Peñasco least chipmunk proposed for Endangered Species Act protections

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Photo by Jim Stuart.

The Peñasco least chipmunk, a rare resident of New Mexico’s high country—and an indicator of failing ecosystem health—has been impacted by climate change and habitat loss from logging and livestock grazing. This week, the U.S. Forest Service proposed listing this rare animal (which inhabits National Forest System lands in just two mountain ranges in New Mexico) as endangered under the ESA. Here’s the press release we just sent out. -mk

SANTA FE, NM—The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week proposed to list the Peñasco least chipmunk (Neotamias minimus atristriatus), endemic to just two mountain ranges in New Mexico, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Service also proposed to designate 6,574 acres of critical habitat for the species.

“These rare animals have been on the brink of extinction for decades, and we’re glad to see the Fish and Wildlife Service finally move them out of bureaucratic purgatory and towards recovery,” said Joe Bushyhead, endangered species policy advocate at WildEarth Guardians.

Historically, the Peñasco least chipmunk only existed in two locations: high-elevation meadows in the White Mountains and mature ponderosa pine forests in the Sacramento Mountains. Logging decimated Peñasco least chipmunk habitat in the Sacramento Mountain, where the species hasn’t been seen there since 1966. A small population persists the White Mountains, but it too is declining as a consequence of habitat loss from climate change, lack of genetic diversity, disease, and other stressors. The species could quickly go extinct if faced with a disease outbreak, large wildfire, or drought.

WildEarth Guardians petitioned the Service to list the Peñasco least chipmunk as threatened or endangered in 2011. In 2012, the Service concluded the chipmunk deserved ESA protections, but deferred further action on the basis that listing was warranted but precluded by other higher priorities.

The ESA provides a critical safety net for imperiled species like the Peñasco least chipmunk. Since its enactment in 1973, the ESA has saved 99% of listed species from extinction. Conversely, more than 40 species have gone extinct while awaiting listing.

Working Lands, Working Communities: WGA Workshop and Interesting Survey Results

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The Utah workshop for the WGA (Western Governors’ Association) Chair Initiative, Working Lands, Working Communities, will be held on Sept. 29-30 and include a keynote by Gov. Spencer Cox.

The opening workshop for the central policy effort of WGA Chair, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, will feature conversations between federal, state and local policymakers and stakeholders. They will examine emerging issues, share success stories, and provide a forum for the development of bipartisan strategies to improve cross-boundary management of lands, mitigate wildfire risk and restore ecosystems.

WGA will livestream both days of the workshop on its YouTube Channel and Facebook page. You can also follow along via live tweets from WGA’s Twitter account. To view the sessions on YouTube, click on the links below at the scheduled times. Register to watch.

All times are Mountain Daylight Time.

There’s also a Colorado workshop on October 7-8.

As background for these sessions, WGA did a survey. There’s much interesting and discussable findings here, I’ll just highlight the “proliferation and lack of connection and possibly utility of collected data” one.

Question 2: How can federal agencies more effectively collect and utilize local‐ or state‐level data – including quantitative and qualitative information – in decision‐making processes that impact western working lands?

According to survey respondents, local data is often available, but lack of staff and funding capacity, partnerships, and communication between agencies creates complications in considering all data, assuring data is high quality and reliable, and fully capturing the story the data tells. Additionally, the lack of established standards for data collection and processing can lead to difficulty integrating data from multiple sources.

The lack of data standards and consistency was a reoccurring theme across multiple responses. Established standards would allow amalgamated data from non-governmental, local, state and federal sources to be efficiently compared and utilized. Varying methods of collection and processing lead to agencies not accessing or using potentially valuable data without creating new systems or procedures. Many respondents noted the need to update databases and database software to reflect new data, science and the use of modern software tools.

