conservation and preserve our natural and cultural resources; to bringing innovative approaches to solving land management and water disputes; and to developing energy, including renewable sources of energy, in the most environmentally protective manner.

During the time I have served as Secretary of the Interior, I have had the opportunity to observe firsthand the success of the 4 Cs. I have met with ranchers and farmers who have changed how they do business in order to protect wildlife and save water; I have visited landowners who are preserving habitat for endangered species; and I have seen industry step up to the plate to help us address important environmental issues, for example, by donating and restoring thousands of acres of hardwood bottom lands in the Southeast that will provide habitat for species and help sequester greenhouse gases. I have met with American Indian and Alaska Native leaders who are determined to improve the quality of life for their people through better educational opportunities and enhanced economic development.

This is an exciting time to be at the Department of the Interior and an exciting time to be involved in conservation. Through programs like Take Pride in America and friends groups at individual parks and refuges, we have over 200,000 volunteers and countless public and private partner organizations that are helping to preserve and improve our public lands and meet the mission of the Department. Together, we are achieving healthy lands and thriving communities, a legacy for future generations.

 
 
Should you want to see exactly who the DOI is 'partnering' with and speaking with at policymaking get togethers:
 

UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

S.J. QUINNEY COLLEGE OF LAW

Friday-Saturday, April 16-17, 2004
 

An interdisciplinary symposium exploring the politics, science, economics, and law of wilderness preservation in the American West

Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment

Ninth Annual Symposium

Wilderness: Preserving Nature in a Political World

Principal Funding by:
 
R. Harold Burton Foundation
Chevron
 
Friday Speakers
 

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed…if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence…so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.” - Wallace Stegner, Wilderness Letter, 1960

Why Wilderness Matters Now More Than Ever: MAX OELSCHLAEGER is the F. B. McAllister Endowed Chair in Community, Culture, and Environment at Northern Arizona University. Recent books include The Idea of Wilderness (Yale UP), Caring for Creation (Yale UP), and Texas Land Ethics (Texas UP) with Pete A. Y. Gunter. Recent articles have appeared in Natural Resources Journal, Future, and Sign System Studies. Max is a board member of Arizona Humanities Council, the Museum of Northern Arizona, the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, and Environmental Ethics, Inc.
 
Wilderness and the Law: ROBERT KEITER is the Wallace Stegner Professor of Law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and Director of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment. His books include Keeping Faith with Nature: Ecosystems, Democracy, and America’s Public Lands; The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: Redefining America’s Wilderness Heritage; and Reclaiming the Native Home of Hope: Community, Ecology, and the West.
 
Local Communities and Wilderness Protection: T. WRIGHT DICKINSON is a fourth-generation rancher. Along with his family, he owns and operates Vermillion Ranch, a commercial cattle operation in Colorado. T. Wright has been active in public lands issues since 1985 and has served in various capacities, including as the Moffat County Colorado Commissioner; Chairman of the Board for Club 20, a lobbying organization, which represents 22 counties on Colorado’s western slope; a Colorado board member of the Western Interstate Region of Counties; Chairman for the Colorado North West Resource BLM Advisory Council; and other appointments.
 
The Economics of Wilderness: RAY RASKER is Director of the SocioEconomics Program of the Sonoran Institute (SI), a nonprofit organization that promotes community-based strategies for conservation and development. Ray conducts workshops to help communities produce their own socioeconomic profiles, understand economic realities, and identify opportunities for environmentally compatible forms of economic development. Before joining SI, Ray was an economist for The Wilderness Society. Ray also holds an adjunct position at Montana State University in the Earth Sciences Department.
 
The Politics of Wilderness Preservation: JOHN LESHY is the Harry D. Sunderland Distinguished Professor of Property Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and is currently a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. John was formerly the Solicitor (General Counsel) of the Department of the Interior throughout the Clinton Administration, worked on a congressional committee staff, was a law professor at Arizona State University, served in the Carter Administration at the Interior Department, was with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in California, and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in Washington D.C. He has published widely on public lands, water, and other natural resources issues (including co-authoring the standard text on federal land and resources law), and on constitutional and comparative law.
 