Other respondents noted that there needs to be agreement on what data is important for a particular end goal. Additionally, that data needs to be translated into an understandable narrative that provides useable, useful information to the reader. Due to lack of data standards, data may be shared, but other groups may not know how to properly interpret that data. Respondents specifically noted that State Forest Action Plans and the Shared Wildfire Risk Mitigation Tool are being underutilized for developing shared priorities, and could be excellent systems for quantifying project accomplishments.

Lack of capacity for adequate data collection was another common response throughout the survey. Some respondents explained their staff lack the necessary training to use data collection equipment and software, while others simply lack staff members and resources altogether. Building a chain of partnerships between every level of group or agency collecting data was a proffered solution. State agency resources may allow local groups to increase capacity for effective data collection, and in turn, states could work with federal agencies to provide collected data. These partnerships could include NGOs and universities engaged in relevant research as well as private landowners. Often, members of one organization or agency don’t even know what data has already been collected and processed by another.

I bolded the “agreement on data” because that seems to be an ongoing theme..as well as “coordination” of data; some us us remember discussions of why BLM and the FS couldn’t collect the same data. I think that was in the 1980’s…

Tarantulas on the Move on Comanche National Grassland

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The sun sets as a male tarantula successfully crosses U.S. 350 outside La Junta this month in search of a female mate. Now through the early part of October is a good time to spot tarantulas in Comanche National Grassland near La Junta. They’re most active in the hour before sunset. Gazette photo.

 

While people are off leaf-peeping across our National Forests, we can also acknowledge that the often less heard-from National Grasslands have their own tourism attractions. This one (Seth Boster story in the Colorado Springs Gazette) seems fairly unusual…

If you’ve seen headlines about “thousands of tarantulas” or “waves of tarantulas” marching across southeast Colorado every fall — CNN and USA Today have covered the annual phenomenon in recent years — you might have the wrong idea. On the contrary, you might see one or two or three at a time crawl across this prairie. Or, you might see none.

I’m beginning to think that is our fate. Other drivers from afar seem to be thinking the same thing.

“Seen any spiders?” one asks from Denver.

“You guys looking for tarantulas?” asks another from Colorado Springs.

She’s driving one of two SUVS in a caravan of searchers. I envy those extra eyes. Mine are sore, along with my craned neck, from forever scanning the road in vain.

Clumps of dirt, spots of tar, a glove, a shoe, a dead squirrel, smashed cacti and grasshoppers of biblical proportions all deceive. I eventually learn to ignore those lubbers for how they glimmer in the sun. The furry arachnids of interest do no such thing.

On and on and on through the fields, and I am wondering about this interest, why I am so eager to find these creepy crawlers. And why is everyone else? Drivers form the true waves here.

“My phone’s been ringing off the hook,” says Pam Denahy, La Junta’s tourism director. “End of August to early October, it’s consistent.”

If you’re asking, Denahy’s answer is yes, now is your best chance to spot the tarantulas. You’ve probably heard of this fall “migration.” The common description again gives the wrong idea.

The tarantulas are not exactly coming and going. They live around here. They’ve always lived around here, since and likely long before the Dust Bowl banished farmers and led to the 1960 establishment of the national grassland — prairie to be left undisturbed.

“You generally won’t find (tarantulas) where people have plowed,” says Whitney Cranshaw, who spent 37 years teaching entomology at Colorado State University and has annually ventured here to witness the eight-legged phenomenon. “They have permanent burrows, and they live for a long time. So it has to be an area that hasn’t been destroyed. It has to be relatively intact, native prairie.”

The tarantulas roam across Comanche’s 443,000-plus acres not so much migrating, but rather looking for love.

If you’re curious, follow the link (I hope it works!, let me know if not) and read on.

Megafires and spotted owls

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An RMRS paper published last month, “Megafire causes persistent loss of an old-forest species,” finds that “The negative effects of megafires on spotted owls are not ephemeral, but instead are likely to be enduring.”

Key Findings

  • Extensive severe fire within spotted owl territories resulted in both immediate territory abandonment and prolonged lack of re-colonization by owls six years post-fire.
  • Each additional 10 hectares of severe fire decreased the likelihood that owls would persist in a territory by 7.8% and decreased the likelihood a territory would be recolonized post-fire by 8.3%.
  • Owl territories that experienced a greater mix of burn intensities (or high “pyrodiversity”) tended to persist after the fire.
  • Salvage logging did not explain variation in post-fire persistence or recolonization; effects to owls could only be attributed to severe fire extent and pyrodiversity.
  • Given the severe and persistent impacts of the King Fire on spotted owls, our work suggests that fuels reduction that limits megafires could benefit this species.

FWIW, Chad Hanson’s work in mentioned:

“In some cases, scientists have debated whether it is the disturbance itself (e.g., fire) or the subsequent management activities (e.g., salvage logging) that has caused estimated effects on sensitive wildlife species such as spotted owls (Hanson, Bond, & Lee, 2018; Jones et al., 2019). It is often the case that fire and salvage effects are confounded and thus cannot easily be separated (Clark, Anthony, & Andrews, 2013; Lee, Bond, & Siegel, 2012). In our study, we were able to separate these two effects and we unequivocally determined that severe fire, and not salvage logging, was correlated with the observed local declines in spotted owl site occupancy. We, thus, reject the hypothesis that salvage logging drove or even contributed to the observed post-fire decline. Given that both severe fire and salvage logging were included as competing covariates, the salvage effects were uninformative across all scales.”

Interview with Chief Moore in the LA Times

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Chief Moore

 

Thanks to NAFSR for posting this link to an LA Times interview with Chief Moore.  The first question relates nicely to yesterday’s post, and the latter questions to common TSW topics of interest. Including the concept that wildfire management choices may look different depending on where you live, and the explanation of WFU and PB policy for this year. There is indeed, as he says, a lot of political steam gathering around forest treatments.

You are the first Black person to lead the Forest Service. In your first address, you said it’s “not going to take another 116 years to have another person of color” serve as chief. What is the agency doing to ensure that happens?

I think this administration is off to a really good start on that with the focus on equity and inclusion. The steps are being put into place where people are in position to be considered for the chief job going forward. I think we have more options these days than what we’ve had in the past, simply because you have a lot of people at the upper end of the organization that are people of color. The opportunities are there, so now it’s a matter of selection.

California is experiencing unprecedented fire behavior. This summer, the Dixie and Caldor fires became the first ever to burn from one side of the Sierra to the other. Does the Forest Service need to change its approach to these fires?

We’ll never be able to hire enough firefighters to fight our way out of what’s going on on the landscape. We’re seeing conditions out there that I have not seen in my 40-plus years of working for this agency. Due to climate change, due to extreme drought that’s taken place, the fire intensity is just off the charts. We’ve always had pyrocumulus clouds at certain nasty fires, but I’ve seen more of them this year. In some cases, fire retardant hasn’t had much of an effect. It’s burning just that hot and moving quickly. I think you have to balance the conversation a bit by not only talking about the need to suppress these fires; we have to talk fuel treatments. We have to do a lot more forest treatment so we have healthy, resilient forests. That’s our biggest weapon against a lot of the fire activity that’s taken place here.

This was a close call for South Lake Tahoe. Did you get lucky with the changing weather? Are there strategic lessons you learned from that experience?

What I saw with my own eyes on the ground is that where we have had fuel treatments, those helped tremendously. If you look at the southern end of [the Caldor] fire and how it moved up toward Lake Tahoe, you can see a blank spot where [a previous fire] was. I’m told the head of that flame was about 150 feet approaching South Lake Tahoe, and when it hit those treated areas, it dropped down to about 20 feet. We have proof that these treated areas really helped slow the fire down. It doesn’t always stop the fire — it’s not intended to stop it — it is intended to slow it down so the firefighters can get out there on the ground and knock it down.

How do you square the need for more prescribed burning with the fact that the Forest Service doesn’t have enough money or trained employees?