The Bush Administration's Wilderness Policies: LYNN SCARLETT is Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management and Budget at the Department of the Interior, where she serves as both the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Human Capital Officer of the Department. Lynn also helps coordinate department-wide environmental policy initiatives to implement Secretary Gale Norton’s “4 C’s” vision of conservation through cooperation, communication, and consultation. She has authored numerous publications on incentive-based environmental policies, including co-authoring the report, Race to the Top: State Environmental Innovations, which examines state environmental programs that utilize incentives, private partnerships, and local leadership in addressing environmental problems.
 
Biodiversity and Wilderness: SUSAN HARRISON is Professor and Davis Campus Director for the University of California Natural Reserve System. Her research interests include plant population and community ecology, invasion biology, and conservation. Susan is particularly interested in the role of landscape structure, such as habitat patchiness and heterogeneity, in shaping patterns of natural diversity.
 
Recreation and Wilderness: LIZ CLOSE is Director of Recreation, Heritage and Wilderness Resources for the Intermountain Region of the USDA Forest Service. The Intermountain Region includes approximately 35 million acres of National Forest System land in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and California. Her 27-year Forest Service career has included positions of Northern Region Wilderness Specialist in Missoula, Montana; National Program Leader for Congressionally Designated Areas in Washington D.C.; and Acting Deputy Regional Forester in Ogden, Utah.
 
Alternatives to Wilderness: CLARK COLLINS was one of the original founders of the BlueRibbon Coalition in 1987 and served as its executive director from 1988 to January 2004. The BlueRibbon Coalition, which operates under the motto of “Preserving our natural resources FOR the public instead of FROM the public,” advocates for recreational access on public lands for motorized and non-motorized vehicles. The Coalition currently has more than 1,100 member organizations and businesses nationwide. Under Collins’ direction, the BlueRibbon Coalition worked with then U.S. Senator Steve Symms (R-ID) in 1990 and 1991 on federal legislation that resulted in the establishment of the Recreational Trails Program, which provides $50 million a year for motorized and non-motorized trail improvements in all fifty states.
 
Wilderness Designation as a Collaborative Endeavor: JEREMY GARNCARZ is The Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center Outreach Coordinator. Before joining The Wilderness Society, Jeremy served as the Southern Nevada Director for Friends of Nevada Wilderness. Jeremy was the point person for the Nevada Wilderness Coalition during the Southern Nevada Campaign, which resulted in the passage of the Clark County Conservation Public Lands and Natural Resources Act of 2002, which designated 452,000 acres of Wilderness and the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area.
 
Rewilding North America: DAVE FOREMAN is Executive Director and Senior Fellow of The Rewilding Institute, a conservation “think tank” advancing ideas of continental conservation. He has worked as a conservationist since 1971, including positions for The Wilderness Society, Earth First!, and the Wildlands Project, which he founded. He has served on the board of directors for the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. He is the author of The Lobo Outback Funeral Home (a novel), Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, The Big Outside (with Howie Wolke), and Rewilding North America (forthcoming from Island Press in July 2004). He was named by Audubon Magazine in 1998 as one of the 100 Champions of Conservation of the 20th Century.
 
Agenda: Utah and The Wilderness Experience
 

FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 2004

8:00 Registration

8:30 Why Wilderness Matters Now More Than Ever - Max Oelschlaeger

9:20 Wilderness and the Law - Robert Keiter

10:00 Break

10:30 Local Communities and Wilderness Protection - T. Wright Dickinson

11:10 The Economics of Wilderness - Ray Rasker

11:50 The Politics of Wilderness Preservation - John Leshy

12:30 Lunch - Boxed lunches in lobby

1:10 The Bush Administration’s Wilderness Policies - Lynn Scarlett

1:50 Biodiversity and Wilderness - Susan Harrison

2:30 Recreation and Wilderness - Liz Close

3:10 Break

3:40 Alternatives to Wilderness - Clark Collins

4:20 Wilderness Designation as a Collaborative Endeavor - Jeremy Garncarz

5:00-6:00 Rewilding North America - Dave Foreman

 

SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 2004

7:45 Registration

8:15 The View From Here: Utah Wilderness Issues -

Scott Groene, Executive Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA)