The challenge for us has been: Do we have the capacity to burn during the window in which we have to burn? And the answer has been no. We’ve lost about 37% of our non-fire workforce over the last 15 years. The capacity has been lost for quite a while. If you go back far enough, you will see that fire used to be about 14%-17% of the workforce, and now it’s over 50%. It’s not that we need to reduce fire; that’s not it at all. We need to increase our resource-related work. There are some locations out there where we are borderline viable.

Last month, you announced a policy of suppressing all fires, even if they are burning far from populated areas and under close watch. This is increasingly a source of tension between politicians who think “managed fire” is an oxymoron and scientists who say it prevents more destructive fires. Why did you make this decision?

It wasn’t a different policy — it was a clarification of our existing policy. There’s a perception out there that we have a “let it burn” policy, and we do not. We’re placing critically needed resources on fires that present the greatest risk to population centers. The last two years, we’ve had such a historical level of fire activity on the ground, and we had every firefighter that we could muster, so it looks like we have a “let it burn” policy to some people. But the reality is we just had so few firefighters. The other thing is, I have called a temporary pause on prescribed burning, because we simply do not have firefighters to put fires out if they escape.

Has the severity of the fires cut through some of the politicized disagreements over how to prevent them?

Yeah, I think so. When you live away from fire, you tend to have a different perspective about what fire can do to a community. And when you live in these communities that are affected by fire — not only by fire itself but the smoke — you will see more of a willingness, in my opinion, to start addressing this issue. Because you have lost livelihoods, you have lost lives, you have lost whole communities. You have suffered from a health perspective. You have lost all of your mementos and the things you valued your entire life. There’s a lot of loss that’s currently going on in our country from these fires, and it’s in ways that we haven’t even quite measured. Look at the carbon that’s released. Look at the amount of trees we’ve lost in the landscape and the effect that it’s had on sensitive species. There’s a huge impact to our environment.

This was the hottest summer in California history. What’s the Forest Service doing to protect firefighters from heat illness?

That’s a real problem that we have had, and we’ve been trying to be very conscious of that. In fact, we’ve given our firefighters an extra day of rest in between shifts. In the past, they worked 14 days, and they’d be off two; now, they’re working 14 days, and they’re off three days. I think that’s really appreciated. We’ve added COVID coordinators on each of the teams now, not only for health reasons but also to see if we can’t do a better job of monitoring each other.

Is it true that COVID-19 has been a problem in fire camps this year?

Last year, this was new. More people seemed to have been serious about following the mitigation protocols. I don’t know about the attitudes and the perspectives around COVID now, but I will tell you we’ve had an increase in COVID infections this year over last year — matter of fact, quite a bit. We’ve done things like moving away from the large base camps to maybe smaller spike camps. We’re doing temperature checks. We also are offering COVID tests, and at some of our locations, we’ve started pilots where we’re working with the local health department to actually give vaccinations at some of our fire camps.

(A Forest Service spokeswoman said there were 1,373 positive coronavirus cases among employees in all of 2020. There have been 1,142 so far this year.)

Conversations about fire with Californians and other Westerners often tend toward despair. What, if anything, gives you hope?

I think this tragic situation we’ve been in lately with climate change and drought and just all of the fires and destruction and devastation, it’s also created an opportunity for addressing some of the problems we’re having. I’m seeing a willingness even in Congress to come together to look at some solutions to this. I’m hopeful because I know that while there’s a lot of attention on fire suppression, there seems to be gathering steam around forest treatment. There seems to be hope on the horizon in terms of having a budget that’s sufficient enough that we can go out and start doing the fuel treatments that need to take place.

Wilderness Reservation System: Many No-Shows

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Oregon Public Broadcasting has a story about the new wilderness entry reservation system in central Oregon.

Crowds are smaller, but no-shows have plagued Oregon wilderness permit system

“People who bought permits before the start of the season were less likely to show than people who bought them as they came available throughout the summer. Still, 27% of people who made reservations during seven-day rolling windows were also no-shows, according to the Forest Service data.”

Covid may be one factor.

This system was the subject of much debate at the Mt. Hood/Willamette RAC meetings in 2019 and 2020. Some RAC members objected to any fees, others to the problem of people unaware of the permit requirement arriving at a trailhead and facing illegal entry or backtracking to a location where the cell signal is strong enough to buy one online… if any remained available.

 

Taylor on Increasing Diversity in Environmental Leadership

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It occurred to me after I posted some quotes from Dr. Taylor’s work, that some of you might not be familiar with her work on diversity in environmental organizations. I was looking for sociological studies of environmental organizations for my “Finding Common Ground” paper, and found Taylor’s report “The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations” which was commissioned by a group called Environment 2.0, “watchdogs for inequality in the environmental sector.” Their website is well worth checking out as Taylor’s report.

Here are two excerpts from the study:

a. Environmental organizations are much less likely to promote ethnic minorities already working in an organization to leadership positions. b. Promotions go primarily to White females. Women of color are still on the outside looking in, along with their male counterparts. c. This results in a narrowing of the gender gap while perpetuating the already wide racial gap in the leadership of environmental organizations.

Ethnic minorities are severely underrepresented in the environmental workforce. ii. Though ethnic minorities are also underrepresented in the science and engineering (S&E) workforce nationwide, they are employed in the S&E workforce to a much greater percentage than they are in the environmental workforce. Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans comprise 29% of the S&E workforce.

Why is this of interest? Perhaps if the goal is to diversify leadership (including political) of federal agencies, it would make it more difficult to select diverse people if you look mainly in ENGOs. And the white female thing.. I did notice that in recently appointed folks in Interior, there seemed to be quite a few white females. Not that there is anything wrong with white females, of course, but our whole community (ENGOs, government agencies, industry, academia) has a long way to go toward diversity, and IMHO the Biden Administration is a good place to make some sizeable gains. In my experience, groups who face similar challenges tend to band together, so while you might hire or promote one person, you may well bring an entire network of possibilities with them.

There may well be a greater proportion of diverse folks working in natural resources than in environmental fields, possibly due to the outreach and support that has been going on, with a great many ups and downs, for at least twenty years. There may be other reasons that would be worth exploring. In my own career with the Forest Service, I worked for three high-level (SES) Black male leaders, Larry Bembry, Jim Reaves, and Brian Ferebee, and I retired about ten years ago.

Good on Secretary Vilsack or whomever picked Randy Moore! Anyway, here’s a piece Taylor wrote in 2020 for Sierra Magazine updating her 2014 study:

When I researched and wrote The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations in 2014, I found that minorities composed just 14.6 percent of the staff of environmental organizations. Most of them worked in entry-level or mid-level positions in human resources, accounting, and community organizing. Meanwhile, people of color make up 38 percent of the US population, and this will be a majority-minority country by the year 2042.

When they were asked why so few people of color worked at their organizations, environmental staff blamed limited job openings, a lack of minority applicants (and not knowing how to find and recruit them), and the absence of a diversity manager. Any existing diversity efforts had mostly benefited white women.

I was moved to write the report because of the painfully slow progress environmental organizations were making. When I talked with environmental leaders, they always asked me for proof that levels of diversity are as low as people of color allude to. The report was an attempt to provide that evidence and document the difficulties that people of color face while working at these organizations.

After the report was released, several major environmental organizations pledged to support the goals outlined in the document. Over five years later, they still have predominantly white workforces and are increasingly reluctant to collect and reveal institutional diversity data. In 2014, only 6 percent reported gender and race data. By 2018, that number had dropped to 3 percent.

Environmental justice advocates want to see more than words to heal the wounds of the past. They want to see full accountability from environmental organizations about the concrete steps they have taken and what they have accomplished in making their organizations diverse, equitable, and inclusive. The future of environmental justice is one in which people of color are recognized as equal partners in environmental affairs, and it is one in which people of color can realize the adage coined at the outset of the environmental justice movement: “We speak for ourselves.”

Joshua tree one step closer to federal Endangered Species Act listing

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We issued this press release at WildEarth Guardians today. – mk

WildEarth Guardians scores groundbreaking legal win for the Joshua tree

Court rules that the federal government cannot ignore impact of climate change on iconic—and imperiled—Joshua trees

Los Angeles, CA—A federal district court in Los Angeles has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (the “Service”) violated the law when they failed to list the imperiled Joshua tree under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”).

The Service disregarded overwhelming scientific evidence showing that climate change poses a major threat to the Joshua tree’s survival when the agency denied listing the species as threatened under the Act. The decision stems from a 2019 lawsuit filed by WildEarth Guardians, challenging the Service’s decision that the desert icon did not warrant federal protection, despite all the available scientific evidence pointing to the same conclusion: Joshua trees will be in danger of extinction throughout most of their current range by century’s end from climate change driven habitat loss, invasive grass fueled wildfire, and other stressors.

“The Court’s decision represents a monumental step forward for the Joshua tree, but also for all climate-imperiled species whose fate relies upon the Service following the law and evaluating the best scientific data available with respect to forecasting future climate change impacts,” said Jennifer Schwartz, staff attorney for WildEarth Guardians and lead attorney on the case. “The Court’s unequivocal holding—that the Service cannot summarily dismiss scientific evidence that runs counter to its conclusions—will force the federal government to confront the reality of climate change and begin focusing on how to help species adapt.”

WildEarth Guardians first filed a petition to list the Joshua tree as “threatened” under the ESA in 2015 and the Service found the listing “not warranted” in August 2019. Under the Trump administration, the Service ignored every available peer-reviewed study to model future climate impacts to Joshua tree—all of which agree that the vast majority (roughly 90%) of the species’ current range will be rendered unsuitable by the end of the 21st century. The Court lambasted the Service’s decision in the ruling stating that “[i]n concluding that climate change will not affect Joshua trees at a population- or species level, the Service relies on speculation and unsupported assumptions.”

Notably, while the decision was issued by the Service under the Trump administration, the Service refused to budge from its indefensible position—or even consider taking a fresh look at the finding—even under the Biden administration. In addition to the litigation, Guardians filed emergency petitions to protect two species of Joshua tree in May 2021, following the release of even more conclusive climate change findings and the large Cima Dome fire that swept through the Mojave National Preserve and killed an estimated 1.3 million Joshua trees. But the Service has failed to respond to the renewed petitions.

“While we are grateful to the Court for this positive decision, we are very disappointed that the Biden administration failed at several junctures to do what’s right by these iconic Joshua trees,” said Lindsay Larris, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians. “The time and money the federal government spent defending a decision that the Court could clearly see was wrong—instead of using these funds to conserve species and determine how to mitigate massive biodiversity loss from climate change—is tragic and, unfortunately, telling. We need this administration to take swift action to protect species and habitat, not just deliver nice messages about the importance of fighting climate change while defending the damaging actions of the prior administration.”

The Court order now directs the Service to reconsider its decision, taking into account the best available science, including climate change models, in issuing a new decision for the Joshua tree. Pursuant to the ESA, this decision is required to be issued within the next 12 months, though the Service will now have 60 days to decide whether or not to appeal the decision.

“For the sake of the Joshua tree and the overwhelming majority of the public who believe in conservation, science, and protection of species and habitat, we are optimistic that the Service will use this opportunity to quickly issue a decision to protect the Joshua tree,” said Schwartz. “Our climate-imperiled species—plants and animals alike—do not have time for political gamesmanship that questions unambiguous science. Now is the time for action to preserve what we can of the natural world before it is too late.”

The Smokey Wire Question of the Day: What’s Holding up Advisory Committee Paperwork?

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From Black Hills Advisory Board Meeting 2019 Newscenter 1 photo

Federal Advisory Committees are extremely important ways for the voice of stakeholders to be heard in government decisions. I was hoping that the Biden Administration, because of the importance of hearing from the public, and the experience of many appointees from the Obama Administration, would have a smoothly operating approval process for renewals and appointments (a girl can dream, right?). Folks tell me that the Black Hills Federal Advisory Committee, at one time the only forest level FACA committee in the US, has been held up for over a year (of course, there’s transition, but it’s not a surprise to the new Admin that FACA approvals are on their list of things to do..)

Does anyone know…

(1) Is this level of delay true of all FACA committees or only some? What about the ones you know about/work on?

(2) Is there a way for the public to apply pressure to speed up the process (it’s not COP26 negotiations here…not a trade agreement, nor even a forest plan; how many people really need to clear them)?

Dr. Taylor’s Definition of Internal Colonialism and its Application to the Interior West: Does Partisan Politics Distract Us From Justice?

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Yesterday, the Colorado Springs Gazette ran an essay by Vince Bzdek. It was about Governor Polis disagreeing with Biden Admin policies on Covid and agreeing with (some previous) Trump Admin policies. I really liked one quote which I think it particularly relevant to TSW topics:

Not all problems have a left and a right. Some problems are just problems, and the minute we Velcro ideology onto some problems, they often become bigger, uglier, less solvable problems.

It will be interesting to look through that lens at various topics. One that comes to mind is the question of what we might call domestic imperialism (I think I first heard that from Matt Carroll at WSU, a rural sociologist). Another related topic was raised by Patrick McKay in this comment. I see actually two levels here: (1) justice (social and environmental) implications of distant folks making decisions with impacts on local communities, and (2) given that this is our current political/legal system, to what extent are the “on the ground” decisions made by the personal predilections of local officials? I see the first as more of a political science question, and the latter as more of a “how does this work in practice?” question. Both are worth reflection and discussion, I think. For this post, I’ll stick to #1.

In Dr. Dorceta Taylor’s, of Yale School of the Environment, book “The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection“, she traces the history of race, gender and class

Let’s look at what she calls “internal colonialism”.

In addition to colonial expansion, countries seek to bring their hinterlands or peripheral regions under the control of the central government. Such moves toward internal colonization result in tensions or conflict between the country’s core or center and its periphery. The core develops exploitive relationships with the periphery, using the hinterland’s natural resources and cheap labor to enhance or sustain the development or expansion of the core. If the periphery has indigenous or culturally distinct people, the core often discriminates against them. The core monopolizes trade and commerce, thus forcing the peripheral region to develop as a complementary economy of the core. The economy of the core typically relies on one or a few exports. The movement of laborers in the periphery is determined by forces outside of the region. Economic dependence of the internal colony is reinforced by legal, political and military measures. The periphery is often characterized by lower levels of service and low standards of living than the core (Blauner 1969, 1972, 1982; Hechter 1994; Horvath 1972; Taylor 2014.

While Taylor focuses on the role of peripheral regions in providing natural resources, it may be just as IC (internal colonialist) to require peripherals to provide certain kinds of recreation by limiting land uses.

Which reminds me of a personal story:

When we started the journey that would become Colorado Roadless, Senator Hickenlooper was Mayor Hickenlooper of Denver. We had a public meeting in Denver and Hick spoke about how important it was to protect recreational opportunities because those opportunities attract businesses and people to Denver. I was standing next to our Regional Forester and said something like “he seems to be forgetting that rural people have their own agency.. sounds colonialist to me!”. Of course, that was Hick’s job as Mayor, to make sure his own folks’ interests were taken into account. Still, this can easily be the modus operandi for any state with urban and rural populations. That not only are urban interests prioritized, but their views on what should occur on rural lands imposed via having the majority of voters.

Circling back to Bzdek’s comment, here’s a question: if the Interior West were not occupied by people who vote Republican, would ENGO’s, the media and other opinion leaders be more sensitive to their quest for (we can disagree about how much) autonomy and political power over the lands they inhabit?