Peter Metcalf, Founder, Black Diamond

Mark Walsh, Associate Director, Utah Association of Counties

State of Utah Representative TBA

9:30 Wilderness, Roads, and Off Road Vehicles

Brian Hawthorne, Executive Director, Shared Access Alliance

Heidi McIntosh, Conservation Director, SUWA

Sally Wisely, State Director, BLM Utah State Office

10:30 Break11:00 Wilderness and Energy Policy

Steve Bloch, Staff Attorney, SUWA

A. John Davis, Shareholder, Pruitt Gushee

Sally Wisely, State Director, BLM Utah State Office

12:00-1:00 Looking Toward the Future -

Brad Barber, Director and Senior Fellow, Center for Environmental Management, Oquirrh Institute

Randy Johnson, Senior Advisor to the Governor, Utah State Office of the Governor

John Leshy, Professor of Property Law, University of California Hastings College of Law

PRINCIPAL FUNDING

R. Harold Burton Foundation

Chevron

SPONSORS

S. J. and Jessie E. Quinney Foundation

Natural Resources Law Forum

Wilderness: Preserving Nature in a Political World

For its ninth annual symposium, the Wallace Stegner Center will commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Wilderness Act by exploring the politics, science, economics, and law of wilderness preservation in the American West. One of the most important environmental laws ever passed by Congress, the Wilderness Act has given wilderness preservation a prominent position on the public land policy agenda.

Since the Act’s passage, though, the notion of what is wild and deserves preservation has evolved.

Traditionally focused on scenic and recreational values, wilderness advocates have become increasingly concerned with biodiversity and ecosystem protection, as well as the economic implications of preservation.

Wilderness opponents, however, object to “locking up” vast areas of public land, placing them off limits to the extractive industries and severely limiting access and recreational opportunities.

For others, the very idea of wilderness transcends politics, economics, and science. As Wallace Stegner argued in his 1960 Wilderness Letter, wilderness is an “intangible and spiritual resource” -- one that has helped to form our character and shape our history as Americans.

The Stegner Center has invited a diverse group of speakers to explore our relationship to wilderness and our efforts to protect it.

On Friday, we examine wilderness preservation in the American West, focusing on the history, science, economics, and politics of preservation.

On Saturday, we turn our attention to wilderness in Utah. Local speakers, engaged in the state’s ongoing wilderness debates, will discuss their experiences, goals, and expectations. Our aim is to promote a fuller understanding of wilderness as both a public resource and political issue.

Registration Form
 

Admission to the symposium requires registration and the payment of the following fees. Payment is due at the time of registration.Advance registration is highly recommended as the symposium may sell out. Please check boxes that apply.

REGISTRATION FEES FOR APRIL 16-17

$ 80 if received by April 5, 2004

$100 if received on April 6, 2004, or after

$ 35 Students/Seniors if received by April 5, 2004

$ 50 Students/Seniors if received on April 6, 2004, or after

CLE CREDIT Utah State Bar

$ 15 11.5 hours CLE credit

Credit may be available in other states; participants from out-of-state must make their own CLE arrangements.

Parking

$ 3 Parking will be available on the day of the symposium in the parking lots east of the S.J. Quinney College of Law and in the Rice-Eccles Stadium parking lot. If you would like a parking permit, please include an extra $3.00. (Free TRAX passes will be available for the day of the symposium -- please indicate below if you would like a TRAX pass.)

REGISTRATION FORM

$_________ TOTAL ENCLOSED

MAKE CHECKS PAYABLE TO: WALLACE STEGNER CENTER

To register, call 801-585-3440 or complete this form and mail with check to: Wallace Stegner Center, 332 S. 1400 E., Rm 101, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-0730.

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I prefer a vegan lunch.

Please do not include my name/address in a published list of participants.

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To register, call 801-585-3440 or complete this form and mail with check to: Wallace Stegner Center, 332 S. 1400 E., Rm 101,

Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-0730.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

801-585-3440

Fax: 801-581-6897

[email protected]

http://law.utah.edu/stegner  

 
 
 
Additional researched, recommended reading: